2025 has already been a huge year for the King of Horror, to say nothing of genre output as a whole, and we still have several upcoming Stephen King movies and TV shows on the way. (It’s like a Halloween-coded Christmas.) The latest and potentially greatest live-action take on the author’s work is Andy and Barbara Muschietti’s IT: Welcome to Derry, the episodic prequel extension of their two IT films. The series is set to debut just in time for Halloween, and critics’ reviews have started floating up from the sewers.
What's IT: Welcome To Derry About?
IT: Welcome to Derry is set to explore the titular monster's deadly cycle in the Maine town 27 years before the events of 2017's IT. Set in 1962, the series follows Leroy Hanlon (grandfather of Losers Club member Mike Hanlon), who gets deployed to Derry with his wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige) and son Will (Blake Cameron), only to realize that the seemingly quaint area is hiding an ancient evil that has a penchant for wearing clown makeup and swiping up innocent children.
- RELEASE DATE: Sunday, October 24, 2025
- PLATFORM: HBO (and HBO Max)
- CREATORS: Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, Jason Fuchs
- CAST: Jovan Adepo, Taylour Paige, Blake Cameron, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Bill Skarsgärd, Clara Stack, Amanda Christine
- RELEASE TYPE: Weekly
The series will share focus with a group of students who also get mixed up in the horrific events while trying to avoid becoming victims themselves. Familiar characters like The Shining's Dick Halloran (portrayed here by Gotham vet Chris Chalk) are involved, as are several other characters and locations mentioned in Stephen King's epic tome, with quite a few brand-new elements crafted specifically for the live-action universe.
Now that critics have seen the first half of the season, let's see what everyone has to say, starting with yours truly.
CinemaBlend's Take On IT: Welcome To Derry
The somewhat rare supernatural Stephen King(ish) TV series with a budget as sizable as the epic tale it's sourced from, IT: Welcome to Derry is both a lore-expanding prequel and a love letter to arguably the author's most celebrated work. All the recognizable themes are there — children overcoming adversities, other children NOT overcoming adversities, mid-century prejudice, gnarly nightmares — in service of exploring a reconfigured history of the town's dark connections with otherworldly evil.
As it went with the films, the scares here inventively play with scale and form, and are often explosive and panic-inducing, with relatively few extended attempts to draw out the dread. (Perhaps my main complaint is how far the CGI vs. practical effects balance dips towards the digital latter.) The Muschiettis & Co. pack episodes with Stephen King easter eggs, while also telling an engaging mystery that digs deeper into Derry's past in both organic and truly weird ways. It's a bloody good time, and both King fans and non-readers should clown around and find out.
What Critics Are Saying About IT: Welcome To Derry
If I can paint a picture using all the blood that just exploded from that balloon, the general consensus for IT: Welcome to Derry skews far more positive and glowing than anything, particularly when it comes to critics who seem to be King readers themselves. That said, not everything rang so positive, and one reviewer shared one of the harshest opinions possible. But before raining pickle juice on this parade, let's first look at the more positive perspectives.
Decider's Meghan O'Keefe believes this TV universe to have a stronger sense of storytelling than either of the IT movies, and states:
The most thrilling part of IT: Welcome to Derry is how showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane have concocted inventive ways to torture a new generation of “Losers.” Pennywise has expanded his reach well past the sewers, taunting Welcome to Derry‘s underaged characters with visions that tap into mid-century angst, grief, and generational trauma. Because King left so many details of this Pennywise cycle off the page, the HBO show shares a similar edge that FX’s recent Alien: Earth had thanks to its new roster of extraterrestrials. Even hardcore fans, well-versed in the lore, can enjoy the dread that comes with not knowing what will happen next.
Decider
Over at Variety, critic Aramide Tinubu shared particular praise for the way IT: Welcome to Derry puts a spotlight on its social issues in ways that mirror their continued existence in the present. As well, the younger cast members were lauded:
It cannot be overstated how outstanding the younger cast is. The foundation of IT, from the novel to the films, and now with this series, examines how evil seeps, morphs and changes the lives of children forever. The cast’s emotional depth and depictions of fright and panic really elevate IT: Welcome to Derry. Stack’s Lilly particularly stands out as a young girl still terrorized by the traumatic loss of her father, but desperate to save her friends from experiencing similar kinds of anguish.
Variety
GamesRadar+'s Will Salmon also spoke in mostly positive swaths about the new show, pointing out how brutal and unflinching some of the scares are in comparison to the films, pointing to the Terrifier films as a potential cause. As far as THIS killer clown goes, though, the delay in Pennywise's arrival isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Not that the clown itself features too heavily, at first. Pennywise has always been a shape-shifting monster, and we see it in various different grotesque forms throughout. At times, the show's reliance on CGI sticks out – a winged digital baby is never going to be as menacing as Bill Skarsgård in his full pomp – but it does save the threat from becoming too repetitive. By the time that we get to the first full Pennywise moment, it feels well-earned. Over-familiarity is, however, something that the show struggles with elsewhere.
GamesRadar+
To put even more of a bow on the point of this being a show for horror fans, here's what SlashFilm's Chris Evangelista had to say after questioning the longterm worth of exploring every nook and cranny of this backstory:
Whether or not Welcome to Derry over explains things remains to be seen. One thing is certain, though: the show is consistently bloody, with a mean streak that might catch some viewers off guard. Here is a horror show that lays the horror on thick, embracing the shape-shifting nature of its monster and exploiting it for all its worth (Does a pickle-jar zombie interest you? You're in luck! You want a scary version of Uncle Sam? You got it!). Any horror show that unleashes a torrent of creative ghouls on the viewer is commendable, and ties in nicely with the neverending spookhouse horrors of King's novel. For now, IT: Welcome to Derry is a total monster mash that should satisfy hungry horror fans.
SlashFilm
So while those opinions represent the vocal majority on Rotten Tomatoes, where the film currently sits at 78% Fresh (with more reviews being added as I write), let's turn our attention to some of the critics who did not feel welcome at all while visiting this version of Derry.
Ben Travers of IndieWire took the show to task for falling for the same mistakes a lot of prequels make, and for not being engaging enough to stand apart from the story that already exists. Speaking to the King fan service that the show provides, Travers says:
There are plenty more winks and nods to lore for those of you who care. I, for better or worse, do not. Everything doesn’t have to connect to everything else, even in a prequel meant to evoke the satisfying snap of puzzle pieces coming together, and primary stories still need to be able to stand on their own. Welcome to Derry, very much for worse, does not. Despite being nicely fashioned by Oscar-winning production designer Paul D. Austerberry, the town’s origins are valued more than what’s going on within it — the former of which is trotted out in blunt stretches of exposition, and the latter of which is realized in clunky set-pieces that are meant to be scary but settle for icky.
IndieWire
Since we kicked things off with my own glowing praise, we might as well end it on one of the most damning appraisals of HBO's latest horror series. Daily Beast's Nick Schager brought out the slingshot and the silver slugs, saying it "completely ruins Stephen King's epic," and lays out this criticism, amongst many:
There’s no other way to put it except to say that It: Welcome to Derry hinges on an idea that’s so dumb, it’s impossible to take seriously. That it indulges in tepid CGI-ified scare tactics and dispenses numerous corny Easter Eggs doesn’t help. However, these are peripheral problems in light of the show’s foundational asininity, which is exacerbated by a laughable new mythology concerning its baddie. Throw in some strained 2022-ish racial politics and only fleeting glimpses of its central fiend, and you have the worst King adaptation in many moons.
Daily Beast
One person's treasure is another person's sewer-relegated trash, but King fans should feel comforted by the idea that such negative opinions (while certainly present and valid) are fewer and farther between than the celebratory bits.
IT: Welcome to Derry will arrive on HBO (and via HBO Max subscription) on Sunday, October 26, for fans everywhere to bring their own critiques to.
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