Spoilers below for everything we’ve seen so far in IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1, so be warned if you haven’t been watching on HBO or streaming via HBO Max subscription.
The back half of IT: Welcome to Derry’s first season has changed up audiences’ previous understanding of Stephen King’s Clown Prince of Evil, while adding further context to the two big-screen features from Andy Muschietti. Bill Skarsgård’s return to Derry wasn’t just about reprising the role of Pennywise, as he also brought the long-mysterious entity “Bob Gray” to life for the first time in Episode 7, expanding IT’s origin story to the point when Pennywise first entered the picture. (Not that there aren’t still questions.)
Bringing such massive changes to this iconic and beloved narrative universe wasn’t a task that the co-creators and showrunners took lightly, knowing that there was potentially more risk than reward in such an act. But IT: Welcome to Derry is all about building upon what already existed, and the creative team was lucky enough to have the progenitor himself, Stephen King, as a litmus test springboard for their ideas. Speaking to ScreenRant, co-showrunner Jason Fuchs talked about the major plus of having the legendary author as a welcoming muse, saying:
The blessing of having Stephen King as a partner and a collaborator in a show like this is that we don't have to have those fears go unanswered. We can have the safety net that is Stephen King to go to and say, ‘Here's what we're thinking. What if this is the story? What if this is the reason?’ And so, as much as we approached it with excitement and trepidation, we also knew that we had an ace up our sleeves in Stephen King there to tell us if we were we were generally scratching in a direction that felt right to him.
Hearing that, I would generally LOVE to know what some of the ideas might have been that would make Stephen King balk and shake his head to the point of it spinning right off of his shoulders. I wonder if there even is an adaptation idea so godawful that he would shut it down right on the spot: "What if we paired Pennywise up with Nickelback and a Quarter-pounder?"
Even with King's support and guidance, Fuchs & Co. were still dealing with a rather bizarre issue stemming out of the sequel IT: Chapter Two, where it wasn't entirely clear how much of Mrs. Kersh's conversation with Bev was pure batshit, and how much of it could actually have been sourced in reality. Here's how he explained it:
Bob Gray was a classic case of that. Because you think about Bob Gray in the context of the films, it's very unclear how much is real and how much is not. In the movies, we get the story that IT tells Beverly Marsh in Chapter Two, when it has taken the form of Mrs. Kersh. She's telling Beverly about her father, the clown, and how he came over. But is that real? Is that a true story, or is that a story IT has made up? Was there really a Bob Gray, or is that a part of the lie altogether? Those are the questions we were interested in.
Episode 7 did indeed confirm that Bob Gray was a cig-smoking widow performing for carnival crowds with his daughter Ingrid, whose apparent dream was to become the doting on-stage partner her mother was under the moniker Periwinkle. One night, Bob is approached by the form of a young boy, and is swayed into following the boy into the woods, never to return in human form again. Tragically enough, Ingrid spent the next 54 years waiting to see him again, only to finally discover that she'd been wrong all this time.
While we don't necessarily see yet how Bob Gray gets taken over, or how IT originally took over the child, Jason Fuchs did speak to the overall inspiration behind why the in-costume Pennywise was chosen as the next human vessel. As he put it:
I think among those questions we were interested in, there was also: Why Pennywise the Dancing Clown? If you think about the choices IT makes, in the context of the manifestations it takes, they're very specific to the personalized fears of the victim it is preying upon. Well, not everyone's afraid of clowns. I am, but there must be something beyond the fear component. And it occurred to us that what Georgie is brought in by at the beginning of the book is not fear. Georgie, it seems, has a little concern at the pit of his stomach that this might not go well, but he's lured in by the presence of Pennywise. It's attractive to a kid. He's talking about popcorn and the circus and all these things.
It's an interesting point, even if I think seeing a clown smoking out of character would be bothersome enough to make a kid NOT want to walk up to him. But I guess this isn't a normal kid we're talking about.
Now that we've gone back to the time when Pennywise and IT first crossed paths, I can't wait to see what the creative team has in store for the upcoming finale, which could very well turn into my favorite thing on the 2025 TV schedule. Will it set up Andy Muschietti's goal for a three-season prequel exploration, or will it feature a more closed-off ending? (Yeah right.)
Find out when IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1 concludes on HBO on Sunday, December 14 at 9:00 p.m.
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