It – Welcome to Derry – Episode 1: The Past Still Floats or does it?
It’s been nearly a decade since Andy Muschietti first turned Stephen King’s It into a generational phenomenon - a coming-of-age horror film that felt as nostalgic as it was nightmarish. Now, with Welcome to Derry , HBO invites us back to the cursed town that never really sleeps, in a prequel set in the 1960s - long before the Losers Club, before Georgie’s yellow raincoat floated into the gutter, before “You’ll float too” became cultural shorthand for childhood terror. “Every twenty-seven years, something wakes up in Derry. Maybe this time, it’s the franchise.” The show, co-developed by Andy and Barbara Muschietti alongside Jason Fuchs, promises to unearth the origins of Pennywise the Dancing Clown , that cosmic parasite of fear. And if the pilot episode is any indication, Welcome to Derry isn’t interested in retelling It - it’s interested in depicting the rot in a different time phase. Still, as the credits roll, one can’t help but feel that what lies beneath isn’t just the town’s da...
