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 dark secret - it’s also the show’s uneasy relationship with its own legacy.

The Shape of Fear

To understand Welcome to Derry, you must first understand the thing that lurks beneath it. Stephen King’s 1986 novel introduced Pennywise not merely as a clown, but as an ancient evil - a shapeshifting cosmic predator that feeds on fear. King’s mythology is vast: It crash-landed on Earth millions of years ago, slumbering beneath Derry, feeding on children because their fear “salts the meat.” Every twenty-seven years, It wakes up, devours, and returns to hibernation.

Big, existential stuff - and for decades, filmmakers have only scratched the surface.

“Fear isn’t what’s lurking in the dark — it’s what the dark brings out in you.”

Muschietti’s 2017 It: Chapter One was an inspired reimagining - Spielbergian wonder fused with Carpenter-esque dread, a balancing act of nostalgia and nihilism. It translated metaphysical hunger into a more cinematic idiom: Pennywise as ritualized and uncanny, as a hybrid between Ronald McDonald and the monstrous faces of circuses and carnivals. Bill Skarsgård, channeling hyena energy and a childlike, out-of-sync physicality, made the clown a new nightmare. Influenced by The Thing, Near Dark, Stand by Me, and the eerie portraits of Modigliani that haunted Muschietti’s own childhood, the film effectively captured the terror of growing up - and the helplessness of watching childhood end. 

It: Chapter Two (2019), though ambitious, lacked that pulse. It was longer, louder, and somehow emptier. Heart gave way to heaviness. And in the years since, Muschietti has wandered - from cosmic horror to superhero mediocrity (The Flash, 2023). 

Welcome to Derry is his return to familiar sewers. Having successfully translated It: Chapter One, and to some extent, its sequel, is the reason why Muschietti was tempted to return back to the well. The only question: does he still have the spark, or is he just milking the cow - or should I say: clown?

Episode 1: The Children of Derry

The pilot opens in 1962. A boy named Matt Clements pleads with a family to take him out of Derry. What follows is a fever dream: the family turns monstrous, a grotesque childbirth ensues, and a mutant infant attacks Matt in one of the most bizarre cold openings ever aired on HBO.

Four months later, the town has moved on, but the horror lingers. We meet Major Leroy Hanlon enduring racist abuse at a military base; Lilly Bainbridge, haunted by visions of Matt’s bloody fingers clawing through her bathtub; and her friends Teddy Uris, Phil Malkin, and Ronnie Grogan, who begin to suspect something monstrous stirring beneath Derry’s quiet streets.

Soon, they’re hearing children’s voices echo from the sewers - familiar songs sung by the missing, and that’s when the plot thickens and the mystery crescendos into a harrowing reveal.

Of Echoes and Caricatures: The Losers’ Club Redux

This is where the pilot starts to rub against its own ambition. The children introduced feel painfully familiar - not because they are faithful to King so much as because they are overt echoes of the 2017 film’s Losers’ Club. The resemblance isn’t merely structural; it is almost literal. 

Take the names and you see the scaffold: When Holden Caulfield-inspired Matthew “Matty” Clements (Miles Ekhardt) goes missing, it’s a deliberate echo of what happened to Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) decades later in It: Chapter One. Both vanishings carry the same emotional gravity - the same ache of innocence lost too soon. Yet here, something’s amiss. The sadness feels rehearsed, the shock too framed.

“Everyone in Derry looks familiar — as if we’ve met them before, in another nightmare.”

Among Matty’s friends who set out to find him, there’s Teddy Uris (Mikkal Karim-Fidler), the clear reflection of Stanley “Stan” Uris (Wyatt Oleff) from the earlier films. They even share the same last name - coincidence or cosmic joke? It’s never clarified, but you sense the show wants you to wonder.

Next, there’s Phil Malkin (Jack Molloy Legault), the group’s loudmouth and self-proclaimed comedian - unmistakably modeled after Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard). He cracks jokes in the wrong places, uses humor as armor, and yet, somehow, none of it lands. It’s as if someone fed Richie’s best lines through an algorithm and forgot to add the soul.

And then there’s Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack) - introspective, burdened with secrets. She carries the aura of Beverly “Bev” Marsh (Sophia Lillis), not just in tone but in trauma. You see shades of Bev in her eyes, in the way she watches the boys - distant yet vital, soft yet scarred.

The problem isn’t that these characters resemble the originals - it’s that they only resemble them. They feel like reflections caught in fogged glass - recognizable silhouettes without substance.

A Story That Staggers, Then Sprints

There’s another subplot running in parallel - one that promises depth but quickly drowns in the main narrative. It introduces adults, a looming municipal mystery, and hints at Derry’s dark past. Yet you barely have time to care. The pacing - jittery, impatient - undermines the weight it wants to carry.

The group gets scared, motivated, and mobilized in the span of minutes. They investigate, bond, and descend into chaos before you can process why. There’s no rhythm to the dread. What should have been a slow build-up, feels like a playlist stuck on fast-forward.

And then -

Everyone dies - except Lilly.

Yes, you read that right. The first episode massacres nearly its entire cast.

The Echoes of the Past

This isn't a coincidence. It’s construction.

Each character in Welcome to Derry mirrors someone from It: Chapter One and even the group dynamic feels like a photocopy of the Losers’ Club - only quicker, thinner, more schematic.

It’s frustrating at first, almost cynical. Until it isn’t.

“He righted his wrong — by wronging his right.”

Because Muschietti and Fuchs are playing a long game. By lulling you into the comfort of familiarity - by reconstructing the exact archetypes you remember - they set the stage for betrayal. When the blood spills and the screen collapses, you realize you’ve been baited. The show kills its own nostalgia.

In that moment, Welcome to Derry becomes something sharper - not just a prequel, but a postmodern prank. A wink from the director that says, “Got you.”

Performances and the Missing Pulse

The young ensemble is competent - technically sound, emotionally uneven. They mirror rather than inhabit. Each line feels inherited from a script they once saw done better. None of it’s bad, just too aware of its own legacy. There’s effort, there’s homage, but there’s little heartbeat.

The adults - side characters orbiting the mystery - add little beyond exposition. It’s as though Derry itself is the only character with dimension left, and even it seems tired of repeating the same story.

Visually, Muschietti channels Creepshow more than It, leaning into exaggeration and the texture of old pulp horror magazines. It’s deliberate - a folklore painted in camp and shadow. The cinematography doesn’t chase realism; it chases unease.

And that’s a choice worth respecting.

The Fear Ahead

Still, one can’t help but worry. 

Episode One of It: Welcome to Derry is a beguiling, sometimes infuriating piece of television. It is cinematic in its bravura, audacious in its cruelty, and uneven in its character work. At times it reads like a director finally reclaiming his monsters; at others it reads like a franchise beating its chest. It is not consistently successful. It is, nonetheless, compelling - precisely because it makes you feel manipulated and then compels you to watch how you were manipulated.

The pilot’s audacious twist leaves the narrative hanging - delightfully, dangerously. Will the next episodes match the high of that subversion, or will they retreat into safe repetition?

That’s the question.

If Welcome to Derry continues to reinvent itself - to challenge our nostalgia rather than exploit it - it might just earn its place beside It: Chapter One. But if this episode was the flash before the fade, we may be staring down another Chapter Two.

The Verdict

Welcome to Derry opens not with a whimper, but a shriek — a grotesque prologue to one of horror’s most enduring myths. It stumbles, imitates, and then surprises. The first episode proves that even recycled nightmares can still find new ways to haunt us.

Whether Muschietti is revisiting old trauma or exorcising it remains to be seen - but for now, Derry still floats.

Rating: ★★½ out of 5

“In Derry, nothing ever dies - it just comes back wearing a different face.”