When people think of IT, they think of Pennywise the dancing clown. This is what has made the sheer level of restraint that the HBO prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry has demonstrated thus far such a bold decision. Three episodes in now, the series has yet to actually reveal Pennywise to its characters or the audience, aside from a few sets of glowing yellow eyes and one notable line spoken by returning actor Bill Skarsgård in the most recent episode, “Now You See It.” However, the final image of this episode also gives audiences what might be their clearest look at Pennywise within the confines of the show yet, in the form of a blurry photograph of a clown bearing an uncanny resemblance to the iconic villain and holding a bundle of his trademark red balloons. Or… does it?
The showrunners of Welcome to Derry, Brad Caleb Kane and Jason Fuchs, are playing things close to the vest in terms of where, when, or how Pennywise will truly manifest as a physical presence in the series. Speaking to Deadline after the third episode aired, the duo seemed a bit conflicted.
“Is that Pennywise at the end of 103? I don’t know. We think it is… as you can tell by the end of the first episode, we tried to pull the rug out from underneath the audience. So right away, you feel like, no matter who I’m rooting for, nobody is safe in this show, and nothing is as it seems, and anything can happen,” says Kane.
Fuchs then chimes in, with “I think it's Pennywise, don’t you?” before Kane turns around and says, “I do think it’s Pennywise. It’s absolutely Pennywise. That’s what I’m going to say to your viewers, and they should go in thinking that. We’ll have to see what happens in the latter half of the season.”
So, all of that is pretty confusing, but its not impossible to unpack. “Now You See It” opens with a flashback sequence to 1907, which director Andy Muschietti revealed in previous interviews would be the setting of a potential third season of the show, as they plan to retrace It’s twenty-seven-years cycles in reverse-order. During this sequence, audiences see a clown that looks similar to Pennywise, but is clearly not. This clown is holding the same red balloons, and looks incredibly similar to the image at the end of the episode. We know that It is an interdimensional entity that takes on whatever form it believes will scare its victims most, and in this flashback scene, a few characters see It as an old man carnival performer. It doesn’t feel like a stretch to see that It is almost certainly going to adopt a clown form while at this same carnival, and grow especially fond of the Pennywise persona.
In this way, neither Kane nor Fuchs are lying when they say this image both is and isn’t Pennywise. It is Pennywise in a literal sense, but likely not the Pennywise audiences are familiar with. It’s larger presence has been felt throughout the first several episodes of Welcome to Derry, as It has taken on all kinds of forms, from lampshades to dismembered bodies in pickle jars. All of this has served as one long, dread-filled drumroll, building up to Pennywise’s proper reveal. We know from all of the marketing materials that have featured Skarsgård as Pennywise that he will show up in a very recognizable way at some point, and when he does, it will feel all the more hard-earned because of the restraint the show has demonstrated thus far.
IT: Welcome to Derry premieres new episodes Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.