IT: Welcome to Derry delivers a scary and satisfying prequel to the Pennywise franchise
As scary and satisfying home viewing, prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry floats to the top of the pile. Packed full of surprises, it’s must-watch entertainment for the spooky season.
Chris Chalk is a standout in Welcome to Derry.
(Photo: HBO / Showmax)
Prequels of any form typically begin life with two handicaps. The first is that events have a foregone conclusion — things have to end a certain way to accommodate the original story. The second is that, for whatever reason, the prequel often takes a copy-paste form, with characters filling the same archetypal roles as their forerunners.
Which means that new prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry has plenty to overcome from the start, in addition to being very much entrenched in the horror genre, which traditionally doesn’t have the stamina for a serial format.
Despite it all, this show, which jumps back decades before the events of Stephen King’s IT — or, rather, the
style="font-weight: 400;">2017 movie IT and its
style="font-weight: 400;">2019 Chapter Two follow-up — succeeds as an engrossing and suitably disturbing chapter in that saga. It helps that the series heads in a new direction, dramatically kicking franchise formula, and expectation, to the curb by the end of the first episode with a sly case of bait and switch.
While King’s bestseller was set in the 1950s, filmmaker Andy Muschietti shifted the action forward to another nostalgic time period for his 2010 adaptations: the 1980s.
Given that IT lore states the titular malicious entity enjoys an approximate 27-year hibernation between feedings, any prequel set in Muschietti’s on-screen universe would have to leap back decades. In the case of Welcome to Derry — which is made by Muschietti and his original IT creative team — that plops viewers in the America of 1962. This immediately makes for a more interesting, richer backdrop for events, thematically and visually, with both the Cold War and Civil Rights Movement gathering momentum and stoking powerful emotions in the populace.
Even if there wasn’t an extra-terrestrial being taking the guise of Pennywise the clown to terrorise and devour children from the sewers, the most chilling thing about King’s town of Derry, Maine, has always been how dismissive the local population is towards the horror taking place within its boundaries.
The young cast of Welcome to Derry. (Photo: HBO / Showmax) Taylour Paige in a scene from Welcome to Derry. (Photo: HBO / Showmax)
At first glance, Derry is a picture-perfect slice of Americana, with manicured lawns, picket fences and smiling faces. As soon as it comes to “the other”, though, people are less accepting.
When black air force pilot Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige) and son Will (Blake Cameron James) move into Derry, they’re told they’re no longer in the South, and can relax, but the side-eyes are still there from their white neighbours, and when local children disappear, blame instantly falls on the town’s African-American projectionist Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider).
Welcome to Derry is all-in when it comes to showing this everyday form of hypocrisy, and quiet complicity in injustice when you’re unaffected. While the prequel series keeps its core cast of characters relatively small, there are still more adult perspectives and storylines in IT: Welcome to Derry than the previous on-screen IT. Combined with the requisite band of bullied, outcast school kids cycling around on their bicycles, solving mysteries and facing supernatural threats, Welcome to Derry feels very
style="font-weight: 400;">Stranger Things. However, as the works of Stephen King were a big influence on that Netflix hit, it’s kind of full circle.
The acting of the young cast in Welcome to Derry is fine, but barring a couple of the kids, including James, Miles Ekhardt as timid Matty, and Arian S Cartaya as Rich, the series’ reliable source of comic relief, they don’t have quite the impact of their onscreen IT predecessors, which included Sophia Lillis.
The adults fare similarly, though Chris Chalk is another standout as a character who will go unnamed for spoiler reasons, but who is called upon to carry a lot of the show’s weirdness. Then again, Welcome to Derry is horror, which means the most important thing its actors can do is respond convincingly to nightmarish events. In this they succeed, and IT: Welcome to Derry provides no shortage of scary moments — all while keeping Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise offscreen (at least to start).
The eight-part series manages to have one truly disturbing scene in almost every episode, with early notables including a supermarket stalking, and a harrowing sequence that kicks off in a bathroom.
Matilda Lawler in HBO's new prequel, Welcome to Derry. (Photo: HBO / Showmax)
Bolstered by polished special effects and a clearly big budget investment in bringing its historical setting to the screen, Welcome to Derry feels like an extended A-grade movie experience.
For bonus chills, the series features one of the most unsettling opening credits sequences in recent times; one that you shouldn’t skip, especially if you’re a Stephen King fan.
It’s stuffed with easter eggs like the show itself, confirming a shared King universe. Look out for references to The Shining and Shawshank Redemption in Welcome to Derry, although they’re more organically incorporated into the story as opposed to the hollow “look at me” inclusions of
style="font-weight: 400;">The Dark Tower’s film adaptation.
On that note, IT: Welcome to Derry isn’t an exclusionary watch. Whether you know the story of IT, or not; whether you’re deeply versed in the work of Stephen King, or not, the series is an open door, making sure steel-nerved viewers have the information they need to make sense of events.
As for falling into the typical prequel trap of over-explaining, Welcome to Derry has its moments but in its defence there’s little mentioned or shown that isn’t lifted directly from King’s writings. Far more jarring are the handful of character actions and motivations that demand a substantial suspension of disbelief.
Still, with access to the first five episodes, it feels safe to say that IT: Welcome to Derry is surprisingly good — far from the creatively cheap cash-in that it could have been. It may still suffer from the final act stumble associated with its genre, but as scary and satisfying home viewing, this one floats to the top of the pile. DM
On HBO and HBO Max internationally, IT: Welcome to Derry is screening in South Africa via Showmax, with weekly episode drops every Friday from 31 October. The series wraps in mid December. This review was first published on PFangirl.
Chris Chalk is a standout in Welcome to Derry.
(Photo: HBO / Showmax) 
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-young-cast-of-Welcome-to-Derry.jpg "The young cast of Welcome to Derry. (Photo: HBO / Showmax)")
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Taylour-Paige-in-Welcome-to-Derry.jpg "Taylour Paige in a scene from Welcome to Derry. (Photo: HBO / Showmax)")
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Matilda-Lawler-in-Welcome-to-Derry.jpg "Matilda Lawler in HBO's new prequel, Welcome to Derry. (Photo: HBO / Showmax)")