I thought IT: Welcome to Derry was going to be typical franchise nostalgia bait, but a perfect, bloody bait-and-switch in episode 1 proved me wrong

Warning: the following contains major spoilers for IT: Welcome to Derry episode 1. Turn back now if you haven't seen the episode and don't want to know what happens!

At first, Welcome to Derry feels like a very familiar kind of franchise spin-off: a legacy prequel that leans heavily into nostalgia bait, aping its source material without offering many new ideas.

In episode 1's opening sequence, a boy goes missing – just like young Georgie at the beginning of It. Like Georgie, Welcome to Derry’s Matty is tormented by the titular It (aka Pennywise the clown), a malevolent entity that lurks beneath the town of Derry, Maine. Also like Georgie, Matty’s disappearance is then investigated by a group of local kids, who find themselves targeted by Pennywise as well.

For most of the episode, we’re invited to enjoy a pretty shameless rehashing of old material. But thanks to a bold and bloody final act twist, the show eventually reveals its subversive side. By killing off two main characters and foregrounding a new duo as the true protagonists, Welcome to Derry makes it clear that – in the words of director Andy Muschietti – "nothing is sacred."

The new Losers Club

Set in 1962, a generation before the events of the first It movie, Welcome to Derry positions its main characters as a blatant retread of the Losers Club, It’s group of outcast tween protagonists. As an unpopular kid from an abusive household, Matty vanishes with lackluster attention from the town at large. The only people who really care are his sensitive classmate Lilly, and two nerdy boys named Teddy and Phil, whose bickering dynamic echoes the foul-mouthed banter between Richie and Eddie in It. Once these three characters join forces with a girl named Ronnie – one of the few Black kids in Derry’s very white community – the show sets the scene for a transparently direct homage, remixing It’s core themes of childhood trauma, social ostracization, and toxic small-town politics.

For most of episode 1, this concept unfolds in a well-executed but unoriginal manner. It franchise director Andy Muschietti successfully revives the gruesome scares and cynical humor of the movies and. alongside the kids, we meet Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) as the top-billed adult character – the future grandfather of It’s Mike Hanlon.

Basically, it all seems like rather pedestrian fare for a prequel, focusing on characters that either thematically copy the source material, or are literally related to the original cast. Think The Force Awakens rather than, say, Alien: Earth. Then in the episode’s final sequence, things take a major turn.

A final act twist

By this point, the main group of kids have formed a tentative allegiance, bonding over their shared suspicion that Matty’s disappearance involved something supernatural. Hoping for some insight, they sneak into the town’s movie theater and watch a scene from the 1962 musical The Music Man – the film Matty watched shortly before he went missing.

One of the main strengths of Muschietti’s It duology was the way they could lurch between absurdity and horror, as Pennywise tortured people by immersing them in a living nightmare. Welcome to Derry bookends its first episode with two such sequences. The first is Matty’s actual disappearance, when he tries to hitchhike out of town, and gets picked up by an eerily wholesome family. This family soon reveal themselves to be one of Pennywise’s fabrications, culminating in a grisly moment where the mother gives birth to a demonic winged baby. At the end of the episode, this baby returns for a bloodthirsty set piece in the movie theater, where it slaughters Teddy, Phil, and Phil’s little sister Susie. Lilly and Ronnie are the only survivors when the credits roll.

Considering Teddy and Phil’s convincing introduction as lead characters, this makes for a satisfyingly unpredictable twist – not just because their deaths come as a shock, but because it disrupts our expectations for Welcome to Derry as a slightly-too-faithful homage. By removing Teddy and Phil from the board, the show makes it clear that nothing is sacred. Likeable kids can, and will, be killed off without warning. At the same time, the show cleverly pivots away from the dated casting dynamic of the original It.

A fresh perspective

In both Stephen King's novel and the movies, It focuses overwhelmingly on white, male characters, mostly thanks to the makeup of the Losers Club: five white boys, one Black boy, and one white girl. And while Muschietti’s It adaptation made some judicious updates to the text (most obviously by shifting the timeline by 30 years), those movies still offer a somewhat underwhelming role to their main Black character.

Judging by the end of episode 1, Welcome to Derry wants to redress those blindspots. In fact, the bait-and-switch between Terry and Phil versus Lilly and Ronnie seems expressly designed to reassure fans while offering a fresh perspective on Derry, teasing the narrative potential of a more diverse ensemble cast.

Without touching upon future spoilers, we can already make some inferences based on the show’s cast list. For one thing, Welcome to Derry is clearly going to focus a lot more on its Black characters, with Jovan Adepo and Taylour Paige playing lead roles as Leroy and Charlotte Hanlon. Meanwhile Lilly and Ronnie represent a viewpoint that was largely absent from the original It, exploring the ruthless social hierarchy of tween girls in Derry’s community.

Welcome to Derry has earned a mixed critical reception so far, but I’d argue that episode 1 is a very promising start. Between the gruesome horror sequences and the darkly funny pre-adolescent banter, it captures the spirit of Muschietti’s It movies while offering a more thoughtful approach to the race and gender dynamics of its setting. If you’re going to make a prequel explaining the background of a story that arguably doesn’t need explaining at all… Well, this is a pretty smart way to go about it.

IT: Welcome to Derry is streaming weekly on HBO Max and NOW. Make sure you never miss an episode with our IT: Welcome to Derry release schedule or, for more on the show, check out our IT: Welcome to Derry review.