It: Welcome to Derry has been digging deep into the secret history of Pennywise the Clown and the town of Derry, Maine, and with the release of a new mid-season trailer, it's looking like we'll be seeing a lot more of Bill Skarsgård's nightmarish clown and its bizarre backstory.
Check it out:
Pennywise's origins have been a key part of the story of Welcome to Derry, which has established that the creature that would become Pennywise crash-landed on Earth in a meteor before humans even existed, going on to terrorize the Indigenous people of the region as their population grew.
In the modern day, the US government wants to capture Pennywise to use its powers as a weapon, roping in characters and concepts from across Stephen King's many novels as the people of Derry try to survive Pennywise's expanding presence.
Though we still don't know how the creature became Pennywise, it's strongly implied that we'll learn the history of that aspect of its backstory as Welcome to Derry rolls on.
The origin given in the show differs slightly from the one given in King's original novel It, which explains that the entity that becomes Pennywise has been on Earth since around 1,000,000 BCE, with no ties to the Indigenous community present in the story.
Given how much Welcome to Derry has expanded on the It mythos, bringing in other aspects of King's novels, it's not surprising that the creature's origins are being expounded upon significantly.
It: Welcome to Derry airs on HBO every Sunday at 9pm PT/ET. Stay up to date on new episodes with our Welcome to Derry release schedule.
