“Nothing in life is to be feared,” Marie Curie once wrote, “it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Curie died more than a decade before Stephen King was born, but the Nobel-winning chemist and physicist anticipated the central theme of the horror novelist’s oeuvre. Nowhere is this more relevant than in It: Welcome to Derry, the vividly terrifying new HBO Max prequel to the 1990 television miniseries, the 2017 film, and the 2019 film sequel (the latter two directed by Andres Muschietti) adaptations of King’s legendary bestselling novel, It.
For the uninitiated, It — movie, miniseries, and book alike — follows a group of tweens as they investigate mysterious occurrences around the small town of Derry, Maine, ultimately leading to a showdown with the shapeshifting entity named “It” (which, for the sake of clarity, we will capitalize to refer to the specter).
It famously takes the initial form of the terrifying Pennywise, who kickstarts the plotline by luring a boy named Georgie into a rain gutter and savagely attacking him. Georgie’s brother, Bill, and his friends set about trying to locate and rescue him when they each separately encounter the entity, which takes the form of their respective greatest fears. The gang combines forces and tracks Pennywise into the sewer, where they confront him in the final scene.
Along the way, the characters discover how It operates both temporally and physically. First, they learn that the entity appears with homicidal intentions in Derry every 27 years, beginning, as far as they can tell, in 1908, proceeding to 1935, recurring in 1962, and reappearing in 1989 (for the purists out there, we note that the preceding timeline follows the 2017 film; the timing in the miniseries and novel are slightly different).
And, critically, they unearth how It feeds: on fear, literally. Pennywise, in his many dimensions, transforms into the severest fears of those he encounters, seeking to consume his victims to survive. Unlike Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, or even the Joker, It isn’t merely a chaos agent, content to watch the world burn. King’s entity needs fear to remain alive.
Welcome to Derry, which premiered last month, in time for Halloween, slots into the King extended universe in 1962, when several children inexplicably go missing. Once again, their friends lead a mission to recover them even as they endure their own encounters with their personalized versions of It. And once again, the cohort must overcome their worst nightmares.
The series also takes place amid a general climate of fear. The Cold War is at its peak, the Cuban Missile Crisis looms, students practice duck-and-cover under their desks, and racial tensions have gripped Derry. The U.S. Air Force operates a mysterious project on the town’s outskirts that stirs trouble with the local Native American tribes. And 60s-era notions of mind control and involuntary psychiatric commitment overlay an already fraught environment.
In this setting, crucially, we encounter one character who stands out: Maj. Leroy Hanlon. Hanlon, a Korean War veteran, sustained an injury to his amygdala while being held captive in North Korea, meaning he’s quite literally fearless. “It’s like the part of your brain that’s supposed to be afraid,” another character remarks in amazement, “it’s not even there!” Hanlon’s inability to be scared both contradicts and plays into the main message of the show — that we are controlled by our fears.
In some ways, It’s increasingly demanding appetite for fear is a metaphor for the horror industry, which every year seemingly intensifies its depictions of gore and heightens tensions to unsustainable heights. This trend, which permeates film, television, and literature, attracted the notice of the New York Times, which wondered last month, “Have Halloween Decorations Become Too Scary?” Welcome to Derry is no exception to this troubling ratchet, and those with sensitivities to children being hurt — to say nothing of coulrophobes — had better stay away.
Indeed, no one feeds on fear quite as well as King, whose sprawling empire of terror has earned him hundreds of millions of dollars. The level of his direct involvement in the prequel remains unclear, but the showrunners have nodded to his influence. “Stephen King has blessed everything that we’ve always done, in terms of script, scenes, and page,” Muschietti told Complex. “We sent him everything before we even started production.”
Along these lines, Welcome to Derry offers plenty of well-executed, terrifying diversions. The creepy opening sequence begins with slightly off-putting animations and ends with straight-up petrifying scenes, all set to a chilling children’s song. In addition to the Easter eggs that correspond to the original movies, the series makes multiple references to other iconic King adaptations, including airman Dick Halloran, whom viewers will recognize from The Shining, and a murder suspect shipped off to Shawshank prison.
And while many new projects spotlight well-known actors, the makers of Welcome to Derry seem to appreciate that fame doesn’t always equal talent; the mostly unknown cast features terrific child acting, the sort that makes you feel as if you’re in the scene with them.
Prequels often suffer from something of a “plot armor” problem, the term for when we know a character must survive unscathed because we have seen them in an installment set later. In the case of Welcome to Derry, the problem is especially pronounced, given the fact that the audience knows the entity will arise yet again in 1989. In other words, assuming plot continuity, we assume, going into the prequel, that the main characters won’t be successful in killing It. Only the final chapters of the prequel will reveal their fate. In the meantime, here’s to understanding more and fearing less.
Michael M. Rosen is an attorney and writer in Israel, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of Like Silicon From Clay: What Ancient Jewish Wisdom Can Teach Us About AI. Amalya Rosen studies chemistry and biotechnology in Israel.