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Pennywise’s New Origin in Welcome to Derry Completely Changes Stephen King’s Book & Fixes the IT Movies
IT: Welcome to Derry expands upon the origin story of the entity It, aka Pennywise the Dancing Clown, with some significant changes to Stephen King’s book and the IT movies. The HBO series serves as a prequel to the two films from 2017 and 2019, keeping with their updated timeline (which shifted the story of the Losers Club as kids from the 1950s to the 1980s), and showing more of Pennywise’s history in the town of Derry, Maine. Warning: Contains SPOILERS for IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1, Episode 4.
In the fourth episode of the spinoff, we edge closer to the arrival of Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, with a couple of shadowy glimpses of the clown and a few red balloons popping up throughout the town. But we also get to learn much more about It even before it was transforming into Pennywise, as the end of the episode delves into how the creature came to be in Derry. This is told by Taniel, the nephew of Rose (who runs the second-hand shop in the town) and a member of the Shokopiwah tribe.
This reveals that It came to Earth in a fallen star millions of years ago, and when their first ancestors arrived, It began to attack. This broadly aligns with the basic outline of how It came to be on Earth in both King’s novel and the movies, but from there is where things begin to differ.
It’s Origin Story In Welcome To Derry Makes Some Major Changes To IT
As we’re told in IT: Welcome to Derry, the star that It came to Earth in was essentially its cage. While landing on the planet let it escape, shards from it were able to be used as a weapon against it – something that’s a new wrinkle in the entity’s story, and reveals a weakness that hadn’t been brought up before now (though it wasn’t enough to defeat it). While It originally preyed on the people of the Shokopiwah tribe, they realized it couldn’t move beyond the Western wood. And so they learned to live in balance with what they named the “Galloo,” staying beyond the creature’s reach… until the settlers arrived.
The people who’d come to turn that land into Derry ignored the warnings of the Shokopiwah, hunting in the Galloo’s territory, and were subsequently preyed upon. Eventually, It was able to grow stronger and expand its reach beyond the wood, until later members of the tribe went and collected more shards of the star. They used these as pillars, containing It within a defined boundary, and those pillars are now accessed via the Well House on Neibolt Street, as pointed out by Taniel at the end of Welcome to Derry Episode 4 (and yes, it’s the same house from the IT book and movies).
Most of this is invention, or addition, to Stephen King’s novel, where there’s less explanation to the entity’s origin and the indigenous population isn’t featured. There’s also a slight change in how the creature is described: in the TV show, the Shokopiwah view the Galloo (a new term) as an evil spirit, whereas in the book it’s an alien creature, though that discrepancy doesn’t really mean they’re not one and the same thing. It’s more how one group described it and passed it down via stories, and an evil spirit fits with when they first discovered it and what they’d have thought it was.
How Welcome To Derry’s Pennywise Origin Changes (& Improves) The IT Movies
Although this origin wasn’t in King’s book, it was part of IT: Chapter Two, sort of. In that movie, we learn of It’s origins from Mike Hanlon, who himself learned them from the Shokopiwah tribe. Some of this is again similar, with an image of the star falling to Earth, but there are also some notable differences. Mike steals an artifact from the tribe that shows It’s origin, earliest attacks, and how to stop it. This is where he learns of the Ritual of Chüd, which in the vision sees the tribe members containing It in that same artifact.
IT: Welcome to Derry‘s version is a change to this: there’s no mention of anything called the Ritual of Chüd, though it’s plausible that’s what was happening when they set out the pillars. But that itself is a notable difference, as the IT movies made no mention of those shards being used either as a weapon or a means of containing It. The show also more directly correlates It’s increased attacks with the settlers of Derry, as the movies don’t make any mention of the indigenous people living in balance with the entity.
Some of this is an improvement, certainly as far as the role of the Shokopiwah tribe is concerned. In the movies, they’re nameless, mostly faceless people, from whom Mike takes the story and the artifact and it’s he who tells the story and drives it forward. In Welcome to Derry, the story belongs to and is told by the Shokopiwah, who are much more fleshed out and treated as actual characters. Native American actress Kimberly Norris-Guerrero, who plays Rose, spoke about the importance of this previously with Polygon, saying:
“It’s a beautiful opportunity to expand on the King universe, because undergirding a lot of the stories is the land. The land is a character itself. The land of Derry is rife with history. The land under The Shining is rife with history. The land underneath Shawshank Prison is rife with history, and that history is our history.”
It’s Origin Explains Why Pennywise Stays In Derry (But Leaves Other Questions Unanswered For Now)
The expanded origin story for It does answer one of the biggest questions about the entity: why Pennywise never leaves Derry. The use of the pillars, made from the shards of the star It came to Earth in, creates a clear boundary that leads to Pennywise’s lair in the sewers, and is seemingly the reason that the creature does not leave the town behind. However, the origin doesn’t go into detail about why It waits 27 years between attacks, nor has it yet got to the point of explaining It taking on the form of Pennywise (something we do get in the book), but that now seems much more likely to come in Welcome to Derry‘s future.
New episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry release on HBO and HBO Max at 9pm ET on HBO and HBO Max.
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