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Welcome to Derry Answers Fans’ Biggest Question (And It’s Disappointing)
IT: Welcome to Derry has spent its debut season meticulously deconstructing the mythology of Stephen King’s most famous monster. The series has gone to great lengths to explain the unexplainable, detailing how the cosmic entity arrived on Earth inside a meteor millions of years ago and how the indigenous people of the region managed to trap it within a cosmic cage. In addition, throughout this expansion of the lore, the show has constantly teased the answer to one specific mystery that has lingered since the novel was published: why a shapeshifting predator would choose the form of a 19th-century circus performer as its primary avatar? The latest episode finally attempts to answer when and why the entity adopted the persona of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, but the explanation is ultimately an underwhelming addition to the canon.
Warning: Spoilers below for IT: Welcome to Derry, Episode 7
The seventh episode of Welcome to Derry dedicates a significant portion of its runtime to a 1908 flashback sequence that explores the tragic childhood of Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe). We see her life as part of a traveling circus troupe alongside her father, Bob Gray (Bill Skarsgård), who performs under the stage name Pennywise the Dancing Clown. This version of the character is a hit with the local youth, performing numbers that are a favorite for the children of Derry. The sequence reveals Bob is a man battling a drinking problem and the grief of losing his wife, clinging to the hope that he and his daughter can achieve fame and fortune with a new act they can perform together.
Bob’s dream is cut short when he is approached one evening by a creepy child, who is actually the entity in disguise. The monster expresses admiration for how easily the clown draws children in before luring Bob into the woods to kill him. The show posits that the entity adopted the Pennywise persona simply because it viewed the disguise as effective bait. This utilitarian explanation strips the character of its mystique and fails to hold up against scrutiny when examining the creature’s past behavior.
IT’s Version of Pennywise Has Always Been Scary, Contradicting Its Origins
The fundamental problem with Welcome to Derry‘s reveal is that the entity’s version of Pennywise is inherently terrifying, which directly contradicts the idea that it adopted the form to lure children in. While Bob Gray may have been a beloved entertainer who brought joy to his audience, the creature’s imitation is a grotesque distortion of that reality. As seen in the IT movies, the monster usually presents itself with a vicious grin, misaligned eyes, and a constant stream of drool. This visage is designed to induce panic, not trust. If the creature truly wanted to use the clown form as a trap, it would mimic Bob Gray’s friendly demeanor perfectly. Instead, it consistently chooses a nightmarish appearance that sends its victims running, effectively working against the very logic the prequel attempts to establish.
Furthermore, the franchise has repeatedly demonstrated that the entity is fully capable of adopting non-threatening disguises when it actually wants to deceive a child. In IT: Welcome to Derry, the creature poses as a frail version of Matty (Miles Ekhardt) to lure the children into the sewers. Similarly, in the films, it appears as Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) to manipulate his grieving brother, Bill (Jaeden Martell). It uses these innocent forms when it needs to be subtle, reserving the Pennywise form for moments of overt hostility and terror. This distinction makes the show’s explanation that the clown is simply “good bait” feel incredibly hollow.
Finally, the theory that the clown form is merely a tool for hunting falls apart when considering how often the creature maintains the guise when no children are present. The entity frequently appears as Pennywise to taunt adults or while lurking alone in its lair, situations where a lure for children serves no practical purpose. If the form were purely a strategic choice to attract a specific food source, there would be no reason to inhabit it so obsessively outside of those hunting scenarios. By reducing the iconic villain’s origin to a simple misunderstanding of human psychology, Welcome to Derry shatters a decades-long mystery without replacing it with a compelling solution.
New episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry premiere on HBO every Sunday.
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