There have been two episodes of It: Welcome to Derry, and Pennywise is taking his sweet time to make his entrance as dramatic and traumatic as possible.
Since the marketing has been all in on making sure you know Bill Skarsgård is back, we’ve been excited to see how film franchise director Andy Muschietti is planning to have his first small-screen appearance as Pennywise the Dancing Clown come into play.
In io9’s recent chat with the minds behind the show, which expands the Stephen King It universe, Jason Fuchs (writer, producer, and co-showrunner) shared that they “wanted to understand why a shape-shifter who has a virtually infinite number of forms it could take continues to take the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown.” He also said that fans can expect to get “really satisfying answers to some of those things in the context of the show. But the answers themselves suggest fresh mysteries and new questions.” Since they were given free rein by King himself to do whatever they want, we’re anxious to see how much new input they’re putting into the horror legend’s scariest creation.
So far we have so many questions! The first couple episodes truly play with the expectations of how It is perceived, playing tricks on the audience’s minds as well as its young characters. It begins with that gnarly birthing scene where the fleshy demon bat baby comes out to feast on the children of Derry, starting with Matty Clements. This grotesque incarnation makes us wonder if it’s just It awakening from its cyclical slumber in the most dramatic way possible or if it’s reborn every time and quickly evolves into a bigger form the more kids it claims.
By the end of the episode, it goes from the size of an eagle to a bigger creature when it takes out half the kids that were introduced. This isn’t Stranger Things; we at least get the sense that no one is safe. Everyone in Derry who has a fair share of darkness and trauma is game for It. And that point is made very clearly as we meet new characters.
In episode two, the surviving girls, Lilly (Clara Stack) and Ronnie (Amanda Christine), are preyed on through It taking the forms of their dead parents. Not as a clown, but instead giving Ronnie the major retraumatization of being birthed by a demonic version of her mom, who passed away when she was born. Likewise, Lilly faces her father in the form of It, taking pieces of him in pickle jars to scare her. But again, it raises a lot of ideas of how It decides to masquerade. Was It really the demon mom or pickled, dead daddy? Or were these just projections it could manipulate? They both disappear instantly; we’re leaning toward more projections than a corporeal outfit that It chooses to take.
Why the entity chooses to don its iconic clown garb has yet to be explored despite marketing bombarding us with Pennywise’s signature look. If we think back on It: Chapter Two, you might recall that there’s a scene where Beverly encounters Pennywise getting ready and looking most definitely like a man putting on clown makeup in a twisted “Get Ready With Me’ moment; we even see It use its fingernails to tear the red lines onto its face.
The trailers tease that the circus or carnival origin story is coming, with glimpses of Skarsgård in his creepy man form without makeup, as we’ve seen in the movies. Hopefully in this Sunday’s episode, we’ll get more lore about Its origin; the entity has been encountered by the Indigenous people around Derry in the past, who have had more knowledge of its presence as an ancient being or alien. Perhaps It body-snatched a carnie after its previous host was destroyed. Because otherwise, why does It go through the effort to put on the face? It can’t be just for funzies, right? If he can just morph into anything, why go through the effort to put on his dancing clown face? It feels like there is an element of having a main form as a corporeal host to unleash its horrors. We are itching to find out more and to see Skarsgård return.
It: Welcome to Derry streams Sundays on HBO Max.
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