Welcome to Derry is a short 1-season show released on October 26, 2025, by director Andy Muschietti and producers Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs, taking place 27 years before the first movie of IT. Since I liked the first two IT movies, I decided to give the show a try, and I’m glad I did.
In the movie and show, Pennywise the clown wakes up every 27 years until it goes into “hibernation.” Welcome to Derry, which focuses on what happened 27 years before the “Losers Club” came along, the group of seven kids who try to defeat Pennywise in the first and second movie when they were kids and adults.
Welcome to Derry introduces many characters that tie into the movies, like Margie, who ends up being Richie’s mom in the movie IT. This makes the show much more interesting and understandable once fans put everything together, encouraging them to rewatch everything over and over again, as I did.
It’s a gruesome show, showing violent and gory scenes that can be hard to watch at times. Still, Welcome to Derry uses these moments to build tension and highlight the constant fear for the characters on a day-to-day basis.
Though supernatural and over the top in its horror elements, this show focuses on realistic emotions, like fear, loss, and confusion, making the characters more human and relatable. Each character was introduced with different personalities, creating both tension and connections towards the end of the season, making it emotional to the point where you might want to bawl your eyes out.
The plot of the show begins when a boy named Matty goes missing due to his abusive relationship with his parents, wanting to escape, but instead it leads to something way worse, causing more people to get involved and injured, and sometimes killed.
Matty’s friends, Ronnie, Lilly, Phil, Susie, and Teddy, go out and search for him, leading to gruesome scenes and a majority of deaths.
The mystery of their deaths and the creature that killed them led them to be curious and explore where it could have come from.
As the season goes on, the show slowly reveals how cruel a place Derry really is, not just because of Pennywise, but because of the people, including a branch of the military, who decide to ignore everything that’s going on or take advantage of it. Some adults are either unaware, scared, trying to fix the problem, or part of the problem, even if they don’t intend it, making everything more disturbing, especially for the Hanlon family, who just moved to Derry and get involved in all the madness going on. Pennywise doesn’t just feed on fear, but thrives on it because no one stopped him.
The acting was really strong, especially from the kids. Their fear felt and looked real, and it made the losses they had and the friendships they gained hit harder. Even though viewers know things don’t end well because of the movies, the show still keeps us invested, hoping things might turn out differently.
Ultimately, Welcome to Derry was an amazing and useful show. It showed us more of the background of the first two movies of IT and gave us more understanding of how everything started. The story, characters, and creepy atmosphere made Derry’s dark story even more interesting and intense.