The creators and cast share their thoughts on a pivotal early moment in the HBO show.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s an adage that resonates throughout IT: Welcome to Derry, a town with a dark underbelly, seemingly idyllic but terrorized by a disturbing monster every three decades like clockwork. Derry may run on a particularly cruel cycle, fueled by murder, bigotry, and the supernatural, but the version we see here also feels a little different from what audiences remember of IT: Part 1 and its late ’80s setting.
Welcome to Derry is a prequel series set in 1962, following Charlotte and Leroy Hanlon (Taylour Paige and Jovan Adepo), a Black couple who move to Derry, Maine, with their son, Will (Blake Cameron James). Just as they arrive, a local young boy is attacked by IT’s eldritch clown creature, Pennywise, and disappears, setting off another string of deaths in the cursed town.
Welcome to Derry’s premise may seem familiar, but what sets the HBO Max show apart is that, for the first time, an IT adaptation unfolds through the eyes of both adults and children simultaneously. While kids remain more vulnerable to Pennywise’s terror, the adult protagonists face horrors of their own from both the town’s entrenched bigotry and supernatural threats.
Determined to break a familiar franchise trope right from the start, series co-creators Barbara and Andy Muschietti (who also worked on the recent two-part film adaptation) center the story on Charlotte and Leroy’s arrival in Maine, where Leroy is stationed outside the town, alongside The Shining’s Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk). Charlotte, a former activist with a history of arrests, initially seems far removed from Derry’s darkness. But when their son begins to experience eerie, unexplainable events, the couple defies every horror trope known to humankind and takes his fears seriously, drawing them into Pennywise’s orbit.
“We hate that trope,” Barbara Muschietti tells Polygon. “We hate the reluctance to believe the kids.”
“I think there’s normal reluctance, because it’s also the ‘60s, but we tried to speed up through that process, which is so frustrating for audiences,” Andy Muschietti adds.
It’s a classic plot device found in countless scary movies, including the Muschiettis’ own IT adaptation, where adults ignore the warnings of children being terrorized. In Welcome to Derry, they sidestep this trope by grounding the story in its 1962 setting and exploring the parallel horrors of racism and Pennywise, sometimes even suggesting that the former gave rise to the latter.
“There is a sensibility that I can attribute to the sensitivity of the times of a family in that culture, at that time, they probably faced a lot of adversity,” Andy explains. “And that’s why it’s a very tight family, in spite of their own differences, which are very clear.”
Charlotte’s activist past makes her unwilling to ignore Derry’s dark undercurrents, while Leroy, bound by his military role and differing views, tries to keep a low profile. Their contrasting perspectives become a key part of the story.
“There’s a bit of a fracture of worldview within that family that is important,” Andy notes. “Yet still, they stick together against adversity.”
Paige and Adepo, who portray Charlotte and Leroy, offer a different perspective on the dynamic and closeness of the Hanlon household, which she says helps explain why the adult characters are so ready to believe something supernatural is afoot in Derry.
“Is it because they’re Black?” Paige asks, before answering her own question.“There’s a natural empathy because you also have something on your neck. So when kids are passionate about something and come to you, you may have a sensitivity of not being believed, to suffering and screaming for help, and people not batting an eyelash.”
Adepo believes the Muschiettis were very deliberate in not engaging too much in the gaslighting trope in their story.
“Andy and Barbara are just way too smart not to continue that trope if it’s not necessary,” he says. “They’re making an edgier choice of letting the parents get in on the juiciness as well.”
