The Reason Pennywise Took Five Episodes to Appear in ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ — And the Scene That Was Originally Meant for ‘IT: Chapter Two’

⚠️ SPOILERS ahead for Episode 5 of IT: Welcome to Derry and Bill Skarsgård’s return like you’ve never seen him before.

The fifth episode of IT: Welcome to Derry — easily the best one so far — finally delivered the long-awaited return of Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, stepping back into the role he made iconic in IT (2017) and IT: Chapter Two (2019). And was it worth waiting five episodes for him to show up again? Let me tell you right now: absolutely. A thousand times yes.

Matty Clements (Miles Ekhardt) suddenly reappears, five months after his supposed death, claiming he’s spent some… less than pleasant days inside Derry’s sewers. He tells Lilly (Clara Stack) and the proto–Losers Club that Pennywise kept him alive and that he managed to escape while the creature slept during the day. He even insists that Phil — one of the friends they believed dead — is still alive somewhere in the pipes.

Convinced by Matty’s story, Lilly and the others follow him down into the sewers, determined to rescue Phil.

But once they’re there, the truth surfaces — quite literally. The bodies of their dead friends rise to the surface of the water… including Matty’s. He had been dead all along. The “Matty” who led them below wasn’t Matty at all — it was Pennywise, who had taken on his form to lure them straight into the slaughterhouse.

And then, the clown reveals himself in all his glory… dancing and singing, forty-three minutes into the episode, finishing the chorus of Down With The Clown like a full-blown showman.

The Matty/Pennywise twist wasn’t originally created for the series

Producer and co-creator Jason Fuchs told Decider that this entire sequence was initially conceived for IT: Chapter Two:

“When I was working on IT: Chapter Two, there was a draft where Mike Hanlon — who’s been guiding our adult Losers the entire time — finally takes them down into the sewers, to It’s shrine, where they find Mike Hanlon’s actual body. And you realize the Mike Hanlon we’d been with the whole movie was really a manifestation of It.”

The idea ultimately didn’t make it into the film because, according to Fuchs, it strayed too far from Stephen King’s canon. But once development began on the series — and especially Episode 5 — the concept resurfaced:

“Suddenly we realized: wait… this makes sense here. Matty as the guide, Matty in this context… it fits so much better.”

Fuchs also explained why this twist works better on television:

“You have more room to take risks. To do things you couldn’t do in the movies, because everything here is truly new. We’re using pieces of the book, but then extrapolating and inventing from there.”

So why did Pennywise appear so late?

Barbara Muschietti explained:

“We decided that, in this season, Pennywise needed to be a bit like the shark in Jaws. You have to be very strategic.”

Andy Muschietti added that it was all about anticipation:

“A game of keeping the audience in that state of, ‘I need to see the clown. Where is he?’ The story unfolds slowly — but with intention.”