Welcome To Derry Series Premiere Recap

Pennywise the Clown is coming back to terrorize a whole new generation of kids and adults, alike, only… well, he doesn’t show face in Sunday’s series premiere. But buck up, kiddos! That doesn’t mean HBO’s new prequel “IT: Welcome to Derry” isn’t chock-full of terror and jump scares that’ll disrupt your sleep and make your skin crawl.

When the highly anticipated series kicks off, it’s 1962, a full 27 years before the events of the first IT movie and the novel. A young boy named Matty Clements is kicked out of a Derry, Maine movie theater, and from the bruises on his face, we can tell he has a rough home life. During his attempt to run away from his at home horrors, he’s eventually picked up by a nice looking family who agree to drop him off in Portland. But it doesn’t take long for Matty to deduce that something is very wrong here, as the family seemingly goes bats—t crazy right in front of his eyes. And even though their car left Derry, someway, somehow they get turned around and re-enter the mysterious little town despite Matty’s screams of horror. The pregnant mom then goes into labor right in the passenger seat, only it’s no human baby. It’s a terrifying winged creature that flies around the vehicle, smashing glass while mom tries to pull the umbilical cord to control it. A creepy opening that only gets creepier as the hour unfolds.

Elsewhere, Major Leroy Hanlon (Mike’s grandfather!) and Captain Pauly Russo, two men in the Air Force, arrive in Derry at their new station. Major Hanlon seems respected in his field thanks to his accomplishments in the Korean War that, at the time, left him considerably injured. (He’s got a serious facial scar to prove it.) He’s there to test the country’s new B-52 jet so he can fly it straight into the heart of the enemy and finish what he started. But once he meets the rest of his squadron, one of his subordinates is blatantly racist against him. (Leroy is Black; for what it’s worth, it’s comforting to see that their superior, General Shaw, is ready to squash this BS from the jump.) But in the middle of the night, three masked men break into Hanlon’s quarters. They beat him with a lead pipe, demanding to know the details and specs of the B-52. Hanlon, like the absolute badass he is, tells them it’s classified, and even at gun point, he refuses to utter a peep. His buddy Pauly hears the commotion and helps Hanlon scare them away.

We cut to a school where we meet Lilly, a young girl who’s being terrorized in a different kind of way — this time by snotty classmates who are torturing her about her father’s freak-accident death. Other new kids we meet are Lilly’s friend Marge, and a pair of friends named Teddy and Phil, who later tell us that it’s been four months since Matty disappeared. Matty’s body was never found, giving them and everyone else in town absolutely zero closure. Lilly, too, was close with Matty. Before his disappearance, he brought her to his friends’ secret hangout. It’s there where she reveals that her dad died in a factory machine accident that tore him to pieces, an accident she unfortunately witnessed. Needless to say, Matty’s disappearance has had quite an effect on Lilly and the town, at large. As if the poor girl hasn’t suffered enough, she starts hearing Matty’s voice in the drain of her shower. And when she asks him to please come home, Matty shrieks, “HE WON’T LET ME!” as fingers emerge from the drain. When Lilly tells Teddy and Phil what happened, they aren’t quite sure if they believe her or not. (Though, at least Teddy is a bit nicer about it. Why do you have to be such a jerk, Phil?!)

Later that night, Teddy gets his own scare when he flips on his lamp and sees that it’s composed of a bunch of faces. Instead of a canvas lampshade, it’s human skin. (What in the Ed Gein and Leatherface is happening here?!) Teddy, Phil and Lilly meet back up the next day, with Phil finally getting on board with this “lampshade s—t.” Lilly says she can’t go back to Juniper Hill, which according to Phil is a “looney bin.” With all these bizarro happenings going down, the kids start sleuthing, along with Phil’s absolutely adorable little sister Susie. They look up Matty’s story using the library’s microfiche and learn that Matty was last seen by the daughter of a local theater owner. They go visit Ronnie, the girl from the beginning scene who allowed Matty to escape the theater. Initially, she doesn’t want to talk about it. The police swarmed around at the time of Matty’s disappearance, and attempted to blame it all on her dad. She tries to send them away, but once they mention hearing Matty in a drain pipe, Ronnie has her own freaky experiences to share, and so she joins their little detective gang.

The kids head to the theater to watch “The Music Man,” since that’s the song they heard Matty singing from the drain. Ronnie starts running the film, and to their surprise, they see Matty on screen in the film! He’s holding what looks to be a baby wrapped in a blanket, and he can hear them speaking to him. They tell him to walk forward, so he does. Only the baby he’s holding? It’s the winged creature from the first sequence, and it smashes through the screen and attacks the kids. It looks larger than ever as it swoops down to attack, picking up Phil and tearing him apart as blood rains down all over Lilly’s face. Lilly tries to save Susie, but the creature bites down hard. Lilly and Ronnie are the only ones to survive the attack, and once they escape to the lobby area, Lilly realizes she’s holding the chewed off hand of poor l’il Susie. (Dark.) She screams in absolute horror as the credits start to roll.

So what did you think of the “IT: Welcome to Derry” premiere? Grade it below, then let us know your thoughts in the comments!