‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ exclusive first look confirms Black Spot, other horrors of Derry history

In the second interlude of Stephen King‘s behemoth horror classic It, adult Mike Hanlon visits his cancer-stricken father in the hospital. Will Hanlon begins to weave a tale, one that he long kept from his son’s ears.

He begins his story decades earlier with his service in the Air Force at a nearby Army base. Will and his comrades opened the Black Spot, a nightclub and watering hole that catered to Black patrons. One horrific night, members of the Maine Legion of White Decency, a radicalized white supremacist group, swarmed the venue and burned it down, killing numerous people trapped inside.

Mike discovers this event to be an earlier sighting of “It,” the shape-shifting, kid-devouring entity that now torments his childhood friends of the Loser’s Club. While typically choosing the guise of creepy clown Pennywise, It appeared before Will in the form of a giant bird to snatch a victim in its talons amid the chaos around the burning Black Spot.

This is just one story that Mike unearths as he attempts to track the It entity’s years-long reign of terror in Derry, presented in King’s novel through the character’s research. Collectively, these “interludes,” interspersed between the main storyline of Pennywise and the Loser’s Club, became the inspiration for IT: Welcome to Derry, as seen in Entertainment Weekly‘s exclusive first look at the nine-episode prequel series to 2017’s It and 2019’s It Chapter Two.

“This is a book we love a lot, and we felt that there was still a lot of story to be covered,” the director of the two movies, Andy Muschietti, and his longtime producing partner and sister, Barbara, tell EW over email. “It’s so rich with characters and events, we thought we would do justice to the book and the fans by going back into this world. Specifically, we are telling the stories of the interludes, writings by Mike Hanlon based on his investigation that includes interviews he conducts with the older people in the town. In Welcome to Derry, we touch on the usual themes that were talked about in the movie — friendship, loss, the power of unified belief — but this story focuses also on the use of fear as a weapon, which is one of the things that is also relevant to our times.”

The Muschietti duo, who developed the series with It Chapter Two scribe Jason Fuchs, shifted the timeline of their It movies a few decades later than the setting of King’s book. So IT: Welcome to Derry follows suit. The main storyline plays out in 1962, which is the year the Black Spot burned down, while the book places that particular tragedy in the 1930s. That means we’re 27 years before the events of the filmmakers’ first It movie, which featured Chosen Jacobs as little Mike Hanlon, a role taken over as an adult in the sequel by Isaiah Mustafa.

“Twenty-seven years is the dormant period of Pennywise,” the Muschiettis write. “It’s a different part of American history with a new set of fears for children, as well as adults having in mind the cost of the Cold War. Our baseline is 1962, but we do a few jumps to the past…. Every 27 years when It appears, It’s cycle is marked by two catastrophic events, one at the beginning and one in the end. We are using the Black Spot as an event in which many stories are built around.”

Jovan Adepo (Babylon, 3 Body Problem) and Taylour Paige (Zola, Beverly Hills Cop 4) lead a meaty ensemble cast that includes the return of Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, as well as It newcomers Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe, and Rudy Mancuso. The filmmakers are keeping specifics of most of their roles a secret, including the identity of the main child actors, but EW’s first look comes with major hints.

Adepo wears an Air Force uniform with the name “Hanlon” in one of the images, suggesting he could be playing a younger Will Hanlon during the Black Spot timeline. The images also suggest Paige could be playing Will’s future wife, Jessica. The Muschiettis decline to confirm.

“We don’t want to spoil too much, but we’ll say that the Hanlon family is involved,” they tease.

IT: Welcome to Derry will premiere on HBO and stream on Max in 2025, and Andy directs four out of the nine episodes, including the premiere. Though King fans have a bit of a wait on their hands, the filmmakers aren’t ready to reveal all their tricks just yet. “We will explore the origins of Pennywise,” they say, “but like in the book, we’ll do it with a healthy dose of crypticism.”

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