Warning: This article contains full spoilers for the season premiere of ‘IT: Welcome to Derry.’ Proceed with caution!
If you walked into ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ expecting a familiar rehashing of the ‘Losers’ Club’ narrative from the films, where a plucky group of kids survives a childhood encounter with Pennywise, you were in for a brutal surprise. The season premiere wasted no time in shattering those expectations, making it clear that this new chapter would be anything but a simple re-imagining.
The story begins with a group of young protagonists – Lilly, Teddie, Phil, and his little sister Susie – investigating the disappearance of local boy Matty Clements. Their search leads them to the Derry movie theater, where a projectionist, Ronnie, shows them ‘The Music Man’ – the very film Matty was watching when he vanished. Lilly and Teddie grapple with guilt over not helping Matty sooner, but Phil reassures them that their current efforts matter.
The Premiere’s Terrifying Climax
Lilly realizes a song from ‘The Music Man,’ ‘Ya Got Trouble,’ was playing when she last thought she heard Matty. Suddenly, Matty appears on the screen, seemingly trapped within the movie itself. The kids desperately try to guide him out, but Matty, cradling a baby wrapped in a blanket, turns on them, accusing them of abandoning him. He blames them for his predicament.
The film on screen distorts, the song warps, and Matty’s face twists into an evil grin. The baby he holds then dramatically leaps from the screen into the real world. It’s the same monstrous, flying demon baby that brutally killed Matty earlier in the episode, and now it’s unleashed within the theater.
[Video: ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Season Premiere Review]
The screen burns and warps as the grotesque creature – which Phil aptly describes as ‘a giant mutant baby’ – savagely attacks Teddie, Phil, and Susie. Lilly frantically hides beneath the seats, splattered with Teddie’s blood as his lifeless body is violently slammed against the projection booth window. A horrified Ronnie, trapped inside the booth, can only watch.
The demon then snatches Phil. Susie, crawling towards Lilly, reaches out as Lilly calls, ‘Give me your hand!’ The demon appears above Lilly just as Ronnie, having escaped the booth, rushes into the theater. She finds a blood-soaked Lilly, who mutters, ‘They’re all gone.’ As the demon reappears, they flee into the lobby, with Ronnie desperately barring the doors behind them.
Ronnie, shaken, demands to know what happened. Lilly looks down, and the shocking truth is revealed: she is clutching Susie’s severed hand. Her ensuing shriek transitions into Nelson Riddle’s ‘Lolita Ya Ya’ as the end credits begin. (For film buffs, this tune is from Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film ‘Lolita;’ Riddle also composed the iconic theme for the ’60s ‘Batman’ TV series.)
Andy Muschietti on Killing Off the Would-Be Losers’ Club
In a recent interview, ‘Welcome to Derry’ executive producer Andy Muschietti, who also directed the ‘IT’ movies and this premiere, discussed the decision to eliminate most of the lead child characters in the first episode. He confirmed it was a deliberate move to signal to audiences that this series would not be a predictable retelling of the original ‘IT’ narrative.
Muschietti explained that killing off Teddie, Phil, and Susie served as ‘a narrative device to basically get people in that mindset where no one is safe in this world, even clearly the ones that you’re going to follow over the rest of the show. So yeah. It was also like kicking the chin, that unexpected thing that will hook the audience into wanting to keep watching, probably.’
The director also touched upon the unsettling ‘birth horror’ theme woven throughout the show, particularly manifest in Pennywise’s form in this episode.
[Video: ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Exclusive Teaser – IGN Fan Fest 2025]
‘I think there’s a very tight link to one of the themes of Stephen King’s book. For people who read the book, the Losers, when they come back 30 years later, they all realize that they don’t have kids, in their 40s, none of them have kids, and probably will never have. And that’s a way of saying that these guys are subliminally terrified of bringing kids into this horrific world,’ Muschietti elaborated.
‘And it’s one of those lingering questions. It’s never really solved. In the book, it’s all questions that are, most of which are never answered, but it makes you think about it. And I think that’s one of the themes, and that’s why the baby thing is a recurring thing, and birth is a horrific event that is brought up over and over.’
Muschietti further connected this to the historical context: ‘The other side of the equation of that particular scene is the fears of the era. This is 1962, and America is in the middle of a Cold War, and there’s a threat of nuclear attack. And all the kids know that.’
‘They’re terrified because there might be a big bang anytime soon, and they’re instructed to go under the tables in case of an attack, which is ridiculous. But that’s one of the fears of the era. And birth defects, radiation was one of the things. I took that and combined it with the idea of the horror of birth, and that’s how the scare was created.’
DC Comics Easter Eggs?
Finally, for the sharp-eyed DC Comics fans, don’t read too much into Teddie’s choice of reading material, ‘Detective Comics #298.’ This issue famously features the first appearance of the second Clayface, Matt Hagen, a shape-shifter much like Pennywise. While the thematic parallel is intriguing, Muschietti clarified the intent.
‘No, no. It was just the inclusion of the world of DC, which is very close to my heart, and I wanted to include it. Because we put Flash on the previous scene, there’s an issue of Flash, then we included one that was Detective Comics, but it wasn’t intended. It wasn’t because of Clayface. It was just an issue of 1962 that I happened to think it was very appropriate,’ Muschietti stated. ‘I can’t remember now, but I’m a hundred percent sure that our props master brought that with that intention.’
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For more in-depth analysis, be sure to read our review of the ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ season premiere, where Tom Jorgensen gave it a score of 8 out of 10. He noted:
‘The first episode accomplishes its most important task of re-establishing Derry and Pennywise with style and some expertly-drawn out tension, though some of the more CG-heavy scares fall flat. Indirectly honoring a popular critique of the novel, the kids’ side of the story is (so far) way more compelling than the adults’, but Pennywise has barely begun to poke his red-tufted head out of the sewer, so there’s plenty of time for that storyline to start floating.’”