It: Welcome to Derry Creators Explain Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise Reveal

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Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise finally shows his face halfway through It: Welcome to Derry season 1.

The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry, titled “29 Neibolt Street,” features a shocking twist. Matty Clements (Miles Ekhardt), who everyone—both in the show and the audience—thought had died, unexpectedly shows up at the Losers’ Club’s hideout. It turns out he somehow managed to survive his terrifying encounter with Pennywise in the very first episode.

It was clearly a trap. The frightening clown tricked the children he was chasing and scaring. He then led them towards the sewer, mirroring a familiar, unsettling scene. In an instant, the seemingly innocent boy transformed into the terrifying version of the clown as portrayed by Bill Skarsgård – a form many consider his most frightening.

Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, and Jason Fuchs, the team behind the upcoming series It: Welcome to Derry, recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about their decision to delay revealing a key element of the show. Barbara Muschietti explained they intentionally built suspense by withholding the reveal, wanting the moment to be truly frightening when it finally arrived. She likened this approach to the movie Jaws, where the unseen threat creates a significant amount of tension for both the characters and the audience.

This season, we aimed to make Pennywise similar to the shark in Jaws – a creature you don’t see all at once. Like with that film, keeping the character mysterious and frightening was key. We realized that showing too much too soon would ruin the fear, so we deliberately held back on fully revealing Pennywise for as long as possible.

Andy described his approach as “a game of anticipation,” explaining that he wanted to build suspense and make viewers eager to see Pennywise. He aimed to create a feeling of desperation – that “I need to see the clown! Where is it?!” – mirroring what he, as a viewer, would enjoy. He characterized it as a slow-building experience.

David Fuchs, who previously worked with his team as a co-producer and script editor on It: Chapter Two, believes the creature’s shapeshifting ability is what makes it truly frightening. He explains that this also cleverly uses what the audience expects, as viewers were waiting to see if that particular version of the creature would reappear after the first two films.

What really struck me about this adaptation is how much more of the monster we get to see. In a movie, you’re limited by runtime, so those creepy, non-Pennywise forms of ‘It’ are just glimpses. But with a TV series, they have the breathing room to dedicate entire episodes to showing all the different ways this thing psychologically torments these kids. It’s genuinely unsettling and expands on the horror in a way the films just couldn’t.

Fuchs described the process of revealing Skarsgård’s character as challenging and time-consuming for the team. Now that the reveal is complete, he says fans will see the character do things never before seen in any version of the Stephen King story.

We debated the timing for a long time. We never intended to reveal this particular element right at the beginning of the first episode, unlike how the show It immediately introduces Georgie and Pennywise. A major part of developing the story was figuring out when to introduce this character and how it fit into the overall narrative. Ultimately, the story and the characters themselves determined the best timing.

This role gives Skarsgård a chance to explore aspects of Pennywise that the movies didn’t allow. We’re building up to seeing Pennywise in a really exciting way, and you’ll see Bill do things with the character that you haven’t seen before.

It: Welcome to Derry releases new episodes every Sunday at 9:00 PM ET and 6:00 PM PT on HBO.

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2025-11-24 06:48