‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Review: A Prequel Drenched in Racial Horror (HBO Max)

A prequel that tries to graft onto It the serialized logic and formulas of other pop phenomena such as Stranger Things, Harry Potter, and even the Marvel universe, Welcome to Derry expands and recontextualizes Stephen King’s nightmarish world with a more concrete historical framing. The ideas and narrative devices that fueled the original novel are still here, but Andy Muschietti and his creative team seem most interested in building a parallel saga centered on America’s racial tensions—problems that, in this story, are given a supernatural connection.

The show adopts the familiar tone of 1980s Amblin cinema, with Spielberg’s suburban adventures as its template and point of reference. Although the action takes place mostly in 1962, its perspective—social, political, and racial—feels far more contemporary, or perhaps reflective of the America of a few years ago. Welcome to Derry can be read as an alternate history of the United States: a seemingly kind and generous nation that, every twenty-seven years, reveals its most violent and hateful undercurrents.

(Note: even a brief summary of the story involves mild spoilers.)

Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard) barely appears in the five episodes shown to the press. Instead, the series seeks to uncover the origins of his evil and the social effects it leaves behind. It all begins in Derry, the fictional Maine town that serves as one of King’s great creative laboratories. The show opens with a brutal sequence—Muschietti doesn’t shy away from full-on horror even within a “mainstream” TV framework—in which a twelve-year-old boy, trying to hitchhike away from a bad situation, meets a gruesome fate.

The incident leaves deep marks on the community, especially at Derry High School, where the boy was a student. There, Lilly (Clara Stack) and a small group of friends try to uncover what really happened. Things quickly take a dark turn: Lilly—recently discharged from a psychiatric hospital—becomes the target of rumors and hostility. Meanwhile, local authorities, in a mix of prejudice and convenience, pin the blame on Hank (Stephen Rider), the Black projectionist at the movie theater where the tragedy began, and father of Ronnie (Amanda Christine), one of Lilly’s classmates. Soon Lilly, Ronnie, the newcomer Will (Blake James), and the Latino student Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) form their own investigative team to track down the truth about the missing children.

Will’s father, Leroy (Jovan Adepo), anchors the series’ second major storyline. A U.S. Air Force officer newly stationed in Derry with his wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige) and son, Leroy finds himself assigned to a mission shrouded in secrecy. He gradually realizes that his superiors are investigating strange phenomena in the area—disturbances that his colleague Dick Halloran (Chris Chalk) seems uniquely attuned to. Halloran, whose name will ring familiar to King fans, appears to possess a psychic gift that connects these supernatural events to the region’s Indigenous history. All signs point toward a force that longtime It viewers will recognize instantly: the evil beneath Derry’s streets.

Across its first five episodes, Welcome to Derry plays out primarily as a racially charged drama with horror bubbling just beneath the surface—though when the horror does erupt, it does so with startling intensity. Muschietti and company compensate for the limited early appearances of Pennywise with several shockingly violent, expertly staged set pieces. As always in King’s world, everything exists in the uneasy overlap between reality and imagination, but the physicality of the horror scenes gives the show a jolt of energy that keeps it from feeling like just another social thriller set in small-town America.

At times, the show’s ambition threatens to overwhelm it. It keeps opening new doors, introducing characters (some of whom don’t last long but may yet return), expanding its mythology, and hinting at a vast supernatural network that connects Derry to a larger cosmic evil. This broader scope is precisely what links It to Stranger Things and other recent ensemble horror sagas, where what’s at stake is far larger and more universal than it first appears. Muschietti manages to juggle multiple tones and storylines without losing momentum. His four directed episodes are tight, visually striking, and driven by an escalating sense of dread, even if the overarching plot takes a while to fully take shape.

What stands out most is the decision to frame Welcome to Derry through a racial lens—addressing both African American and Native American experiences. It wasn’t a major theme in It, but here it’s brought front and center, recalling the work of Jordan Peele and other contemporary filmmakers who have reframed horror as a tool for exploring racial trauma. In that sense, Pennywise becomes less a singular monster than a symbolic embodiment of the systemic cruelty and fear that the U.S. has long buried beneath its polished surface. The evil clown may only appear to a few, but Welcome to Derry makes clear that the town itself—and by extension, the country—is built on the same foundations of fear, hatred, and collective denial.