HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry pulls us right back into the sewers of Stephen King’s cursed town — only this time, it’s decades before the Losers’ Club, before the red balloons, before the monster had a name. Set in the early 1960s, the eight-episode series serves as a prequel to Andy Muschietti’s IT duology, plunging us into a world where nostalgia and dread share the same face.

It’s a time capsule of American suburbia — all candy colors and Sunday smiles — but if you listen closely, you’ll hear the pipes whisper. Because in Derry, horror doesn’t just live underground. It seeps through wallpaper, radio static, and polite conversation.

The first episode, “The Pilot,” directed by Andy Muschietti himself, feels like both a return and a rebirth. It’s visually rich, thematically ambitious, and chillingly familiar — a story that expands Derry’s mythology while deepening the scars beneath its surface.

The Pilot: A Short Film of Terror

The opening sequence could stand as its own horror short. A boy named Matty (Miles Eckhardt) walks home through the mist, only to be picked up by a cheerful family on their way to Portland. At first, they seem harmless — a typical roadside kindness in a simpler time. But then the smiles linger too long, the laughter sounds rehearsed, and the air inside the car turns colder than it should.

The father refuses to let Matty out. The children start taunting him. And the mother? Her face twists into something you can’t quite name until it’s too late.

What follows is Muschietti at his best — flickering headlights, a suffocating silence, a camera that refuses to blink. The moment crescendos into a horrific “birth” of a demonic baby, an image so grotesque it feels ripped straight from the subconscious. It’s a scene that channels King’s surreal dread and Muschietti’s painterly horror — visual storytelling at its most primal.

It’s claustrophobic, cruel, and utterly transfixing.

But as soon as the credits fade, the pacing begins to fracture.

When Derry Starts to Drift

After that perfect opener, the story spreads itself too thin. We’re pulled across too many threads — from grieving teenagers to military officers, from haunted households to shadowy government labs — and while each subplot carries intrigue, their rhythm doesn’t always align.

The sense of focus that defined the opening is lost somewhere in the shifting perspectives. The result? A strong pilot that occasionally feels like two or three pilots stitched together.

Still, Welcome to Derry thrives on its atmosphere. The production design is immaculate — from the retro cars and pastel diners to the ominous fog rolling across 1962 Maine. Every frame hums with that strange Muschietti mix of beauty and menace. The soundtrack, full of vintage melodies warped into something sinister, adds layers of unease.

It’s the small details — the static in a radio, the blood in the drain, the laughter echoing from pipes — that keep you unsettled even when the pacing falters.

For fans of It (2017) and It Chapter Two, the scares may feel familiar — voices from sinks, eerie shadows, the slow-building dread before Pennywise strikes. But familiarity here isn’t a flaw; it’s a reminder. Derry has always been a place where history repeats itself, in blood.

The New Losers’ Club (Kind Of)

Where Welcome to Derry truly finds its pulse is in its young ensemble cast. Clara Stack, Mikkal Karim-Fidler, Amanda Christine, and Jack Molloy Legault play the town’s new generation of outsiders — kids trying to make sense of trauma long before the Losers’ Club ever existed.

Their dynamic feels raw, awkward, and heartbreakingly human. There’s Lilly (Clara Stack), a pariah burdened by guilt over her father’s gruesome death at a pickle factory — and her last words to Matty before his disappearance. Teddy (Mikkal Karim-Fidler) is the conspiracy-minded misfit, a kid who talks about chemtrails before “chemtrails” were a thing. Fred (Jack Molloy Legault), the comic-book realist, clings to fictional heroes to escape real nightmares.

And then there’s Ronnie (Amanda Christine), the quiet observer — the heart of the group — whose father runs the local theater. It’s there, in a beautifully constructed meta-sequence, that the kids play The Music Man, the same film Matty saw before he vanished. And when they do, they see Matty inside the movie — pale, flickering, impossibly alive.

But this isn’t resurrection. It’s Pennywise feeding.

Taking Matty’s form, the clown uses guilt as bait and fear as seasoning. It’s not just horror — it’s emotional manipulation at a metaphysical level. The theater scene soon erupts into chaos: diegetic lighting bleeds into red, screams echo through the aisles, and Teddy’s brutal on-screen death turns the popcorn-stained floor into a massacre.

Only Lilly and Ronnie survive — and Lilly walks out holding Teddy’s sister’s severed hand.

Major Hanlon and the Other Side of Derry

Parallel to the kids’ nightmare runs another story — that of Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), a decorated veteran fresh from the Korean War. He’s stationed at Derry’s local Air Force base, “the tip of the spear” against Russia. But the real war he’s fighting is closer to home.

As a Black officer in 1962 America, Hanlon’s mere presence disrupts Derry’s fragile politeness. A salute withheld here, a door closed there — the series doesn’t shy away from the era’s racism. Beneath the supernatural horrors, Muschietti and screenwriter Jason Fuchs weave a more insidious kind of fear: systemic prejudice.

Hanlon’s subplot thickens when he’s approached by masked men demanding classified weapon specs. The attack leaves him bruised and shaken, and though it feels like a military test at first, it’s left chillingly unresolved. There’s a sense that the evil in Derry isn’t just cosmic — it’s institutional.

And if you’re a Stephen King reader, the name “Hanlon” might ring a bell. He’s a clear ancestor to Mike Hanlon, the Losers’ Club historian. Through Leroy, we see the beginnings of the town’s cyclical curse — one generation haunted into the next.

The Muschietti Touch

There’s something uniquely cinematic about how Andy Muschietti shoots fear. He doesn’t rely on noise; he relies on silence. The camera lingers in hallways that feel too long, faces that hold smiles for a beat too much, and moments where you swear something’s about to move — and it doesn’t. Until it does.

Even when the narrative stumbles, the direction remains hypnotic. The lighting, the color grading, the slow, deliberate pacing — all echo Muschietti’s work on It (2017) and It Chapter Two. It’s haunting and nostalgic, like a nightmare you remember fondly.

The Verdict

It: Welcome to Derry opens with brilliance, loses its footing mid-way, but recovers with a haunting, blood-soaked finale that demands your return. It’s uneven, yes — but so is trauma. And Derry, at its heart, is a story about collective trauma buried beneath decades of smiles.

Between Muschietti’s visual horror, a strong young cast, and a quietly powerful subplot about racism and fear, Welcome to Derry feels like both a continuation and a correction. It’s the shadow that lingers long after the red balloon pops.

The show reminds us that monsters are born from what we refuse to face — and in Derry, no secret stays buried.

As the mist settles over Derry, one thing is certain — the nightmare has only begun. HBO’s Welcome to Derry doesn’t just revisit fear. It resurrects it, reframes it, and dares you to look again.

And if this is just the pilot, we’re in for something far darker, far deeper — because in Derry, every story ends the same way: with something staring back from the drain.

Meanwhile, dive into the world of your favorite horrors and heroes with Superhero Toystore’s collection of Anime, Marvel, DC, Transformers, LEGO, and more. From Pennywise to Batman — we’ve got legends, monsters, and memories that belong on your shelf.

Because sometimes, it’s better when the monsters stay in your room — not under it.