Welcome Back to the Worst Place in Maine
IT: Welcome to Derry wastes no time reestablishing the dread-soaked world Andy Muschietti shaped in his feature films. Episode 1, simply titled The Pilot, feels like slipping back into a nightmare you thought you grew out of. The town is familiar, the shadows feel hungry, and every kind gesture hides a blade behind it.
This first chapter sets up both a new group of kids and an adult storyline that runs parallel—and everything is drenched in that signature Muschietti tension. Let’s break down what goes down in Derry before the clown truly takes center stage.
The Disappearance of Matty
We begin with Matty, a kid trying to escape a bad situation at home, only to discover he’s run straight into a far worse fate. What starts like a hitchhiking misunderstanding spirals into one of the most grotesque, horrifying birth scenes the franchise has ever attempted.
The demonic newborn that erupts into this world is the first warning sign that something is seriously wrong—and possibly connected to a larger nightmare tied to King’s Crimson King mythology. It’s gruesome, chaotic, and sets the tone: no one is safe, and whatever took Matty is far from finished.
Meet the Kids of Derry
Matty’s disappearance ripples through the small circle of misfit kids who knew him—if you can even call them friends.
Teddy: A conspiracy-leaning outsider with a compassionate core. His home life is strict, tense, and grounded in inherited trauma.
Fred: More level-headed, obsessed with comic books, and very aware that life in Derry is a little too weird for comfort.
Lilly: Traumatized by her father’s bizarre death and tortured by the last harsh words she spoke to Matty.
Lilly is the first to hear Matty’s voice echoing through her bathroom pipes—a disturbing signature of IT’s mythology. When Teddy gets a late-night visit from Pennywise—disguised through home décor made of screaming flesh—the kids realize something is wrong at a level they can’t rationalize.
A Shabbat dinner scene quickly follows, revealing the fear and generational trauma Teddy’s father carries. His destruction of Teddy’s prized The Flash #123 isn’t just parental frustration; it’s a symbolic rejection of escapism at a time when horror is literally clawing its way into Derry.
Into the Theater
The kids team up with Ronnie, whose father works at the local movie theater. The Music Man is still playing—the same movie Matty last saw—and Lilly hears its soundtrack coming through the pipes.
Inside the darkened auditorium, the kids see Matty on screen. But is it really him? Or is it Pennywise wearing a boy’s skin like a mask?
This is Muschietti going full nightmare mode:
- The lighting drops into hellish red
- The demonic baby’s cries return
- The line between projected image and reality dissolves
When Matty tears into the yellow-blanketed infant on the screen, his face twists into something inhuman. What follows is pure chaos.
Blood on the Popcorn
Pennywise shows himself—not with a flourish, but with violence. Teddy is the first victim, ripped apart with shocking brutality while popcorn kernels crunch beneath the blood. The sequence pushes past the implied horror of the films and confronts viewers with a massacre that feels almost too real.
By the time the screams stop, only Lilly and Ronnie are left alive. Lilly stumbles outside clutching what she thinks is Ronnie’s hand… only for us to learn it’s the severed hand of Teddy’s little sister.
It’s clear now: this story belongs to Lilly. She is the heart of Welcome to Derry, and this first episode rips her innocence away in one horrifying night.
Major Hanlon Arrives in Derry
Parallel to the kids’ nightmare, we meet Major Leroy Hanlon—grandfather to the Mike Hanlon fans know from the IT films. Fresh from the Korean War, he’s stationed at a secretive base with a reputation for pushing boundaries.
But this storyline isn’t just about the military. It’s about being a Black man in 1962 America, entering a community that doesn’t want him there. Adepo plays Major Hanlon with quiet strength and a deeply felt anxiety—you sense immediately he’s walking into a place more dangerous than any battlefield.
The “Special Projects” division looms large, as does a mysterious late-night beating by masked men demanding access to classified experimental weapon specs. Their escape leaves the mystery open-ended—and suggests something rotten within the base itself.
Hanlon’s story clearly mirrors the kids’: fear works its way into every layer of Derry, from playgrounds to military compounds.
Final Thoughts on Episode 1
The Pilot does exactly what a horror prequel should. It doesn’t try to outdo the movies. It builds on them, enriches them, and makes Derry feel bigger, darker, and more haunted than ever before.
Between Lilly’s tragic awakening, Teddy’s brutal end, Matty’s monstrous rebirth, and Major Hanlon’s unsettling introduction, Welcome to Derry starts with a shocking body count and a promise: the clown hasn’t even begun to play yet.
