Do you know what time it is? It’s time to float, baby—because Stephen King’s It is returning to our screens! Developed by Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, and Jason Fuchs, the latter of whom also serves as co-showrunner alongside Brad Caleb Kane, It: Welcome to Derry is a prequel series to 2017’s It and 2019’s It Chapter Two and is set in 1962, 27 years before the events of the first film. Pennywise (played once again by Bill Skarsgård) is back for another child-eating cycle, so you’d better stay out of the sewers, even if you see a shiny red balloon down there. 

Ahead of the series’ HBO and HBO Max premiere on October 26, the cast and creatives behind It: Welcome to Derry took to the Empire Stage at New York Comic Con to tease the horrors in store. If you couldn’t make it, never fear (well, maybe fear a little—you taste so much better when you’re afraid) because we’ve rounded up the highlights right here. 

It: Welcome to Derry Is Based on Mike Hanlon’s Interludes from Stephen King’s Original Novel

If you’re a Constant Reader of Stephen King, you might remember that the 1986 novel It includes a series of five first-person “interludes” documented by Mike Hanlon (played in the films by Chosen Jacobs and Isaiah Mustafa), Derry’s town librarian and unofficial historian. These serve to flesh out the sinister world of Derry, which is a character in and of itself, and to help the reader appreciate just how far back Pennywise’s dark influence over the town goes. As Andy Muschietti put it during the panel, the interludes are “a puzzle that was intentionally unfinished in the book,” one that sparked an idea in the minds of the series’ creators. 

“For me,” he says, “those interludes were kind of a blueprint for a different story, a hidden story, a story that is not told forward but a story that is told backward and has, as a final conclusion, the events in which It became Pennywise.” Why is the story being told backward? You’ll have to see the show to find out. 

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.

The Story Centers on Mike Hanlon’s Grandfather and His Family

We caught a glimpse of Leroy Hanlon, Mike Hanlon’s grandfather, in 2017’s It, where he was teaching the young boy how to use a bolt pistol to kill sheep. In It: Welcome to Derry, we’ll meet a young Leroy, played by Jovan Adepo, just as he’s moving to Derry with his wife, Charlotte (Taylour Paige), and their son—right in time for a kid to disappear in town. 

Leroy is a “flyboy” in the U.S. Air Force, which was especially meaningful to Adepo, whose own father was a military man. “Getting a chance to play, in some form, a version of who I thought my father was as a child was really exciting for me,” he says. 

Adepo notes that Leroy is in search of a better life for his family, which he’s probably not going to find in the clown murder capital of America, and teases that the man has a “very unique relationship with fear.” As for his wife, Paige says that Charlotte “has a sacral sense that something is just not right in Derry. 

“It’s frightening to think that you’re losing your mind,” she says. “It’s frightening to feel hysterical, and everyone around you being like ‘oh, we’re good.’”

The 1960s Setting Creates New Opportunities for Anxiety and Fear

Stephen King’s It is split between the late 1950s (for the child portion) and the mid-1980s (for the adult portion). The film adaptations shifted these time periods up to 1989 and 2016, respectively. Since Pennywise’s murderous cycle occurs every 27 years, this means the prequel series is set in 1962, which allowed the creative team to tap into some of the themes and ideas present in King’s 50s setting. 

“What we couldn’t do in the movie in terms of era… we’re doing now,” Andy Muschietti explains. “It’s closer in spirit and also in textures and feel to what the book was.”

“I love doing complex, interconnected, very character-rich shows,” says co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane. “Setting it in 1962… that was very interesting to me, particularly when you’re dealing with a monster, an interdimensional creature, who uses fear and hatred to divide, and you’re talking about 1962 in America. Well, that’s a very rich and specific area to mine.”

This period of intense social anxiety and political instability in America would be nothing short of a buffet for Pennywise, for whom fear is flavoring. As King writes, “adults had their own terrors, and their glands could be tapped, opened so that all the chemicals of fear flooded the body and salted the meat.” In that case, our favorite Dancing Clown might want to monitor Its sodium levels. 

“Derry is a microcosm for America,” Kane adds. 

Indigenous Characters Will Play a Major Role in It: Welcome to Derry

It Chapter Two caught some heat in 2019 for its inauthentic inclusion of Native American spiritualism as a plot device. It: Welcome to Derry seems to be making strides to correct that mistake through the character of Rose, played in the series by Kimberly Guerrero. (That’s the same Rose, by the way, who owns Second Hand Rose, the pawn shop glimpsed in It Chapter Two and staffed by King himself in a cameo appearance.)

“The Stephen King universe is a family, but it’s a family that we’ve been left out of,” Guerrero says. “The native story has been there, but we were never able to join you all at the table. We have stories, too—and boy, what a story!”

Guerrero notes that the story of Derry, where something evil lurks in the sewers just out of sight, is one that will feel familiar to Indigenous audiences, saying, “I have never been to a reservation or a Native American community that did not have a place where you do not go. You do not go because you do not know.” But Rose does know, and she’s doing her darndest to protect against It. Her greatest fear is something happening on her watch. 

“It was such a gift to get to play this Indigenous character that has had all this ancestral knowledge that’s been passed down from generation to generation to generation,” Guerrero enthuses. “Rose knows—my community in this story knows—everything that happened before Derry was Derry. There was a first Loser’s Club, and that Loser’s Club was a group of Indigenous kids.” 

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.

James Remar Was Thinking about Retirement before Getting the Call

Rose’s story in It: Welcome to Derry is closely connected to that of General Francis Shaw, played by James Remar. The actor, who recently reprised the role of Harry Morgan in Dexter: Resurrection, says he was considering retirement when the opportunity to join the Stephen King universe fell into his lap. 

“I was in the parking lot of a Pavilions grocery store and I was thinking to myself, well, it doesn’t really matter if I don’t work anymore,” Remar recalls. “I got into the car and I got a phone call from my agent, and they said ‘Andy and Barbara Muschietti want to meet you for this undisclosed project, and they’re only meeting one actor.”

“I admired this man since I was a child,” Andy Muschietti explains. “When he said yes, I couldn’t believe it.”

Remar, who brought his own experiences growing up in the 1960s to the table, says his character was saved from Pennywise by Rose when they were kids. They fell in love and had a whirlwind romance as only 9-year-olds who have been terrorized by an ancient evil entity can, though Shaw’s psyche was “shattered” by his encounter with It. Now in charge of strategic air command for the northeastern United States, General Shaw returns to Derry on assignment and reunites with his old flame just as the cycle begins again.

“I feel that my character is drawn back to Derry,” Remar says. “It’s out of my control… I’ve forgotten it in large part, but it’s in the fabric of my being, and I go to Rose.”

We’ll See a Different Side of the Shining’s Dick Hallorann

Audiences will meet plenty of new characters in It: Welcome to Derry. But one character who is likely very familiar to Stephen King fans is Dick Hallorann, the man who would go on to become head chef at the Overlook Hotel and who would use his “shine” to help save Danny Torrance from the terrifying forces lurking within its halls. Hallorann is a central character in The Shining (played by Scatman Crothers in Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation, and by Melvin Van Peebles in Mick Garris’ 1977 miniseries) and a tertiary one in Doctor Sleep (portrayed by Carl Lumbly in Mike Flannagan’s adaptation). However, Constant Readers will know that Hallorann also has ties to Derry, where he founded The Black Spot bar, the site of a racially-motivated attack. According to Chris Chalk, the actor bringing this iconic character back to the screen in It: Welcome to Derry, the version of Hallorann we meet in the series is quite different to the older, gentler version we know and love. 

“Dick is in Derry because Dick fucked up,” says Chalk. “Dick thinks all of these people are corny, he doesn’t respect a single one of them, and that’s the journey of Dick. The Dick you know is super nice. Good luck with this Dick!” 

In an exclusive clip played for the NYCC audience, Hallorann—who was a mess cook in the military during his younger years—has a terrifying vision of Pennywise while flying high overhead in a U.S. Air Force plane, seeing the ruin’s of Bob Gray’s circus wagon and dead children suspended in the air in the sewer. 

“You’re going to meet him at a stage where he has a different relationship with his internal self, with his spiritual world,” Chalk adds of Hallorann, “and his biggest fear is himself and losing control.” 

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.

Pennywise Is Here, but You Won’t See the Iconic Clown Right Away

We’ve been dancing around the Dancing Clown a lot in this article without looking directly at It. Don’t worry, Pennywise stans, It’s definitely part of the series—but you might not see It in Its clown form right away.

“He’s our shark,” says Barbara Muschietti, referencing Jaws’ tactic of teasing viewers with sightings before a sudden and shocking reveal. “We believe wholeheartedly that we can’t allow the audience to get comfortable with It. We had to hide the ball.” 

“Part of the unpredictability is, ‘When is the clown going to show up?’” adds Andy Muschietti. “I can’t tell you when! But he will… He’s present in other incarnations for a while and then, when you least expect it, there he is.”

It: Welcome to Derry will premiere on HBO and HBO Max October 26th, 2025.

It’s impossible to overstate the influence of The X-Files. Horror fans can spot its cultural ripple effects everywhere from Buffy to The Conjuring to Sinners. The show traversed countless subgenres and tonalities, including queasy body horror, B-movie monster yarn, and even frothy romantic comedy. For the uninitiated, wading into the paranormal investigations of Agents Scully and Mulder can feel like braving a haunted house with nothing but a flashlight. Fear not – if you’re in the mood for some Halloween-season thrills, we’ve chosen the scariest episode from each of the show’s nine original seasons.

The Scariest Episode From Every Season of The X-Files

Season 1: “Beyond the Sea” (Jan 7, 1994)

Owing much to The Silence of the Lambs, “Beyond the Sea” drums up genuine psychological scares by drawing the viewer into Scully’s precarious headspace. Her staunch rationalism falters when she encounters an unsettling vision of her dead father, setting the stage for a dizzying mind game between her and serial killer Luther Lee Boggs, portrayed with demented gravitas by Brad Dourif, a genre icon at the peak of his powers here. Thanks to a devastating performance from Gillian Anderson, this early episode broke the doors open on Scully, proving the show was as much about her journey through the unknown as it was her partner’s.

Season 2: “The Host” (Sep 23, 1994)

The show’s makeup effects team brought a cavalcade of nightmare visions to life throughout the franchise’s run, but none more stomach-turning than the Flukeman from this Season Two creature feature. Mulder investigates dead bodies in the New Jersey sewer system. The culprit? A parasitic flatworm with the size and physiology of a human. With Anderson’s pregnancy limiting her screen time, the episode has plenty of breathing room to linger on the gnarly attacks and dead-eyed visage of the Flukeman (played by Darin Morgan, who’d later pen some of the show’s most vaunted episodes). Not only does “The Host” feel like Creature from the Black Lagoon with an extra veneer of ick, the connection of Flukeman’s origins to the Chernobyl disaster adds a chilling layer of human culpability. “Nature didn’t make this thing,” Mulder intones. “We did.”

Season 3: “Wetwired” (May 10, 1996)

“Wetwired” tackled screen addiction over a decade before smartphones crawled into our hands and changed our brains forever. Paranoid vibes dominate this episode, in which binge marathons of cable news and game shows drive ordinary citizens to homicide. Scully soon gets pulled asunder by the nefarious broadcasts, causing her to turn against Mulder. “Wetwired” blends the show’s case-of-the-week format with its ongoing conspiracy saga to produce a high-anxiety thriller that presages our modern miasma of doomscrolling, fake news, and AI-induced psychosis. Along with the show’s other tales of techno dystopia (“Blood,” “Kill Switch”), consider “Wetwired” a proto-Black Mirror – with the added tension of composer Mark Snow’s slithering synth score that creeps under your skin.

Season 4: “Home” (Oct 11, 1996)

The X-Files cross-pollinated horror with related genres, but “Home” is perhaps the lone installment that feels like pure horror in its most undiluted form. Mulder and Scully investigate a grisly infanticide and run afoul of the Peacocks, a reclusive trio of brothers with unspeakable secrets. The dark power of “Home” pervades every frame. Behold the episode’s gorgeously photographed cold open, gruesome kills, and shiver-inducing reveals, all in service of the writers’ twisted treatise on family. “Home” was birthed at the top of Season Four, when the show found itself on a meteoric cultural ascent. The show’s growing popularity may explain why writers Glen Morgan and James Wong felt bold enough to send The X-Files into unhinged Texas Chainsaw Massacre territory. They may have overplayed their hand: this episode was famously banned from reruns after its initial airing.

Season 5: “Chinga” (Feb 08, 1998)

As the show’s profile continued to rise, the inevitable occurred: horror titan Stephen King reported for writing duty. The result is a sharp Gothic chiller with squirm-inducing set pieces. While on vacation, Scully happens upon murder and mayhem in (of course) Maine. While the local citizens are quick to blame Melissa, a single mom to a young girl named Polly, Scully hones in on the true source of evil: Polly’s doll, which can push victims to graphic acts of self-harm. Melissa’s eerie premonitions of death round out the incredible visuals of this episode, also notable for sending Scully on a solo adventure and nudging her yet another step closer toward acceptance of monsters and madness.

Season 6: “Drive” (Nov 15, 1998)

As production moved from Vancouver to sun-dappled Los Angeles in Season Six, the scripts themselves also veered toward sunnier stories, reflecting the writers’ continued hope to replicate the success of comedy installments like “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” or “Bad Blood.” Nevertheless, this season still offered more intense fare like “Drive,” a pulse-pounder about a Nevada man whose head will explode unless he drives westward – and fast. The episode owes much to the quick wit of Vince Gilligan, one of the show’s most seminal writers. Gilligan would go on to create Breaking Bad, starring Bryan Cranston, whom he cast based on the strength of his guest turn in “Drive” as the afflicted man who takes Mulder hostage on his westward race against time. All the earmarks of Breaking Bad are here: can’t-look-away tension, character-driven thrills, and mordant humor belying a pervasive air of rage and doom.

Season 7: “Millennium” (Nov 28, 1999)

Season Seven also ran heavy on lighthearted oddities, but it did offer darker outings on occasion, especially when Carter leveraged The X-Files to tie up loose threads from his prematurely cancelled Millennium. Mulder and Scully call upon that show’s tortured hero, Frank Black (the wry and lugubrious Lance Henriksen), to help them thwart a small cult of FBI agents hellbent on bringing about the apocalypse by turning themselves into zombies. (Hey, it makes sense when you watch it – mostly!) The undead are depicted with moody flair, keeping goofiness to a minimum, and the satisfying climax offers us a glimpse of a monster-fighting trio that could have been. Meanwhile, for fans who are adamant anti-shippers of Mulder and Scully, this episode is the season’s scariest for an entirely different reason.

Season 8: “Roadrunners” (Nov 26, 2000)

With David Duchovny absent from half of Season Eight. Terminator 2’s Robert Patrick was introduced as Scully’s new partner, the stoic and steely-eyed John Doggett, and Scully became the unequivocal narrative center of The X-Files. The writers returned to the show’s darker roots as a way to level-set against the seismic changes. “Roadrunners” is the most stellar beneficiary of these shifts in cast and tone. Unable to fully warm to her new partner, Scully ventures alone into a secluded village to investigate the whereabouts of a missing tourist and realizes something is ever so off about the townspeople. The episode features the mounting social/psychological dread of The Wicker Man, coupled with the disgusting body horror of Alien, and Anderson discovers new shades of grief and resilience in Scully during this flawed yet compelling post-Mulder era.

Season 9: “Daemonicus” (Dec 2, 2001)

With Duchovny fully departed from the cast, the final season of the show’s original run saw Doggett paired with a new partner Monica Reyes (the effervescent Annabeth Gish), with Scully downgraded to a mere consultant for her X-Files comrades. Meanwhile, the writers continued to favor grislier stories such as “Daemonicus,” about a mental patient who may be wielding demonic forces against our trio of heroes. Director Frank Spotnitz goes heavy on the stylistic portents of doom to great effect, employing shots of roiling clouds and sound design laden with eerie whispers to conjure a world besieged by inescapable evil. Even the editing team gets in on the fun, offering up unusual scene transitions to underscore the episode’s mysterious boardgame motif. The episode’s true horror highlight: a projectile vomit scene that lasts for forty-some-odd seconds. Somewhere William Friedkin is saying, “That’ll do, effects team. That’ll do.”