HBO Max has introduced us to a new series, It: Welcome To Derry, based on Stephen King’s famous novel and the two-part horror movies directed by Andrés Muschietti. Bill Skarsgard has returned to his role as the creepy clown Pennywise. The series also stars Jovan Adepo as Leroy Hanlon, Clara Stack as Lily Bainbridge, Mikkal Karim Fidler as Teddy Uris, and Jack Molloy Legault as Phil Malkin. The story is set years before the IT (2017) film, with Teddy Uris being Stanley Uris’ father. 

The episode begins with a movie being shown in the cinema. A young boy quickly escapes a guard after being caught sneaking into the movies. He’s walking out in the cold when a family pulls over, picking him up. The mother asks where he’s headed, and he tells them “anywhere but Derry.” He notices the daughter acting weird as she grabs some liver from a tub and begins sniffing it. The family continues to act strangely and starts to scare the boy. Everything happens quickly. The mother goes into labor with her infant when the boy accidentally hits her stomach after trying to escape the vehicle. She gives birth to a baby who turns out to be a creature with wings. The creature growls and flies inside the car, the family laughing, and the boy scared for his life. The creature then flies to the boy, killing him. 

It’s now four months later, in 1962. Leroy Hanlon and Russo are in the Air Force, stationed in Derry. The threat of nuclear war is commonplace during the Cold War era. 

A girl named Lilly goes to school and, as she walks to her locker, opens it, finds jars of pickles inside, with one falling out and collapsing on the floor. Her friend, Marge, comes over to check on her, and they begin to talk about their plans for the summer. Two boys their age, Teddy and Phil, talk about the airbase being held in the town. After school, while Phil is yapping about the airbase and his theories, Teddy is feeling down. The boy from the beginning of the episode, Matty, was their friend. Teddy thinks Matty ran away because his body was never found.

Lilly has a flashback of her and Matty. They talk about her dad, who worked at a jarring factory. She tells him that she left something inside the factory one day, and her dad went back to get it for her. He was killed in a freak accident while trying to fix a broken machine. 

After her flashback, she’s home in the bathroom, and she turns off the shower. She begins to hear Matty’s voice from the drain, and asks if he’s okay. She then tells him to come home, and he says, “He won’t let me.” Two bloody fingers poke out from the drain, and Lilly screams. 

The next day, at school, Lilly tells Marge about what happened last night. Marge doesn’t believe her, not knowing that Lilly and Matty were friends before he went missing. After school, Lilly shows up at the boys’ secret spot, waiting for them to get there. They’re surprised to see her. She tells them everything. Phil doesn’t believe her, but Teddy thinks otherwise, not sure whether to believe it or not. He already doesn’t believe that Matty is dead, so he thinks that anything is possible. 

During dinner, Teddy asks his dad if someone could get kidnapped and kept under the sewers. His father scorns him for forgetting that his ancestors survived the Holocaust and are too familiar with human torture, like skinning Jews to make lampshades. Later on that night, Teddy is reading a comic book when his bedside lamp flickers off he turns it back on to see the lamp shade become human skin with a face appearing. Scared, he kicks the lamp as it screams. He hides his face, and when he opens his eyes, it’s gone. 

The next morning, Teddy tells Phil and Lilly about his night. Phil begins to freak out, thinking he’ll be next. They all promise not to say anything to anyone, agreeing to work together on finding Matty. They go to the library and look at some old newspapers. They find one with Matty’s missing person report. They go to talk to Ronnie Grogan (Amanda Christine), who was the last person to see Matty. Ronnie doesn’t want to talk to them, telling them that the police were going to blame Matty’s disappearance on her dad, Hank (Stephen Rider). As they begin to walk away, Phil says something about sewers, which makes Ronnie turn to them. Ronnie has also heard voices coming from underground. 

At the basecamp, Leroy goes to bed. The blinds shake from the breeze coming from the window, so he closes it. As he turns around, a person stands behind him on the other side of the window. Leroy gets back in the bed, and the person stands above him. The two of them begin to fight, but the stranger is not alone. The two men attack Leroy, beating him up. Before they can kill him, Pauly comes to rescue. 

The kids go to the cinema, and Ronnie uses her keys to enter the building. While Teddy, Lilly, Phil, and his little sister, Susie, sit in the seats, Ronnie sets up the film for The Music Man. Lilly realizes the song from the movie is what she heard coming from the drainpipe in her bathroom. Then, Matty and the family that took him show up in the film. Lilly says his name, and he looks right at the camera, as if he can hear her. He begins to move toward the camera and tells them that he won’t come back. Suddenly, the monster baby flies out of the screen and attacks the kids. Ronnie gets locked inside the film room. Once she’s finally free, she runs down and tries to save them, realizing Lilly is the only one alive. They escape the theater, and Lilly realizes she’s still holding Susie’s hand. 

Overall, this was a very creepy episode. An amazing way to start the series, with the creature and the disappearance of Matty. It’s easy to tell that this is an IT project, with the goriness and creepiness. There are some questions: Is the creature an introduction to Pennywise? When will he show up? And what will happen now that Ronnie and Lilly are the only surviving two?

Rating: 10/10