This review of Welcome to Derry only covers the first 5 (out of 8) episodes that were sent out to reviewers. This review will be based on these five episodes, and I’ll also refrain from posting spoilers since a) I don’t know how it all ends and b) it will still be weeks until you’ll be able to see all episodes.

So, the scope of Welcome to Derry is to uncover the origin of the entity called Pennywise. We also know it as IT or as a clown from the book, movies, and miniseries we’ve seen and read, but where does it come from, and why does it look like a clown? My guess is that we’ll only get parts of the answers in the first season of Welcome to Derry, because we already know that the plan is to make two more seasons (not sure if they’ve been greenlit yet or not), and they will take place in 1935 (second season) and 1908 (third season). My guess is that IT was born (or created) in 1908 and that was when it all started. Just a guess on my part, but I believe the setup speaks for it being so. So it’s no surprise that this first season feels like they’re building up to how it begins and doing so by tracing IT’s steps backward from the ’60s.

Here we meet Dick Halloran, who we know from The Shining, and who plays a big part in the story here. We do get the story about The Black Spot, which we know from the book as the place where the Black members of the Air Force from the nearby military base go to unwind and get away from their white supremacist group. We also know The Black Spot gets burned to the ground. Now we get all the details about these characters, places, and events.

We also get to see how Mike Hanlon’s grandfather, Leroy Hanlon, moves to Derry with his wife Charlotte and son Will (Mike’s father), and how they struggle to fit into a town that isn’t all that welcoming to strangers. I do like that they trace everything backward from the characters we know to their ancestors, and we get an understanding of how they’re all connected with each other, Derry, and IT.

But, and there is always a but, right? We do get a bunch of kids, not a Losers Club but very close, and they start seeing things that the adults in Derry don’t, and it gets very similar to what happens in the movies we got back in 2017 and 2019. It’s almost like we get a rerun of the movies but with different characters in a different formation. It’s not the same, but it could turn into that if they’re not careful. At the same time, it is the story King is telling, IT returns every 27th year, and it’s only the kids who see him, so every 27th year there must be a group of kids who see him and probably fight him, since he hasn’t taken over. But it’s a thin line to walk on. On the one hand, it is necessary, but on the other it’s very easy to repeat the movies. So far, they do a great job with that balancing act, and I hope they stay on the right side for the entire eight episodes. And my guess is that it’ll be harder if we get two more seasons.

I feel good after seeing the first five episodes. My guess, though, is that they’ve been the launchpad for the remaining three that I expect will be scarier and more gruesome, and if I’m right, I’ll be a happy viewer.