I’ve been waiting for years now for us to return back to Derry so I could talk about what I think is the best character in horror. I’ve read the book 3 times, obsessed over all the intricacies in the movies and I was so hyped to see that we were getting a show centered around Derry back when it really transformed into a town.
These new images look great and throughout this video we’re gonna be going through them all to talk about what they tell us about the show. I’m also gonna be going over what we know about the series as well and there’s so much to talk about.
Now though it’s being listed as a full on origin story for Pennywise I don’t know if it will center solely around just his backstory as we know the series is going to be set in the late 50s/early 60s. Pennywise actually crash landed on earth millions of years ago and he landed in what would go onto become North America. Here he….or rather she sat waiting in hibernation. Yeah Pennywise or rather the creatures real face is a female and they’ve gone bloody woke. Nah I always mess up the gender when talking about her so to keep things simple I’m gonna just call Pennywise him if we’re referring to the clone as the creature fits the body of the form it takes.
Pennywise Timeline
What you do care about is the rough timeline of what happened to lead up to the events of the show which I wanna talk about first. Now IT lay dormant until people settled in the area and originally this land was inhabited by native Americans. Using their ancient techniques they managed to subdue the creature by carrying out a process known as the Ritual of Chud. This is something that the losers club adopted in Chapter 2 and in the book they defeated it using that whereas the films had them adopting cancel culture and basically becoming a live action twitter mob.
Either way IT’s greatest plan was that it allowed the town of Derry to be built up around it. This gave it a constant supply of food as visitors and settlers would constantly come by the area and it could prey on them and their children.
In the book it says that IT is Derry and Derry is IT and in discovering the origins of the town we’re going to be discovering the origins of Pennywise.
Anyway in 1715 it started its cycle after awakening and taking some of the children from the town. There’s a moment in Chapter 1 when Ben sits in the library where we see him looking up at a painting and there’s a woman placing a baby down a well. This was actually originally going to be a scene in the film in which we saw IT picking off children from the town and offering the mothers the option to live or die in the kids place.
Jump to 17-40 and we get it’s first real cycle in which it terrorises the town for three years. This was a bloodbath and during it three hundred settlers from Derry disappeared. During the first film we visit Bens room and see that he’s collected images from this and can catch Pennywise standing amongst the settlers in a crudely drawn image.
Now it then disappeared for roughly 29 years before emerging in 1769. From this point onwards the creature continued its cycle and it was responsible for several atrocities in the town. This included the Kitchener Ironworks explosion which we see Ben looking at images of in the Library during part 1. It also adopted the moniker of Bob Gray which we got a nod to in It Chapter 2 when Beverly visited Mrs Kersh.
Either way the cycle goes all the way up to 1957 which I’m guessing is when the show will take place. This was it’s 8th emergence and in the book it was one of the most brutal appearances of the clown.
Now interestingly the timeline in the book was set during this period and this was then carried across to the tv adaptation. Both of those have the kids growing up in the 50s so that they could be adults come 1986 when the older sections were set.
However the movie changed things up so that they could be adults in modern day and thus the films had the kids growing up during the 80s.
Both live action adaptations have done things differently to how they’re laid out in the source material with the 50s and 80s stuff being told side by side whereas it was laid out much neater when they adapted it.
However I think that we can kind of use the basis of the book to guess at what could happen in the 60s as they skipped over a lot of the murders to shorten things down to fit a film. In total there’s 17 deaths in just that part of the book which gives them lots of things to pull upon.
Welcome To Derry Photos
One thing I don’t think that the movies showed well is how lucky that the losers club actually was to survive Pennywise and in the book they get out of most encounters by just the skin of their teeth. They have some chapters where we see things from the point of view of a kid named Eddie Corcoran as he runs through the woods being chased by IT and just as he makes it to freedom he’s grabbed and pulled in. Reading stuff like that really sticks with you and I think that the series could easily have full episodes centered around just one child trying to evade the monster only to get taken at the end.
Now that takes us onto the images and we have a number of missing children’s posters which were spotted at the filming locations. These includes Danielle Van Helden and Peter Bodha. Neither of them were in the list of Pennywises’ victims however we do see some that could hint to what happens in the show. We have a police car in the streets and later on can see the office of the Chief Of Police. Though in the book he was called Andrew Radermacher there could be a reason why we get the different names in the show.
Radermacher himself was killed in a seemingly strange and violent storm and in order to fill the position the chief before him would’ve had to vacate it. I’m guessing that the series might take a strong focus on the police due to the missing posters and the cop car and sign. In Derry they were constantly looking out for why so many kids had up and vanished and chapter 2 centers solely around the death of Adrian Mellon which is told to us by a police officer who’d been put on the case. Adrian’s death was shown at the part of chapter 2 but they skipped over a lot of things that made that section of the book so creepy.
Witnesses saw a clown at the scene of the crime but fearing that it wouldn’t hold up in court they decided to never testify about it. Due to Pennywises powers he’s also able to psychically put a form of mild hypnosis over the town in which people arent as interested in the missing kids as they should be.
A video posted on TikTok by Mr. Will Wong took a tour of the sets and in it he also filmed the outside of the Derry police station so yeah they are giving a lot of focus to that. We know roughly what the series will be about but I thik we could at least explore this in the series and it would be great to see things from the perspective of the police. Now there’s also a Fremlin Dairy Van and a one for Melvin’s Deluxe Sliced Dill Pickles. Both of these really set the tone for the series and this continues when we see the sets themselves.
Now this series is being filmed in Port Hope Ontario but they’ve done a great job of transforming the town. We’ve got things like a modern appliance store advertising colour tvs and also a sign that says Zenith. This could be a nod to Stephen Kings book The Plant Zenith Rising though it could also be a reach.
On top of this there’s the Derry press, some Campbells soup tins in a window and another very interesting location.
We can see a Chinese restaurant called the Jade Orient which has links in with both the books and film. In them the banquet scene happens at the Jade Orient and htough the location is different we could be seeing the restaurants first store too.
We have the Derry Grill, The Derry Press, and also Second Hand Rose Antiques.
This could go onto become the antique store where Bill gets his bike back from and in Chapter 2 this was where we got the Stephen king cameo at.
Lastly we have a really haunting image with a car driving past a drain which has one of Penny-wise signatures coming out of it. Dangling from the drain is a red balloon which the character used to lure kids in with. It’s a really haunting image and we also got in the video a picture of a sign saying that this would be the home of the future Paul Bunyon monument. That was a big part of both the book and second film with it chasing Richie after Pennywise took its form.
Welcome To Derry Plot Synopsis
Now the plot synopsis says:
“Welcome to Derry” will take a look at a group of friends who are forced to take on their greatest fears when children begin to disappear at the hands of a murderous clown named Pennywise. According to Deadline, the series will portray the events leading up to 2017’s “It: Chapter One.”
So though I did weigh on the police I think it’s gonna definitely carry the aesthetic that made the films so popular and the book and mini series of course influenced shows like stranger things and so on.
The series is being over seen by Andy Muschietti who will direct several episodes. However Bill Skarsgard will not be returning as pennywise and yeah, kinda bummed out hearing that. However we know the cast will be made up of Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, James Remar and Chris Chalk. I think Remar would make a great policeman investigating stuff but let me know your thoughts below.
The series is set to release in 2024 and so far it hasn’t been held up by the writers strike. Guessing that they got the scripts to the point that they’re happy to start filming and I can’t wait to see the series next year.
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