The residents of Derry, Maine are visited by Pennywise every 27 years, and It: Welcome to Derry season 1 follows one of these brutal killing sprees in the early ’60s. The two-part IT movie further cemented Pennywise as an iconic horror movie villain, while It: Welcome To Derry exposed more of his dark beginnings.
Pennywise works as a mystery to his victims, making it all the more terrifying when they are confronted with his incredible power and seemingly unrelenting nature. However, the iconic clown persona that appears to George in the sewer in the first movie is just scratching the surface of the truth behind Pennywise.
From where this evil being came from to its terrifying true form, there are a lot of details to be explored in Pennywise’s origin story. This is evidenced in It: Welcome To Derry‘s Ingrid Kersh storyline, among its other subplots.
Where Pennywise Comes From
Pennywise Arrived On Earth Centuries Ago
Despite his iconic and unsettling appearance, Pennywise is not a clown but rather an ancient, evil being that is perhaps as old as the universe itself. IT comes from the void that contains the entirety of existence.
At some point, Pennywise left the Deadlights and traveled across the Macroverse, entering our universe. Pennywise arrived on Earth in a cataclysmic event millions of years ago. He landed in the section of what would become North America, specifically where the town of Derry, Maine, eventually comes to be built.
Pennywise slumbered beneath the Earth for millions of years, awaiting the arrival of humankind. When the town of Derry was built in 1715, IT awoke and began a cycle of feeding on the fears of the people of Derry and then resuming hibernation for cycles of 27 to 30 years.
Why Pennywise Eats Kids
How Has Pennywise Gone Unnoticed?
The clown in IT doesn’t technically eat kids — it consumes their fear, but the process is fatal. Pennywise/IT preys on the children of Derry because their fears are easier to manifest into a physical form and harvest.
King decided for IT to predominantly take the shape of Pennywise the Dancing Clown because he believes “clowns scare children more than anything else in the world.” IT influences the adults of Derry to passively ignore it and not interfere with his attacks on Derry’s children. However, he’s not above consuming adults when the mood strikes.
Pennywise isn’t just responsible for spates of missing children every 27-30 years though. As Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) discovered when he researched Derry’s history in the library, IT has been a part of the terror and death in Derry for centuries.
Pennywise was responsible for the explosion at the Kitchener Iron Works that killed 108 people, including 88 children. He also contributed to the Black Spot massacre when It: Welcome to Derry‘s Hank Grogan was accused of killing Pennywise ate.
IT can also be awakened by an act of violence on top of Pennywise’s 27-30 year cycle. The 1986 Stephen King’s IT novel begins with a boy named Dorcey Corcoran being beaten to death by his stepfather, Richard Macklin, in 1957.
This awakens Pennywise. Pennywise primary goal is terrifying and subsequently consuming children, but he also simply relishes and causes violence, mayhem, and general carnage.
What Is Pennywise’s True Form?
Pennywise Takes Multiple Forms Over The Course Of The Movie
IT takes many other shapes, such as a homeless leper chasing Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer) and the woman in the painting that terrifies Stan (Wyatt Oleff). In the novel, IT takes on even more shapes, like a giant spider and several famous monsters the producers of IT don’t have the cinematic rights to.
These included Dracula, the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein’s Monster, the shark from Jaws, and Rodan. In the original Stephen King novel IT, Billy (Jaeden Lieberher) glimpsed Pennywises’s true form in the Deadlights for a moment, and he described it as an endless, crawling, hairy creature made of orange light.
Though IT likes to manifest itself as a male clown named Pennywise, in the novel, IT also takes the form of an enormous female spider. In IT: Chapter 2, Richie (played by Bill Hader) also glimpses Pennywise’s true form at the film’s climax. In IT Chapter 2, Pennywise is shown as a trio of glowing lights swimming among infinite walls of what appears to be red-hot flesh.
The experience is enough to cause Richie’s eyes to roll back in his skull, and viewing the Deadlights nearly kills him. This was a great direction for the movie adaptation to take, since IT/Pennywise is supposed to be a cosmic entity and godlike presence in King’s wider fictional canon.
Whether Pennywise is more powerful than The Turtle isn’t known. However, the fact it’s debatable in the context of Maturin being one of the entities holding King’s cross-title fictional reality together is a testament to Pennywise being truly powerful.
IT can project itself into photographs like the slideshow of Billy’s family the Losers watched in Billy’s garage and can appear and disappear at will. This last power is demonstrated when he shows up in the woods to watch when Mike is being attacked by Henry Bowers and his gang of thugs.
Pennywise’s most lethal power is the ability to manipulate how people perceive reality, which is how IT got away with centuries of violence. This power is why Alvin Marsh (Stephen Bogaert), the abusive father of Beverly (Sophia Lillis), couldn’t see that their entire bathroom was covered in blood after IT attacked Beverly.
IT is able to regenerate himself, as he did when Beverly speared Pennywise through his head, but only up to a point. This is diminished if his attacker isn’t afraid. After the amount of physical damage he took from the emboldened Losers, Pennywise had to retreat to the bowels beneath Derry to go back to slumber and regenerate for 27 years.
Why It Took Over Bob Gray’s Pennywise Form
Its Clown Form Was Stolen From A Human Victim
In It: Welcome to Derry‘s Ingrid Kersh story, the show revealed that Pennywise the Dancing Clown himself, real name Bob Gray, was another victim of It before he became the monster’s preferred form. A widowed circus performer, he worked as a clown at a carnival near Derry in 1908.
Gray hoped to get his daughter Ingrid into the family business, and even allowed her to perform with her mother’s stage name, Periwinkle. However, because Bob Gray was beloved by children and had gained their trust as an entertainer, It targeted him, killed him, and assumed his identity as its default form.
It trasnformed into a lost child and asked Bob for help finding its mother in the woods outside the carnival. Since Bob was a kind man who would help out a child in need, the monster successfully ensnared and devoured him in episode 7, “The Black Spot.”
Everything It: Welcome To Derry Season 1 Has Revealed About Pennywise’s Backstory
The IT Prequel Revealed More of The Monster’s Backstory
The origins of Pennywise in IT and IT Chapter Two were changed significantly from Stephen King’s original 1986 novel. The origins of Pennywise in Stephen King’s IT novel were both quite ambiguous and, in many ways, incredibly complex, and It: Welcome to Derry honored King’s story by portraying the complex, changing form of Pennywise.
Stephen King’s version of Pennywise was a cosmic horror being that required a lot of explanation when it came to its history and backstory. Similarly, It: Welcome to Derry‘s monster is a being with a lengthy, varied history. When It appeared to Derry’s original Native inhabitants, it operated like a Wendigo.
When the monster returned in the 20th century, it took on the appearance of Pennywise the Dancing Clown to attract young victims after killing Bob Gray. The monster also stoked racial divisions in Derry as It feeds off pain, anger, sadness, and fear.
In the It movies, director Andy Muschietti’s version of the killer clown exists in a standalone story, with no connections to a wider horror cosmology like its on-page counterpart. However, in It: Welcome to Derry, the franchise figurehead successfully reintroduced Pennywise’s backstory.
What The It Movies & Prequel Show Changed About Pennywise From The Book
It: Welcome to Derry Brought Back The More Complex Ideas From King’s Novel
The 2017 IT and 2019 IT: Chapter 2 change a lot of details from the original Stephen King novel, especially when it comes to Pennywise. Pennywise takes many different forms in the novel. These were removed from the movie for licensing reasons, especially since some were characters like the shark from Jaws and Rodan from the Godzilla movies.
The methods Pennywise uses in the book vary slightly too, and his list of victims is larger. Books featuring Pennywise also make many allusions to Stephen King’s fictional universe, but, understandably, references to The Turtle are removed in IT and IT: Chapter 2.
However, It: Welcome to Derry not only reinstated many novel details, but the show even expanded on them. Through Dick Halloran’s use of the Shining, the prequel reveals that Pennywise has been trapped in Derry by the natives for generations using a cage made of various pillars that seemingly contain the entity.
These details explain why Pennywise never left Derry, and why its sphere of influence is limited to the town. Furthermore, It: Welcome to Derry‘s Bob Gray flashbacks explain exactly why the monster looks like a clown, even though It‘s titular villain is really an ageless evil entity.
