Though its release date hasn’t been officially revealed yet, Welcome to Derry is scheduled to release in 2025, and fans are hoping that the series will adapt and expand upon some elements of IT’s mythos. We previously discussed the Black Spot, its connection to IT, and its significance within the broader narrative of the novels and movies, and we also talked about the Ritual of Chüd, which is used to imprison Pennywise the Dancing Clown. However, there are many things that still aren’t answered, and fans are hoping that the show will shed some light on certain mysterious elements.
One such mystery is Derry’s adults, who have been idly watching as the horrors unfold, tragedies happen, and children go missing for decades on end. The fans of IT have always been wondering how that’s possible and how no one among the previous survivors ever thought to raise awareness to IT’s presence or to seek out the entity and destroy it once and for all. Instead, adults in Derry choose to maintain the status quo, and their complicity allows Pennywise to thrive on their fear and ignorance. But why is that so?
To learn this, we must first look at IT’s origins, its powers, and its connection to Derry to better understand how it affects adults, and makes them complicit. According to the lore, IT originated in an undiscovered void that contains and surrounds our and many other universes called the Macroverse. Other evidence from the lore suggests that IT was created by a completely separate omnipotent creator referred to as “the Other,” who also created Maturin the Turtle — the very creator of our universe.
It’s unknown how IT gained entry into our universe, but it arrived on Earth in a massive cataclysmic event. Judging by the crater seen in the movies, this is most likely an asteroid impact in North America. That location would eventually become Derry, Maine. Now, it’s quite obvious that IT is a predatory being that feasts on human flesh for both survival and satisfaction. From IT’s perspective, our emotions act like seasoning, as fear “salts the meat,” so it primarily goes after those it has made terrified of itself. It has a preference for children as prey, as they’re typically easier to scare.
IT’s awakening from hibernation usually follows a massive tragedy, like the Claude Heroux mass killings from the novels or the Kitchener Ironworks explosion. It then proceeds to feed for a year, during which a series of child disappearances and murders occur in Derry, before going back to sleep for another 27 years. Those disappearances or murders, regardless of how gruesome, seem to not get reported if they happen in the small town.
However, the lore from the novels also explains that Pennywise is also capable of low-level omnipotence, mind control, possession, and illusions. In fact, it’s believed that he has the same amount of power as Maturin the Turtle. These abilities allow him to affect the minds of Derry citizens to make them indifferent to all the tragedies, disappearances, and murders that take place. But the underlying effects are actually much worse than simply turning a blind eye to the stuff that’s happening.
The lore from the novels and movies reveals a cycle of trauma and abuse that affects multiple generations in Derry, who are part of the same poisonous cycle. Though IT feasts on flesh, what it truly sustains itself on is a lack of faith and hope, sprinkled with fear for a more “gourmet” experience. IT awakens, feeds, and goes back to sleep for another 27 years. Rinse and repeat. But, each cycle leaves survivors to breed the next generation of prey, and those survivors are often left with traumas stemming from IT’s previous feeding cycle.
These emotional traumas, often unexplained, result in harmful behavior in their adult lives. This then affects the new generation (children) and creates even more fear and trauma for It to exploit. This is quite evident in the case of Henry Bowers, whose father obviously abused the boy, leading to psychotic tendencies, which IT later provoked and used to manipulate Henry to kill his father and his friends and go after the Losers.
On top of the aforementioned abilities, IT also has the innate ability to affect people’s memories. When members of the Losers Club leave Derry as adults, they suppress their childhood traumas and forget about IT, and a similar thing happens to other adults. They forget and have become numb to the disappearances, violence, and tragedies around them, which allows IT to feed undisturbed for a year, and then go back to a state of dormancy.
In the end, IT is directly connected to Derry and affects the entire town. As long as the entity is well-fed and gets to rest, the town will remain relatively the same. However, after the Losers defeated IT, the psionic storm caused by the release of souls trapped within the deadlights caused widespread devastation in Derry, leaving a heavily damaged downtown area and several buildings that are either completely destroyed or heavily flooded in its wake. As a result, Derry’s economy plunged, and it became yet another “dead town” in the middle of Maine.
Welcome to Derry is now perfectly poised to adapt these elements of collective apathy onto the small screens, and it should definitely do that. Exploring why Derry’s residents stay complicit in their town’s darkness will definitely make the series even more terrifying. After all, the only thing scarier than a monster is the people who let it thrive on their own suffering.