It: Welcome to Derry first look unveils skin-crawling glimpses of the town’s evil

The first footage from HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry, a prequel to Andy Muschietti’s pair of It films, has been unveiled during a private screening at the San Diego Comic-Con 2025, and it’s every bit as creepy as fans were worried (and excited) about. This chilling new tome, returning us to the massacred soul’s timeline seen in It (2017) and It: Chapter Two (2019), promises to provide a closer look at the town's blood-soaked history and the countless souls who paid for it before the Losers Club arrived on the scene.

The teaser offers a smutty, dread-soaked glance at 1960s Derry, Maine, and stirs whispers of psychological horror into the already familiar mythology. As Screen Rant reported from inside the SDCC panel, the footage, which was introduced by producer/writer Nick Watson and EP Max Borenstein, wasn’t shy about what it contained, as grotesque, bizarre, and emotionally taxing, the footage seemed to confirm what King fans have long suspected: It: Welcome to Derry isn’t your run-of-the-mill prequel… It’s a trip to the fourth circle of Hell.

Welcome to Derry teaser is unsettling, surreal, and absolutely horrifying

The trailer doesn’t seem like much at first: a boy hitchhiking through the snow, a child who was thrown out of a movie theatre. But in classic Derry style, the horror comes seeping through slowly. A family pulls over and stops to give him a ride, and initially, they appear to be the safe escape from his worst fears. But strange things start happening. Something is wriggling under the skin of the mother-to-be. And the boy in the rear seat has bright, Pennywise-ish eyes. And then, chaos. The family turns its back on the boy, shouting "O-U-T!" together as a demonic-winged figure shoots out of the mother and makes a killing attack. All that remains is the boy’s pacifier, floating down an icy river.

The sneak peek’s last image is eerie, even unsettling: the pacifier drifting through the water and going below the ice as chilling text “It: Welcome to Derry” appears. The teaser looks as though it’s going to lean even harder into body horror and grotesque horror than the films did, crossing over into something akin to the territory of Guillermo del Toro with the monstrous “baby” and the fever-dream pacing. What’s especially unsettling about the scene is the way it preys on the idea of false safety: the warmth of the car, the warmth of the family, the motherly figure, before twisting each into a font of horror. Here is Derry in a nutshell: It is not enough for evil to lurk in the sewers; it grins at you from behind the wheel.

What Welcome to Derry could explore from the Black Spot to Pennywise’s dark legacy

It: Welcome to Derry is primarily adapted from the interlude chapters of Stephen King’s novel, in which adult Mike Hanlon interviews townspeople about their encounters with It. Though the It movies notoriously raced past a lot of these harrowing mini-histories, Welcome to Derry intends to fill us in. One thread that we know for sure gets spun is the burning of the Black Spot, a Black people nightclub for Black patrons, that was burned down by hate mongers, the triggering awful event of one of It’s cycles of awakening.

According to Muschietti, It: Welcome to Derry is anchored in the timeline of the films, not the novel, meaning the Black Spot incident occurs in 1962. The showrunners have said this isn’t just a flashpoint, it’s the narrative spine. Around it will spin countless stories of horror, bigotry, and fear, all feeding Pennywise’s centuries-long reign of terror.

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A previously released trailer offered our first peek at the sewer-dwelling demon’s return. Bill Skarsgård’s unforgettable laugh rings out from the halls as he gradually emerges from the shadows, a reminder that the presence of this clown, no less sinister in this second chapter, is just as potent as it once was. Not much has been officially announced about the characters, but the series will focus on a new generation of Derry residents.

Nine episodes are coming, and an October release is on the horizon, and Welcome to Derry seems like more than an expansion; it's a terrifying celebration of the untold stories that would go on to define the town forever. If the teaser is any indication, we are in for an origin story drenched in blood, terror, and the deeply twisted belief that in Derry, no one is truly ever safe.

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