It prequel welcomes you to Derry with full-length, Easter egg-filled trailer

A lot of Stephen King references float down here too.

By Emma Keates  |  September 23, 2025 | 4:47pm
Screenshot: HBO Max/YouTube
TV News It: Welcome To Derry
It prequel welcomes you to Derry with full-length, Easter egg-filled trailer

It: Welcome To Derry somehow found a way to make its ridiculously haunted setting even more hellish. The poor residents of Derry, Maine already had to deal with an interdimensional, sewer-dwelling clown popping up every 27 years. From the new trailer for HBO’s prequel series, however, it appears they’ll also have to deal with the mist from The Mist and, for some especially unlucky citizens, whatever human rights abuses are happening within the walls of the Shawshank State Prison. A young version of Dick Hallorann from The Shining even makes an appearance (played in the HBO show by Chris Chalk), which opens up a whole new can of worms. At some point, you should probably just move.

Unfortunately, the Hanlons, Welcome To Derry‘s central family, have just moved to the nightmarish town instead of away from it. “Eight years of living on base, I just think my missus is ready for a little taste of normal,” Leroy (Jovan Adepo) says of his wife (Taylour Paige) upon his arrival in town. There’s obviously none of that in store. Past teasers have already covered the whole missing kids aspect of this story, but this one gets a lot freakier. In addition to the aforementioned King Easter eggs (plus a winky reference to the not-yet-built Paul Bunyan statue that would one day terrorize poor Richie Tozier in It Chapter Two), the new trailer also features floating, bloody children, terrifying, ghost-like creatures, something squelchy and horrifying involving pickles, and a closer look at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise himself.

We still don’t know exactly what the story will be (the logline just says the show “expands the vision established by filmmaker Andy Muschietti in the feature films It and It Chapter Two“), but one thing is clear: As in King’s original novel, a lot of horrific shit went down in Derry before the members of the Losers Club were even born. 

It: Welcome To Derry floats out of the sewers and onto HBO and HBO Max October 26. Check out the new trailer below:

 
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