‘Welcome to Derry’s’ Lack of Pennywise Is Becoming a Real Issue

I love Freddy Krueger. Not in like a “we’re friends” way, but in a “that scary guy’s movies are pretty fun” way. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare are two of my favorite horror films. It’s not just the mood and atmosphere and gnarly kills, it’s the powers. Krueger can enter people’s minds when they’re sleeping and manipulate their dreams. It’s rad, and sometimes it can happen when the person isn’t even realizing it.

This confusion can lead to someone who thinks that they are awake suddenly realizing that not only are they asleep, but that they’re being tortured by the Springwood Slasher himself. Some instances are more obvious than others, with characters speaking in slowed speech or the atmosphere suddenly feeling more dream-like. Others haven’t even required the party to be sleeping, as was the case with a certain babysitter from New Nightmare.

Despite the exceptions, Krueger’s powers have stayed relatively consistent. His skills include making people think that they are dealing with some kind of extreme physical ailment, which he then pushes to the extremes and either does away with them himself or makes them have an… accident. A popular instance of this that comes to mind involves a character in Nightmare 3 being turned into a marionette puppet via his veins and organs, only to be “cut loose” and fall to his demise. However, we as the audience see that his guts were never really pulled from his body.

It’s a thrilling sequence, and something I was very much reminded of in this week’s episode of IT: Welcome to Derry. It makes sense because Pennywise the Clown has pretty similar powers to ole Freddy Krueger. Andy Muschietti makes the comparison even more apparent by including a poster and marquee listing for Nightmare on Elm Street 5 in his first IT film. It’s there, and I get it, but the scene in question on this week’s new Derry felt different.

In the show, we see the character of Marge Truman attempting to warn her friend, Lily Bainbridge, that she’s about to fall victim to what seems like a Carrie-like scenario (which Marge had a hand in orchestrating). As she’s about to fess up, she begins to feel a pain in her eyes. She quickly discovers that they have been invaded by some sort of worm, which makes them turn large and colorful to make her easy prey for a bird, as evidenced by a video Marge is grossed out by in class earlier in the episode.

Pennywise’s powers are similar to Freddy Krueger’s, albeit a bit more extreme (and immense). While Krueger has undoubtedly influenced the town he occupies in different films, he doesn’t usually have control over them or their residents. He famously tries to use the lead character of Nightmare on Elm Street 2 as a vessel through which he can commit his crimes, but it’s a little half-baked and short-lived. Meanwhile, Pennywise has the town of Derry firmly under one of its spidery fingers.

Like Krueger, Pennywise can make people’s fears come to life, just not in a dreamscape. The creature can also transform into other entities and create “illusions” that can cause harm. However, ITs motivations are food. So, more often than not, it’s feasting (at least partially) on its victims. What it doesn’t usually do is create scenarios so horrific that it forces its victim to enact self-harm (I’ll get to Stan in a moment), which is what happened with poor Marge.

First and foremost, I enjoyed this scene. The scarier, monster-heavy moments have been the best part of the show so far, even if the creatures often have similarly long limbs. But this, along with a flashback later in the episode, was genuinely terrifying. Marge frantically tries to remove the creatures from her eyes and settles for trying to saw her eyeballs off, which half works. Her face hits the saw, and she loses one of her eyes in the ensuing damage, but the bulbous monstrosities emerging from her face were never really there.

The whole ordeal is very effective and leaves poor Lily in a position that makes it appear that she’s the one who caused Marge such pain and may get her sent back to the insane asylum (where she is maybe friends with a ghost?). Again, very frightening, but didn’t feel much like a Pennywise attack. Some of the tricks were there. It was playing with her mind. But the extent to which IT was scaring her and causing her to self-mutilate did not feel like a method out of its usual playbook. Will the Clown sit back and watch others harm each other? Yes. Watching people hurt themselves? Not so much.

Obviously, a big exception to this could be Stanley Uris. Stan is a member of the Loser’s Club (who apparently has a relative that was killed by the monster) and, instead of returning to face Pennywise one last time, he chooses to permanently remove himself from the playing field. But that is done more out of fear, both of the creature and that Stan would be vulnerable to its powers. It could also be argued that it worked against Pennywise’s plan, giving him one less person to intimidate. All things serve the beam.

With Marge, there’s also a missing isolation. Part of what makes attacks by Pennywise so frightening is that they usually happen when a character is alone. In the case of the Losers Club, there is legitimate power in their numbers (lucky seven). Outside of that crew, we often get to see someone separated, intentionally or otherwise, only to have their worst fears come to life and destroy them. IT then devours them (or saves them for later), and most victims are just written off as another of Derry’s many missing kids. That dismissive response allows the town to keep on keeping on and prevents Pennywise’s meal ticket from expiring. Such an attack opens even opens the season.

While not a major change, having this attack happen out in the open as a way to potentially frame Lily is another aspect of the story that Derry mixes to fit its own needs. That’d be easier to accept if it felt like the show was telling its own story, but it can’t help reminding us of the source material or the movies that preceded it. The movies should be referenced, as what we’re watching clearly takes place in their world, but even the show has moments where it changes what has already been established in those films, like most of what we’ve learned about the Native American population in Derry this season.

The one element that may make this all work better would be Pennywise. The clown has yet to appear on the show, to the point where I’m genuinely curious if Bill Skarsgard agreed to return after most of the season had already been shot. Another similarity between Pennywise and Freddy Krueger is that they like torturing their prey. That element is sorely missing from this show. Krueger is all over his films, as is Pennywise. This series has been IT without IT, and that’s starting to wear thin, especially when we know IT’s coming.

Marge is 12 at most, and no 12-year-old would think “my eyes might explode, I should cut them off with a saw.” That just ain’t gonna happen. But a “friendly” figure or teacher with a toothy grin and cleverly placed orange-red pom poms, encouraging her to do it? That I buy. Then we could at least tie these powers to the being directly. As long as the show keeps making changes to Pennywise without the clown really being there to own them, it may as well be Freddy Krueger.