Debuting at HBO and HBO MAX in October 2025, a brand new trailer for the PennyWise Prequel series It: Welcome to Derry Was revealed at San Diego Comic Con 2025 and it’s already one of the most scary things I’ve seen this year. The show will take us back to where it all started in the 1960s, when the city of Derry is haunted by evil and unaware of them, a killer clown that just happens to be responsible for all the missing children.
If you try to find out the full timeline, 2017 movie version of THE was set in 1988 with follow -up film It: Chapter two taking place 27 years later. Bill Skarsgård has played Pennywise in all three projects, and he is incredibly good in age if the fleeting prequel recordings are something to pass by. We know how his story ended, but its beginning is still shrouded in mysticism and that mystery is probably absolutely cruel.
We won’t see the losers club this time but that doesn’t mean It: Welcome to Derry Will be devoid of other Stephen King movie lore. In fact, I noticed an epic crossover in the new trailer, and if you missed it, be sure the sneaky Easter egg is staring you directly in the face.
It: Welcome to Derry’s new trailer nods to Stephen King’s most disturbing story of the time
Look at
Not satisfied with just scare us silly in the last few decades, King’s also enjoyed reducing us to tears. Shawshank -Release is one of the most famous examples of this, adapted to a movie in 1994 to explore the tape between two men imprisoned in Shawshank. Why is this relevant? Because 57 seconds into It: Welcome to Derry Trailer above, you will see a bunch of male prisoners aboard a bus reading ‘Shawshank State Prison’ along his Navy page.
It’s a flash-and-you-glip of that moment, but it’s also the kind that causes horror movie fans to gasp the moment they see it. We have no idea what role (if any) imprisoned could play in the new TV show, but from the way the trailer sets up to the bus, it can be more than just an Easter egg. Two of our new Juvenile PennyWise hunters encounter our bus-off prisoners in the Fear-King-Awe, with the murder clown’s signature red balloon flowing along a river bank nearby directly.
This could easily mean that Pennywise is a former Shawshank -except instead of making a movie from the 90s that could reduce you to tears just by thinking about it, he decided to hurt innocent children instead. Fact Pennywise’s back story is basically everything to play for maybe just be the most exciting part of It: Welcome to DerryClean because we simply have no bearing on what may come. What can be scared than fear of the unknown?
Will we see even more Stephen King Easter Eggs as the TV show starts broadcasting? Who knows. But thanks to this lush scene, I keep my eyes peeled as the armpower detective I was born to be.
