HBO’s 8-Part ‘Stranger Things Meets Lovecraft’ Series Fixed An Iconic Franchise

Since IT: Welcome to Derry is effectively a blend of Stranger Things and the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft, the HBOMax series managed to redeem the flawed IT movies. Stephen King has written many books, but not all of them are universally loved by fans and critics. Dreamcatcher and The Tommyknockers are a pair of particularly infamous efforts that even the author himself isn’t sure about. However, 1986’s doorstopper IT is not only one of King’s most critically acclaimed books, but also one of his biggest mainstream hits.

IT’s sprawling, multi-generational story of outcast kids taking on a supernatural killer clown spawned an iconic TV miniseries in the 1990s and a two-part movie adaptation in the 2010s, with the latter becoming a billion-dollar franchise. As such, HBOMax’s prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry was inevitable, but what wasn’t quite so inevitable was the show’s unexpected critical success. Since 2017’s IT was set in the 1980s and 2019’s sequel IT: Chapter 2 wrapped up its story in the 2010s, IT: Welcome to Derry needed to take things back to the 1960s.

To offer a new spin on Pennywise’s reign of terror, IT: Welcome to Derry mixed the nostalgic small-town coming-of-age mystery seen in Stranger Things with a harsher, darker brand of horror. The show was more indebted to the writings of HP Lovecraft than it was to the movies of Amblin Entertainment, and this proved to be just what the series needed. While IT: Chapter 2 was a box office hit, the sequel was widely criticized for abandoning the scares of its predecessor in favor of character comedy. No one could accuse IT: Welcome to Derry of repeating this mistake.

HBOMax’s IT: Welcome to Derry Is A Scarier and More Intense Stranger Things

In its opening episode, IT: Welcome to Derry fooled viewers into thinking it was little more than a 60s-set spin on the Stranger Things premise, introducing a supernatural threat and a group of scrappy young kids who were ready to investigate this monster. However, IT: Welcome to Derry’s pilot instantly became an unforgettable outing when its jaw-dropping ending killed off all but two of the show’s ostensible main characters. When Pennywise brutally killed a trio of innocent children onscreen, it was clear that viewers had no idea where the show was going, and it was no Stranger Things clone.

Many of the shows that attempted to recreate the Stranger Things formula made sure to emulate the show’s lighter, sillier tone from season 3 onward. Both 2022’s Paper Girls and 2023’s Goosebumps revival borrowed various elements of the Stranger Things setup, but made sure to drop the explicit violence, bleak character backstories, and gory horror to make things more palatable for a larger audience. In contrast, even though IT: Welcome to Derry also focused on a group of unpopular, lovable kids banding together to take on an interdimensional monster in their small town, its approach was radically different.

Welcome To Derry Fixes The IT Franchise After A Disappointing Chapter 2

Image courtesy of Everett Collection

Around the same time that 2019’s goofier, more cartoonish Stranger Things season 3 was released, IT: Chapter 2 took the original movie’s intense scares and watered them down with much more character comedy and self-aware humor. This clashed badly with the sequel’s darkest scenes, such as IT: Chapter 2’s upsetting opening death, a homophobic lynching that jarred with the absurd sight of a leper puking in Eddy’s face later in IT: Chapter 2’s tonally inconsistent story.

Although IT: Chapter 2 had its moments, the movie’s vibe was all over the place, resulting in a sequel that felt too dark in some scenes and too comedic in others. The result was a disappointing conclusion for the franchise, especially when Pennywise’s much-vaunted death scene amounted to the Losers Club standing around and berating the killer clown until he withered into nothing.

In contrast, IT: Welcome to Derry’s brutality and bleakness made the show better. In a sea of shows that hoped to copy Stranger Things, the HBOMax series was one of the only ones that leaned into cosmic horror and made its story truly terrifying. Since readers love the camaraderie between the Losers Club so much, it can be easy to forget that their friendship is forged through a lot of horrifying trauma in both the novel and its 2017 movie adaptation.

Admittedly, 2017’s IT still toned down some of the novel’s most shocking moments to retain an R-rating, but the horrific bullying that Henry Bowers inflicts on the kids, along with Beverly’s abuse by her father, makes the movie feel uncompromising in its darkness. IT: Welcome to Derry takes this approach and doubles down, with the racism of Derry’s inhabitants, Pennywise’s nightmarish onscreen murder of numerous kids, and even the revelation of Ingrid Kersh’s IT: Welcome to Derry backstory coalescing to make the prequel feel genuinely sinister.

IT: Welcome to Derry’s Unique Setup Dodges The Biggest Stranger Things Problem

Of course, it isn’t hard for a TV show to have a good debut season, even if IT: Welcome to Derry did have two blockbuster movies to live up to. Everything from Lost to Stranger Things itself started out strong, before later outings saw their stories get derailed or their tones shift in much the same way that IT: Chapter 2 lost IT’s delicate balance of comedy and horror. Fortunately, IT: Welcome to Derry is already safeguarded against the biggest issue Stranger Things faced.

Viewers fell in love with the main characters of Stranger Things in season 1, so the show’s creators became understandably reticent about killing off main cast members as the series went on. By the time the finale aired, various characters in their mid-teens were played by actors in their mid-twenties, and it was clear that there were over a dozen characters that the show wouldn’t kill off in the final episodes.

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In contrast, Pennywise’s modus operandi means that every season of IT: Welcome to Derry is set 27 years apart. Thus, there will be no recurring cast members, and so, no fear of teen actors aging out of their roles. As such, IT: Welcome to Derry has already not only redeemed the IT movies, but also sidestepped one fundamental issue that helped sink the later seasons of Stranger Things.

Release Date

October 26, 2025

Network

HBO

Directors

Andy Muschietti