The premiere of It: Welcome to Derry shattered audience expectations with a gruesome ‘Red Wedding’-style massacre and a terrifying mutant baby, signaling that no character is safe and resetting the rules for horror in Stephen King’s iconic town.
Stephen King’s cursed town of Derry, Maine, has once again opened its gates to terror, but the prequel series It: Welcome to Derry wasted no time proving it’s playing by its own brutal rules. Unveiling on October 26, 2025, the HBO series immediately plunged viewers into a double dose of horror, featuring a disturbing mutant baby birth and a shocking massacre that left audiences reeling and creators declaring it their “Red Wedding” moment.
The ‘Red Wedding’ Moment: Shattering Expectations
Fans familiar with the Stephen King lore, or the recent Andy Muschietti-directed films, expected a slow build to the terror. Instead, It: Welcome to Derry delivered an immediate, devastating blow. Four years after a disturbing cold open, five child actors—Lilly (Clara Stack), Ronnie (Amanda Christine), Phil (Jack Molloy Legault), Teddy (Mikkal Karim-Fidler), and Susie (Matilda Legault)—are introduced, giving the impression they would form a new “Losers’ Club.” Their mission to find missing classmate Matty (Miles Ekhardt) leads them to the Capitol Theater, where a screening of The Music Man turns into a bloodbath.
A flying devil baby erupts from the screen, devouring most of the children, leaving only Lilly and Ronnie alive. Co-creator Barbara Muschietti, who also serves as executive producer alongside her brother Andy, remarked to Entertainment Weekly, “It’s our red wedding.” This comparison to the infamous Game of Thrones scene perfectly encapsulates the premiere’s intention: to shock and establish that no character, no matter how seemingly central, is safe.
Director Andy Muschietti elaborated on this strategic choice, stating, “This is strategically a devastating event to set the audience into that sense of ‘nothing is safe in this world.’ We kind of trick the audience into thinking that these are the new losers. Well, guess what? I guess they’re all dead.” This immediate subversion was a deliberate move, conceived in a secret writer’s room and sprung as a surprise on HBO executives during the season pitch. The network’s enthusiastic reception was a “huge relief,” as Barbara Muschietti noted, as they had prepared for a fight to push the horror boundaries, only to find HBO embracing it.
The Terrifying Origin: A Mutant Baby Born of Fear
The horrors began even before the Capitol Theater massacre. The series’ cold open in 1962 introduced Matty, a troubled young boy attempting to hitchhike out of Derry. He finds himself trapped with a seemingly innocuous white Christian family, who soon transform into instruments of terror. The pregnant mother gives birth to a deformed, fetal infant—a two-headed, bat-winged demon that savagely attacks Matty.
This unsettling creature was a brainchild of Andy Muschietti, deeply rooted in the historical fears of the era. Set in 1962, a time marked by the Cuban Missile Crisis, post-World War II sentiments, and the Cold War, the show pays meticulous attention to prevailing anxieties. Andy Muschietti explained to TV Insider that the inspiration stemmed from the “pretty widespread panic of nuclear attacks and the effects of radiation and mutations in childbirth.” He clarified that the entity’s first form on the series isn’t a demon baby, but “a mutant baby that [is] malformed by radiation,” directly linking it to the collective societal fears of the time.
Behind the Gore: Blending Practical and Digital Effects
Bringing these gruesome visions to life required a seamless blend of old-school practical effects and modern visual wizardry. Daryl Sawchuk, the series’ VFX Supervisor, and Sean Sansom, Head of the Prosthetics Department (who also worked on the previous It films), detailed the intricate process in an exclusive conversation with Variety. Their shared philosophy was to maximize practical elements, ensuring a tangible, visceral horror that honored traditional techniques.
For the car birthing scene, the team employed ingenious practical solutions. The actress portraying the mother knelt upright in the car, with a full fake body from the collarbone down, manipulated by rods from underneath the car floor. This allowed for the realistic depiction of blood and guts oozing out. Sansom confirmed that they even had two practical baby puppets: one with outspread arms for flying reference, and another “all folded up in the fetal position” specifically for the birthing scene, pushed out of the prosthetic belly.
The collaboration extended to other scenes as well. For the child actors’ reactions to Pennywise’s forms, a giant monster baby head was brought to set, and Andy Muschietti himself would make distorted baby noises to immerse the young cast. Actors like Clara Stack (Lilly) and Amanda Christine (Ronnie) recounted the filming of the movie theater sequence as “so much fun” and a “big shocker,” highlighting the effectiveness of these practical tools in eliciting authentic performances.
Setting the Stage for a New Era of Horror
The brutal premiere served a critical purpose: to immediately communicate to the audience that It: Welcome to Derry is not just a retread of familiar territory. Co-showrunner Jason Fuchs explained, “The entire story of the season is set in motion by what happens at the end of episode 1, this massacre of the Capitol Theater.” This devastating event will ripple through subsequent episodes, with “aftershocks” playing out in episode 2 and beyond.
The 1962 setting, a period largely unexplored in King’s original novel, grants the creators immense freedom. “Not all these characters are canon from the book,” Fuchs noted, allowing for genuinely “unexpected, exciting things.” This bold approach, as executive producer Brad Caleb Kane told TV Insider, was designed “to pull the rug out from under people right away to let them know you shouldn’t get too comfortable with anybody right away. Anything can happen. Anything will.” By defying audience expectations and embracing extreme horror from the outset, It: Welcome to Derry establishes itself as a truly unpredictable and terrifying journey into the dark heart of Stephen King’s most infamous town.
