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Very, very soon, you're going to see a whole lot of Pennywise the Dancing Clown here at Popverse, and not just because the Andy Muschietti-created IT: Welcome to Derry is coming to HBO. Even before that, you'll be getting your fill of Stephen King's most sinister of villains as the IT prequel series heads to new York Comic Con 2025, where you can bet your last red balloon Popverse will be covering it.

In preparation for that, though, I thought we might wind the clocks back a bit to this summer, and to a different comic con the entire way across the country. See, I have actually already seen the first ten minutes of the upcoming fright fest at San Diego Comic Con, during a panel hosted by director Andy and producer Barbara Muschietti themselves. And as we approached what is sure to be a new golden era for Bill Skarsgård's smiling psycho, I thought - 'Hey, why not share what I know with my lovely Popverse readers?'

That's exactly what follows, and as I'm sure I don't need to tell you, that means this piece will contain some mild spoilers (very mild, even - this is only ten minutes, remember). So go ahead and read this at your own risk.

Spoilers ahead for IT: Welcome to Derry.

Derry might not care about its missing kids, but you will

In the opening moments of IT: Welcome to Derry's first episode, we are treated to the musical number 'Ya Got Trouble,' from 1962's The Music Man. There's obviously a darker connotation to the song here than we get in that old Technicolor film, and as the camera pans out, we find that we are watching the movie alongside a Matthew Clemments, a young boy who, it turns out, has not paid for his ticket. Matthew is chased out of the movie theater and into the streets of '60s Derry, Maine, but not before getting some assistance from the theater's projector, Hank, and his daughter, Ronnie.

As Matthew escapes the theater (clinging to a red candy pacifier - that'll be important later), we come to find that it's winter outside. Needing someplace warm (as well as a larger escape - we see from the boy's black eye that he comes from an abusive household), the boy hitches a ride along the road. Just as we're starting to get nervous that the elements are going to take their toll on this poor kid, a traditional American family pulls up beside him and, in a moment of apparent kindness, offers him a ride. The family consists of a father, his pregnant wife, their teenage daughter, and their spelling-obsessed son, maybe eight years old.

When the family asks where the boy wants to go, Matthew responds, "Anywhere but Derry."

A new era in television horror is (shudder) born

Of course, this is a horror program we're watching, so you should have no illusions that this kid is safe because he's gotten in the car. And if you did, they'd start to disappear when the family starts acting stranger and stranger, more and more sinister by the moment. Their young son keeps spelling out awful things (D-E-C-P-I-T-A-T-E-D, P-E-S-T-I-L-E-N-T), the parents laugh explicitly about their young daughter's promiscuity, and the daughter herself begins eating a lunch she's paced with her: raw liver. As if things aren't awful enough, our heroic moviegoing protagonist notices that the car isn't pulling away from Derry - it's heading back in.

But here's where things really get messed up. In an effort to escape the car, Matthew grabs the steering wheel from the family's father, causing the car to lurch and the man's wife to hit her pregnant belly against the dashboard, hard. At first apologizing, the moviegoer then watches in silent horror as blood gushes out of the woman, followed by something inhuman that at last springs from between her legs. The thing takes a moment to recover from its grotesque entrance into existence, then leaps from the floor of the car directly at our poor would-be-escapee.

From an outside view, we see the stopped car's window painted, suddenly, with a spray of blood. A small object explodes from the window a second later - it's the kid's red candy pacifier. But as it goes from out of the car and down, off the bridge where the car is parked, we can't help but feel it gives off all the appearance of a balloon.

Is Pennywise in the first ten minutes of IT: Welcome to Derry?

Before I leave you, I wanted to take a moment and address the question you were probably hoping to have answered by this point - is Pennywise in the Welcome to Derry intro? The answer to that is... well, complicated. It's clear that this sinister family is a manifestation of IT, the evil that lurks under Derry and feeds on the town's children. But those who were hoping to see the shape that IT most often takes - that is, Skarsgård's Pennywise - are going to be disappointing. There's no clown here.

Not yet, anyway.

IT: Welcome to Derry premieres on HBO Max October 26. 

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.