The kids of Derry just rang the wrong doorbell… and now Pennywise’s balloon is floating straight toward your childhood nightmares. 🥳🩸

Episode 5’s “Neighborhood” trailer drops the hammer: Neighborhood watch turns into a block party from hell, with leper-skinned horrors scratching at picket fences and a little girl’s tea party ending in red punch. Bill Skarsgård’s grin widens at 1:28—those teeth? They’ll chew your sleep away.

HBO knows we’re hooked. But that final sewer gurgle? It’s calling your name. Stream the trailer NOW on Max before the block reports it. Details below. Which Derry door would YOU knock on? Spill before IT answers 👇😱

Forget apple pie and white picket fences—HBO just flipped Derry’s idyllic ’60s suburbs into a slaughterhouse of floating balloons and festering fears with the first trailer for Episode 5 of IT: Welcome to Derry, titled “Neighborhood.” The 1:58 clip, dropped Wednesday afternoon on Max and HBO’s socials, yanks viewers deeper into Stephen King’s nightmare town, where a block party spirals into a blood-soaked blockaded siege and Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise lurks behind every cul-de-sac shadow, his ruffled collar stained with the innocence of the damned. Quick cuts of neighborhood kids pedaling bikes into storm drains, mothers clutching pitchforks at PTA meetings gone demonic, and a leper’s hand oozing through a screen door have fans barricading their doors already. “Fear isn’t in the dark,” whispers Taylour Paige’s haunted homemaker in the opener. “It’s in the welcome mat.” By the close, with Pennywise’s giggle echoing from a storm cellar as red lightning cracks the sky, it’s clear: Derry’s not a town—it’s a trap.

The trailer, teased during a virtual fan Q&A with showrunner Andy Muschietti, exploded to 18 million views in six hours, crashing Max’s app and catapulting #WelcomeToDerry back to X’s top trends with 2.1 million mentions. “That tea party scene? My inner child just got eaten alive,” one viral post from a former Loser wailed, her reaction reel racking 89K likes amid a deluge of “IT’S IN THE HOUSE” memes splicing suburban bliss with Poltergeist panic. It’s the first peek since Episode 4’s November 16 gut-punch—where Chris Chalk’s Dick Hallorann faced tribal interrogations in a Derry jail cell that bled shadows—ramping the dread from isolated hauntings to full-block Armageddon. Benjamin Wallfisch’s score, returning from the 2017 and 2019 films, twists ’60s doo-wop into dirges that claw at the eardrums, while practical effects from the IT legacy team (think melting faces via silicone prosthetics) ensure the gore feels as tactile as a clown’s greasepaint grip.

Welcome to Derry, the HBO prequel that clawed its way to 5.7 million U.S. viewers in its first three days (third-biggest debut behind House of the Dragon and The Last of Us), premiered October 26 as an eight-episode origin tale set in 1962 Derry, Maine—27 years before the Losers’ Club first floated. Developed by Muschietti siblings and Jason Fuchs (with Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane as co-showrunners), the series greenlit in 2023 after a 2022 HBO Max pitch, expands King’s 1,100-page opus into TV’s most bingeable boogeyman. Episode 1’s missing-boy hook pulled in critics’ praise (78% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, buoyed by Skarsgård’s “menacing minimalism”), while Episode 2’s Halloween early drop (October 31) spiked streams 40%. By Episode 4, viewership hit 4.2 million weekly, overtaking Weapons (Zach Cregger’s 2025 horror darling) on Max charts and fueling spin-off buzz: a Neibolt Street standalone teased in post-credits. The finale looms December 14, but Muschietti’s already plotting Season 2—”Deeper into the Ritual of Chüd,” he coyly told Variety last week. Budget? A cool $120 million for Season 1, funneled into Hamilton, Ontario sets mimicking ’60s Maine rot, with Skarsgård exec-producing alongside Warner Bros. vets Roy Lee and Dan Lin.

For Muggle Mainers (or those who skipped the sewer since 2019’s $473 million haul), IT lore roots in King’s 1986 novel: An ancient entity (the Deadlights, aka Pennywise) cycles every 27 years, feasting on kids’ terror in Derry—a mill-town curse tied to Native American rituals and industrial blood. The films, grossing $1.1 billion combined under Muschietti’s lens, split the tale into ’89 childhood (Jaeden Martell as Bill) and ’17 adulthood (James McAvoy stepping in). Welcome to Derry backtracks to the entity’s early whispers: A family relocates amid vanishings, unearthing town elders’ pacts with the shape-shifter. Cast? A killer ensemble: Jovan Adepo as a Vietnam-traumatized vet sniffing the supernatural, Paige as his chain-smoking wife unraveling PTA secrets, Adepo’s squad including Stephen Rider’s chain-gang survivor and James Remar’s grizzled sheriff. Young Derry denizens—Clara Stack’s pigtailed psychic, a bullied dreamer (rumored Stranger Things alum)—mirror the Losers without copying, their clubhouse chats laced with civil rights-era grit. Skarsgård’s Pennywise? Subtler here—no full clown till mid-season, per leaks—but his Episode 5 glimpses (a balloon in a baby carriage, a giggle from the milkman) have purists purring: “It’s the buildup that bites,” one X thread (45K views) gushed.

The “Neighborhood” trailer doesn’t just tease; it terrorizes. Opens with sun-dappled lawns: Kids trade baseball cards on stoops, a station wagon hums home from the A&P. Then the rot sets in—drains gurgle black ichor, mailboxes sprout teeth, and a block watch patrol (Remar’s sheriff barking orders) stumbles on a “welcome” mat woven from missing posters that whispers names. Paige’s character hosts a Tupperware demo that devolves into a leper’s feast (prosthetic pus courtesy of The Thing vets), while Stack’s girl communes with sewer whispers, her doll’s eyes popping like grapes. The money frame? At 1:28, Skarsgård’s silhouette in the storm cellar door, ruffles fluttering like dead wings, as a chorus of child voices chants “We all float… in the neighborhood.” Fans are flaying it alive: Reddit’s r/StephenKing (1.2 million strong) zooms on a 0:52 Easter egg—a faded “Losers’ Club” graffiti under fresh paint—fueling “Bill’s dad cameo?” wars, while TikTok stitches mash the tea party with The Brady Bunch for ironic chills (one hit 3.2 million views). Diehards devour the fidelity: Muschietti’s nods to King’s macro—the town’s cyclical amnesia, industrial waste birthing the entity—while injecting ’60s freshness: Civil rights marches clashing with clown parades, Vietnam drafts feeding fear cycles. Backlash? A smattering gripes the “woke Derry” (diverse cast over pallid ’80s vibes), but Skarsgård’s clapback—”Fear doesn’t discriminate”—shut it down, echoing the 78% audience score.

Production horrors were as real as the script’s. Filmed in Hamilton’s foggy ravines (standing in for Derry’s Barrens), the shoot wrapped principal last spring amid Ontario blizzards that iced animatronic balloons mid-float. One night exterior for Episode 5’s block siege? A prop rain machine burst, flooding a cul-de-sac set and nearly drowning Adepo’s trailer—crew dubbed it “IT’s revenge.” Paige, channeling Zola intensity, shadowed ’60s housewives for authenticity, emerging from a 12-hour makeup session as “the mom who sees dead kids in her Jell-O.” Skarsgård, fresh off The Crow remake, spent weeks in motion-capture greasepaint, his voice modulator glitching into real echoes that spooked grips off-set. Wallfisch’s soundtrack Volume 1 (Episodes 1-2, dropped November 2) topped horror charts; Volume 2, teased for post-Episode 5, promises a “Float Symphony” with child choir howls. Fuchs’ scripts, per insiders, ballooned 20 pages from lore deep-dives—King consulted remotely, approving a “tribal origin” beat tying Pennywise to Wendigo myths. Budget overruns from VFX (ILM’s Deadlights swirls rivaling Dune‘s voids) hit $15 million, but HBO’s reaping: Episode 4’s 4.2 million viewers (up 12% from premiere) signal a $200 million franchise extender, with Muschietti eyeing a Losers bridge movie.

Beneath the jump scares, Welcome to Derry chews King’s parable: Fear as a communal cancer, innocence as the ultimate bait, and small-town secrets festering like untreated wounds. In Episode 5’s ‘hood horrors, it’s suburbia’s facade cracking—PTA politics masking pedophilic pacts, block parties birthing blood oaths—mirroring 2025’s echo chambers where dread devours discourse. As Muschietti told The Hollywood Reporter, “Pennywise isn’t the monster; Derry’s denial is.” With the trailer stinger—a child’s tricycle vanishing into the grate, balloon trailing like a noose—one dread floats supreme: The neighborhood watches back, and it’s always hungry.

Episode 5 hits HBO and Max Sunday, November 23 at 9 p.m. ET—lock your doors, Derry’s coming home. Will the block survive the siege, or will Pennywise crash the cul-de-sac cookout?