🚨 IT FANS, BRACE YOURSELVES: The Clown Is BACK… But This Time, He’s HUNGRIER THAN EVER! 😱🤡

Imagine Derry in 1962: Kids vanishing, shadows whispering ancient curses, and a red balloon floating toward your worst nightmare. What if Pennywise wasn’t just a monster… but the HUNGRY HEART of a cosmic evil that’s been devouring souls since the stars fell?

The Episode 5 trailer drops BOMBSHELLS – Neibolt Street tunnels pulsing with terror, the Losers’ parents cracking under the fear, and Bill Skarsgård’s grin wider than your screams. But here’s the twist that’ll keep you up at night: How does a “fallen star” named Galloo become the Big P we dread? And who’s REALLY pulling the strings in Derry’s underbelly?

You WON’T believe the Easter eggs tying this to The Shining… or the betrayal that rips the ’60s crew apart. Click below for the full breakdown – if you dare.

In the fog-shrouded streets of Derry, Maine, where the air hangs heavy with unspoken dread, HBO’s IT: Welcome to Derry has been methodically unraveling the threads of Stephen King’s most iconic nightmare. Airing Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and streaming on Max, the series – a prequel to the blockbuster IT films directed by Andy Muschietti – plunges viewers into 1962, decades before the Losers’ Club first confronted the shape-shifting terror known as Pennywise. But with the midseason trailer for Episode 5, titled “Neibolt Street,” dropping like a blood-red balloon into the cultural zeitgeist, one question echoes through the sewers: He’s back. And this time, the clown’s origins are more ancient – and insidious – than fans could have imagined.

The trailer, released on November 17 via HBO’s official channels and YouTube, clocks in at just over two minutes but packs enough visceral punches to rival the 2017 film’s infamous storm drain scene. Bill Skarsgård reprises his role as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the entity’s most gleefully malevolent form, after a deliberate absence in the season’s first four episodes. Fans have been on edge since the series premiered on October 26, 2025, with Episode 1 drawing a staggering 5.7 million global viewers in its first week, according to Variety reports. That momentum shows no signs of slowing, as the trailer’s teaser – “The nightmare beneath Derry awakens” – has already racked up millions of views and sparked frenzied discussions across social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), where users are dissecting every flickering shadow.

At its core, Welcome to Derry expands King’s sprawling multiverse, blending the raw terror of IT (1986 novel) with nods to his broader canon, including The Shining and even The Shawshank Redemption. Set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis – a real-world apocalypse mirroring Derry’s supernatural one – the show follows a new generation of kids and their parents as they stumble into the town’s cyclic curse. The entity, an eldritch abomination from beyond the stars, feeds on fear every 27 years, manifesting as whatever horrifies its victims most. In the ’80s of the films, that was Pennywise terrorizing preteens. Here, in the buttoned-up ’60s, it’s something older, hungrier: a primordial force called “Galloo,” unleashed by a “fallen star” that cratered into Derry centuries ago.

Episode 4, “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function,” aired on November 16 and peeled back these layers with clinical precision. Viewers watched as young protagonist Lilly (played by newcomer Emuna Wilton) uncovers yellowed archives revealing the entity’s arrival: Not a meteor, but a rift from the macroverse, King’s term for the chaotic void outside our reality. The indigenous Shokopiwah people, Derry’s original stewards, warned settlers of the “Galloo” – a devourer of innocence – but greed blinded them. As the town incorporated in 1715, the first cycle began: Children vanished, adults gaslit themselves into denial, and the entity slumbered until hunger stirred it awake. This isn’t just backstory; it’s a metaphor for generational trauma, with the trailer hinting at how 1962’s adults – including a young Dick Hallorann (the psychic chef from The Shining, portrayed by a grizzled Stephen Root) – are starting to connect the dots.

“Neibolt Street,” penned by Brad Caleb Kane and directed by Muschietti himself, marks the series’ pivot from slow-burn dread to full-throttle confrontation. The episode’s title is no accident: In King’s novel, 29 Neibolt Street is the derelict house where the Losers first battle Pennywise, a nexus of the entity’s power woven into Derry’s crumbling infrastructure. New stills released by HBO on November 20 show the ’60s-era Losers – a ragtag crew including Teddy (Jovan Adepo), Phil (Chris Chalk), Ronnie (Tati Gabrielle), and Marge (Madeleine Stowe) – descending into those very tunnels, flashlights cutting through cobweb-choked darkness. The air grows thick with the scent of mildew and something fouler: fear made manifest.

The trailer’s hook hits within the first 10 seconds: A crimson balloon drifts lazily over Derry’s Paul Bunyan statue – the lumberjack icon that hides a sewer grate straight to hell – before popping to reveal Skarsgård’s Pennywise, his porcelain face smeared with fresh blood, eyes gleaming like polished obsidian. “We all float down here,” he rasps in that signature whisper-growl, a line straight from the films but delivered with a ’60s twang that chills to the bone. Cut to Lilly, wide-eyed and clutching a tattered journal on Bob Gray – Pennywise’s human alias, a nod to the entity’s shapeshifting lore. She’s piecing together how Galloo, the star-spawn, adopted Gray’s form after feasting on a 19th-century carnival performer, twisting innocence into abomination.

But it’s not just kids in the crosshairs. The trailer intercuts with adult horrors: Ronnie’s father, Hank (Randy Havens), ambushed on a Greyhound bus bound for Shawshank State Prison – King’s fictional hellhole from his 1982 novella, now woven into IT‘s fabric as a dumping ground for Derry’s “troubled” souls. Shadows lunge from the seats; a clownish silhouette leers from the rearview. Meanwhile, Hallorann, haunted by visions from his Overlook Hotel days (a Shining Easter egg that has theorists buzzing), rallies a makeshift adult brigade: Major Leroy Hanlon (Mike’s grandfather, played by Glynn Turman) and a skeptical Sheriff Shaw (Bill Camp). Their “comparing notes” scene – a tense diner confab amid fallout shelter drills – fractures under paranoia, foreshadowing the Losers’ own infighting.

Critics and fans alike are hailing this as the season’s turning point. On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds a 92% approval rating from 120 reviews, with Episode 4 earning praise for its “King-ian fidelity” in blending folklore with psychological gut-punches. “It’s not just scares; it’s a meditation on how evil festers in plain sight,” writes one Variety critic, noting how the show’s restraint – no jump-scare overload – builds to this payoff. Social media echoes the sentiment: X users like @HQNewsNerd quipped, “That trailer for Episode 5 really said: ‘Just when you thought you could leave Derry… nope, Pennywise’s still got your schedule booked,'” amassing hundreds of likes and reposts. YouTube breakdowns, such as BrainPilot’s “Episode 5 Trailer Explained & Theories,” have surged past 500K views, speculating on crossovers: Could Hallorann’s “shining” detect Pennywise’s deadlights, the entity’s soul-sucking true form?

Behind the scenes, Welcome to Derry is a labor of love for Muschietti, who helms four of the eight episodes alongside Barbara Muschietti as producer. The cast, a mix of rising stars and veterans, brings King’s ensemble to life with grit: Tati Gabrielle’s Ronnie channels a fierce vulnerability reminiscent of Sophia Lillis’ Beverly, while Jovan Adepo’s Teddy evokes Isaiah Mustafa’s adult Mike Hanlon from the films. Skarsgård’s return, teased in exclusive Bloody Disgusting stills on November 20, shows the actor leaning harder into Pennywise’s physicality – elongated limbs, jerky marionette movements – honed from his Chapter Two arc. “Bill brings a pathos to the horror,” Muschietti told Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview. “Pennywise isn’t evil for evil’s sake; he’s lonely, eternal, and that makes him terrifying.”

Yet, the trailer’s revelations raise stakes for the back half. Episodes 5-8, airing weekly through December 21, promise escalating cycles: The Losers’ first “Ritual of Chüd” – King’s telepathic battle method – against a fledgling Pennywise, alliances crumbling as the Missile Crisis peaks, and hints at future seasons jumping to the 1700s and 1930s. One chilling frame shows Marge, the group’s maternal anchor, clutching a silver slug – a Shining callback to Danny Torrance’s weapon against Jack Torrance – suggesting King’s interconnected universe is no fan service, but a deliberate web of dread.

For newcomers, Welcome to Derry demands investment: It’s less a monster mash than a slow poison, exploring how Derry’s civic rot – racism, industrial decay, parental neglect – nourishes the entity. Episode 1’s vanishings evoke real ’60s child abductions, while Episode 3’s aerial search over the Barrens (Derry’s forbidden woods) nods to Vietnam-era paranoia. The trailer’s bus attack on Hank ties into Shawshank’s themes of institutional madness, implying the prison as another fear-feeder. “This isn’t just IT; it’s Derry’s soul laid bare,” notes Screen Rant in its trailer analysis, highlighting how Galloo’s “swirling apparatus” – a vortex of planetary energies – positions Pennywise as a symptom of larger cosmic entropy.

As Episode 5 streams tonight (November 23 at 9 p.m. ET/PT for U.S. viewers; November 24 on Sky/Now in the UK), expect watercooler wars over predictions: Will Lilly become Pennywise’s “primary target,” as the trailer implies, her Bob Gray probe drawing the clown like a moth to flame? Or does Hallorann’s shine force an early showdown, collapsing timelines across King’s works? HBO’s marketing machine, including fan-made concepts on YouTube that mimic official trailers, has amplified the hype, with one viral edit blending IT sewer scenes with ’60s newsreels.

In a landscape of jump-scare satiation – from The Nun 2 to Smile 2 – Welcome to Derry stands out for its intellectual horror. It’s King’s Derry: A town that eats its young, where balloons aren’t party favors but harbingers. As Pennywise croons in the trailer, “Time to play,” one can’t shake the irony – in Derry, play is always deadly. Tune in, if you can stomach it. The big P isn’t just returning; he’s reminding us why we float.