The premiere episode of IT: Welcome to Derry kicks off with a chilling sequence that surpasses even the infamous misfortune of Georgie Denbrough and his paper boat. This new chapter in the horror saga wastes no time in ramping up the terror.

**Spoilers ahead for IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 1, available on HBO MAX**

The series begins by acquainting us with Matty Clements, portrayed by Miles Ekhardt, a young boy who finds himself expelled from a screening of The Music Man for sneaking in without a ticket. Sporting a fresh bruise, Matty decides to hitchhike, not towards home, but away from the ominous town of Derry.

His luck seems to take a turn for the better when a seemingly wholesome “all-American” family offers him a lift to Portland, Maine. However, as their journey progresses, an unsettling atmosphere begins to settle in. The family’s behavior starts to shift in bizarre and disturbing ways, intensifying Matty’s sense of unease—especially when he realizes they are circling back into Derry.

Just as the dread peaks, the pregnant mother in the car undergoes a horrifying transformation, giving birth to a nightmarish creature. The monstrosity, a flying bat-like entity with an unsettling resemblance to Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise, swoops around the car. The scene culminates in a sinister arrival at a circus, leaving Matty, and the audience, engulfed in terror.

So what gives? What’s the deal with this utterly bananas cold open to IT: Welcome to Derry?

“We were just hoping to start the show in a way that felt both familiar and fresh,” series co-showrunner and episode writer Jason Fuchs told DECIDER. “Obviously the book, the movie, begins with Georgie being taken. So it felt appropriate to have Matty Clements have our first It abduction, but wanted to do it in a fresh way.”

Fuchs shared that he and fellow co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane wanted to do the “inciting It kill” without the iconic clown.

“We wanted to do it without Pennywise. We wanted to see another manifestation of It and specifically a manifestation that took advantage of the fears of the time period,” Fuchs said. “It’s 1962. We’re in the heart of the Cold War. Fears over nuclear radiation and fallout and mutation and all those things combined. into us coming up with the sequence that you see at the beginning.”

Another nod to 1962 culture is the show’s opening shot. We hear a warped version of “Ya Got Trouble” from The Music Man play on a black screen. We soon find ourselves in the aforementioned Derry movie theater, where Matty is, yes, watching The Music Man.

IT: Welcome to Derry showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane were ecstatic to explain how the otherwise squeaky-clean movie musical made it into a new Stephen King adaptation.

“We both have a Broadway background. We’re both Broadway fans,” Fuchs said, before copping to the fact that both he and Kane were musical theater actors. (Kane even was the singing voice of Aladdin in the ’90s Disney animated film!)

“When we started talking about the opening, we actually initially entertained the idea of writing an original musical number, which quickly seemed like that was going to be a heavy lift,” Fuchs said. “I think the other thing we realized was we wanted this to feel grounded in the period. You know, there’s so much heightened stuff. There’s so many genre elements. We wanted something that made it feel really real to the moment. And so Music Man became the choice.” 

“Well, why did Music Man become the choice?” Kane asked. 

“Well, for two reasons,” Fuchs said. “We were looking through the list of properties that we could use. It came out in ’62 and then we also realized that opening, that song, ‘Ya Got Trouble.’” 

“‘Trouble, trouble, trouble,’” Kane echoed.  

“Just a perfect opening to hear that over black before the camera goes up on our opening scene,” Fuchs said. “It felt like a really eerie repurposing of an otherwise happy musical theater number.”

So eerie that you might not be able to watch The Music Man again without thinking of Pennywise.