Welcome to Derry There are glimmers of good ideas hidden in the mechanics of the franchise, but without a solid backbone of a novel it will never find its feet.
Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO
Set to build on what may be Stephen King's best novel, Ono: Welcome to Derry comes with expansionist ambitions. Positioned as a prequel to Andy Muschietti's recent duology, the series fits perfectly into HBO's modern mandate under Warner Bros. Discovery to create a game based on the franchise. This context does not automatically make it difficult. At the moment, the standard-bearer of prestige television has a decent track record, making a creative living from such endeavors: Peacemaker may have ended retained in James Gunn's DC versionsbut HBO still filmed Penguinextra income capsule by Matt Reeves Batman a franchise that has proven itself very well. It's not that great stories can't emerge from scraps of knowledge. Rogue One arose from the throw line at the beginning Star wars crawl and eventually led to Andor, one of the best series ever made. Developed by Muschietti and his sister Barbara along with showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane. Welcome to DerryUnfortunately, this spark was never found. Too closely tied to his corporate agenda, he gets lost in the sewers of an expanding universe.
The funniest thing about This is that our collective memory of this story has always been greater than that of the 1986 novel or any of its adaptations. 1990 miniseries starring Tim Curry as the fearsome Pennywise. much more graceful than you might remember. Muschietti's two-part adaptation broke box office records and turned his killer clown Bill Skarsgård into a Hollywood goth boy day, goal they don't exactly a classic even after they've done their job. This isn't so much a criticism as it is an acknowledgment of the raw psychic power of this story. The titanically prolific king is himself a master of his craft at the sentence level, but his ideas tend to penetrate the subconscious and take root. Through the time-jumping saga of the Losers' Club. This speaks tenaciously to cycles of violence—how childhood trauma echoes into adulthood, intertwined with the tenderness of adolescence—and the bittersweet truth that our capacity for transcendence lies in the innocence that is lost the deeper we delve into adulthood.
Welcome to Derry doesn't have the luxury of the source material's built-in magic; all this money has already been spent on films. Instead, his gambit is to inflate interlude chapters from King's novel that trace the city's cursed history with its persistent evil and that were omitted from Muschietti's films. In the book, adult Mike Hanlon, a lonely Loser who remains in Derry, interviews elders in search of information about a creature that appears every 27 years. In these sections, the cosmic fear of history is rooted in the historical rot of America, as well as in the history of Muschietti, Fuchs and Kane. present a three-season project around this material, each from a different era. This is the first series of episodes the story is set in 1962 (moving King's original timeline forward), with future seasons, if greenlit, planned for 1935 and 1908. This opening sequence seems to lead to one of the book's most gripping interludes, narrated by Mike's ailing father, Will: the burning of the Black Spot, a nightclub founded by black servicemen for the local black community, which was destroyed by white nationalists with people still trapped inside. According to Will, the massacre coincides with one of the earliest modern appearances of the creature, but thematically it is a reminder that true horror is often in the hands of man.
Here's where this review gets tricky: HBO's embargo prevents critics, who have only been given the first five of eight episodes, from revealing the series' core cast, limiting the depth of discussion of the show's premise. However, as a whole, the season unfolds in two interconnected directions. One features a group of kids fighting Pennywise, echoing the original story; the other revolves around a wide range of adult Derry residents whose own dark battles – racism, wrongful imprisonment, military secrecy – eventually converge with the clown's orbit. These two strands are connected by the Hanlon family, newly arrived in Derry when patriarch Leroy (Jovan Adepo), a black pilot and Korean War veteran, is stationed at a local base where something related to the otherworldly beginnings of Pennywise is happening. With him are his wife Charlotte (Taylor Paige) and young son Will (Blake Cameron James). This is, of course, the same Will who later tells the story of the Black Spot to his son Mike in King's novel.
Welcome to Derry works with large quantities. Maybe too much. Beneath the tangle of plots lies a series that thinks about racism, American militarism, the empty ideal of mid-century America, and the country's exploitation of its homeland and tribes, all layered on top of the novel's core interest in childhood trauma, coming-of-age experiences, and cyclical violence. The ambition is admirable, but there's a fine line between complexity and bloat. Problem with Welcome to Derry is that nothing ever turns into the right story. There are too many characters drawn too thinly for you to feel deeply for any of them, and there are simply too many threads competing for emotional focus. Her political concerns are compelling, but without a strong narrative mechanism they seem academic.
Giving Welcome to Derry And here's this: it had an amazing premiere. Without going into embargo-breaking detail, the first episode unfolds confidently and builds to a climax so dark it almost feels like a challenge. But the show never quite recaptures that energy, and what follows quickly becomes an ungainly bundle of franchise-building obligations. Determined to piece together an integrated Stephen King verse for HBO, Welcome to Derry young Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk), the Overlook's telepathic cook, appears Shineand even name-checks Shawshank Prison as part of its expanding mythology. What Hulu did years ago with him Castle Rock rowplayfully winking, mixing different themes of the King universe, Welcome to Derry approaches with an obedient diligence that robs him of pleasure.
Welcome to Derry still has its pleasures, although they are uneven. The tone oscillates between genuine fear and a serious, slightly campy nostalgia reminiscent of Stay with me. The young cast is good, if sometimes annoying. Violence against children always has a visceral charge, and the show leans into that early on, but as the season progresses you can feel it pulling some punches. There are flashes of inspired horror – one piece of bed-related creature design is exceptional – but the show struggles to maintain that imagination. By the fifth episode, the scares begin to feel weightless, which suggests that the most exciting moment comes not from anything supernatural, but from a scene in which a character describes the desecrated remains of other children. This is what remains.
This adaptations don't have to be great to work, but they do need conviction, and that's where Welcome to Derry fluctuates. This kind of wasted potential makes you wonder what might have been had HBO followed the path it previously blazed with Guardiansgiving Damon Lindelof free reign over the source material and create something truly magnificentor built a series around Thisis a cyclical horror series, with each season focusing on a new generation as they confront the universal fears of childhood while at the same time being shaped by their era's own horrors. Welcome to Derry There are glimmers of good ideas hidden in the mechanics of the franchise, but without a solid backbone of a novel it will never find its feet. One of King's greatest insights was how the members of the Losers' Club needed to rediscover their childhood courage in order to defeat overwhelming evil. Welcome to Derry cannot fully exhibit the same spirit while trapped in his adult corporate obligations.
