‘It: Welcome To Derry’ Creators Explain the Premiere’s Shocking Ending

The following contains spoilers for the first episode of HBO‘s It: Welcome to Derry.

Oh my God, they killed Teddy!

And Phil!

And Susie!

The season premiere of It: Welcome to Derry introduced a new young Losers Club that was seemingly going to be the focal point of the season moving forward and then promptly seemingly murdered several of them in a chaotic climactic scene that was set in a movie theater.

The surprise slaughter followed an opening sequence which killed off yet another young character — Matty — which perhaps lulled the audience into thinking something along the lines of: OK, that was similar to what happened in the first It movie, where Pennywise killed one child in the opening, now the rest of the kids are going to be safe. But they weren’t. Instead, the show’s creators pulled a bunch of Barbs.

Filmmakers Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the opening scene and that movie theater sequence.

“Yeah, it’s exactly as you said, you want to create an event that that gives the audience a sense that if these kids were smoked at the end of the first episode, nothing is sacred,” Andy Muschietti said. “In this world, no one will be safe. So, technically, that was the intention.”

“Also, it responds to the idea of subverting certain aspects,” he continued. “We did two movies already. One thing that we didn’t want was to — given that we’re using the same tone and the style as the movies — is get people too familiar [with the story mechanics]. We really wanted to create a subversion to get people excited. It has to do also with raising the volume a little in terms of intensity and spectacle.”

As for whether the kids are truly dead, that’s supposed to be slightly unclear moving forward. But the answer for now is: Seemingly, yes (one is, at the very least, short an arm).

We also asked the duo a somewhat philosophical question about the opening sequence with Matty trapped in the car, being carried off to his doom: What is happening in reality during this? Pennywise can take on various forms and create illusions. But he doesn’t, presumably, have a car. So if you’re an observer standing on the side of that road, what are you seeing happen to Matty when he’s going through this?

“Answering that question would somehow kill the magic,” Andy Muschietti said. “Because there’s always the lingering concept that we believe in that It exists because the kids believe what they see. So it’s a feedback between believing in something that you see and creating something that you believe. It’s an abstraction, but that’s really one of the strong themes in the book. There’s a point where the Losers Club in [the book wonder], ‘Does this exist because it’s real or because we believe in it?’ So that’s a question that I can’t answer as an external viewer. Would you see Matty flying in an invisible car? Or it was all in his head? Or was there actually a manifestation of the car? That’s a big question and I’m not brave enough to to answer it because it is one of the great enigmas in the book that has to be unsolved.”

He then added, “Nobody has ever asked me that question, and it really made me think.”

Also, in case you’re wondering where was Pennywise himself was during this episode, the filmmakers are intentionally holding the killer clown back a bit. As Andy Muschietti explained during our previous chat, “We did ‘less is more’ for half the show, but then we did ‘more is more.’ The idea behind the delayed appearance is the build up of expectation. The audience doesn’t know that they want it, but I think it creates a very special feeling. When and where the clown is going to appear was a game that I wanted to play with the audience.”

It: Welcome to Derry airs Sundays on HBO.