This: Welcome to Derry finally introduced Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in the series’ fifth episode.
The creators took a long time to bring the dancing clown to the show. But all this delay had a fitting explanation which was finally given by creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti.
Barbara explained that they tried to plan Pennywise’s appearance very strategically to keep the character’s terror alive.
She said Weekly entertainment, “We decided that, in this season, Pennywise should be a bit like the shark in Jaws. You really have to be strategic. In both films, it was very important for us to keep the mystery and fear of this character alive.
“We find that familiarity is the enemy of that. So it was important for us to delay the pleasure, or the terror, as much as possible.”
Showrunner Jason Fuchs believes there’s a lot more space in television to experiment with ideas than in cinema.
“In the movies, there’s only so much space to see these non-Pennywise manifestations of this creature,” he says. Because you’re on television…you get full episodes where you explore the other ways this is going to torment the kids.
Following Bill’s first appearance in episode 5 of Welcome to Derry, Besides, fans can now expect him to do all kinds of terrible things that he’s never done before in movies.
