Spoilers ahead for IT: Welcome to Derry season 1, episode 7IT: Welcome to Derry is terrifying everyone with their new episode, and the latest Pennywise the Clown twist has left the audience with four mysteries that are leaving people speechless.
In an interview with ScreenRant‘s Grant Hermanns for IT: Welcome to Derry episode 7, showrunner Jason Fuchs explained exactly what happened during the latest episode in the hellscape, which is the fictional town of Derry.
“It occurred to us that perhaps what was interesting about the form of Pennywise was the way the original performer impacted children. What was it like to see Bob Gray perform? How did kids react to him? Was this sort of a Pied Piper figure? And that’s exactly what you see at the top of episode 7, a performance from Pennywise, the real dancing clown, and not the manifestation. And you see kids watching him, hypnotized. They’re transfixed. And then when the performance is over, they go nuts. They storm the stage, and they’re whipped into a frenzy. You see ITs manifestation in that moment, as a young urchin boy, observing all this, and he’s seeing exactly that.”
Fuchs continues and states that Pennywise is a “magnet for young children,” as he lures them with his odd charm:
“Watching IT understand that and realize all that is part of the fun of that episode and part of the fun of unraveling the mystery. But again, I hope we leave the audience with additional mysteries to think about in the context of 1908. What did happen to Bob Gray once he went into the woods? We don’t really know. We know that Ingrid Kersh says she never saw her father again. Was his body found? We saw the bloody kerchief. There’s a lot of mystery there.”
Robert “Bob” Gray, in Stephen King’s original novel, is the name IT states to the character Goergie as his real name. Gray was a human born in the United Kingdom and arrived in the United States with little to no money. He began playing a clown named Pennywise around 1908, which was the beginning of the corrupted version of IT.
During the 1935 cycle, his daughter Ingrid Kersh, who is now grown, has encountered IT taking the form of Pennywise, and believes that her father is being possessed and hopes to release him. Fuchs continues and goes into depth on how Bob Gray found himself in the woods before vanishing:
“And who was that kid that IT was in the form of? I get that IT took the form of that kid to lure Bob Gray into the woods, that tracks. But when we first see that kid, it’s before IT has made the realization that he even wants to do that. So, what’s the story behind that manifestation? There are many fresh mysteries, I think, suggested by some of the answers to mysteries we provided in the season. And I hope that those mysteries are as satisfying to the next generation of IT fans as the original mysteries in it were to me.”
It’s clear that there are lots of mysteries and unanswered questions in IT: Welcome to Derry, and it’s not entirely guaranteed that all of those questions will be answered, but seeing more into the life of Bob has been eye-opening, and fans are awaiting the next episode for even more mysteries to unravel.
- Release Date
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October 26, 2025
- Network
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HBO
- Directors
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Andy Muschietti
