IT: Welcome to Derry director Andy Muschietti revealed the true reason why Pennywise the Dancing Clown always targets kids. HBO Max's prequel series brought back Bill Skarsgärd's terrifying Pennywise as the show explores its 1962 cycle, where the killer clown is more violent and brutal in tormenting children. Welcome to Derry made it seem that Pennywise was more tame and less horrifying in the movies because the creature didn't hesitate in killing three children and using Matty Clements as the subject of IT's cruelest trick right from the get-go in Episode 1.
Pennywise's dominance continued in the subsequent episodes, using its horrifying powers to instill fear in the proto Losers' Club in 1962, led by Lilly Bainbridge and Will Hanlon, so that they could taste better when IT finally consumed them. While Pennywise has a town full of grown adults to feed on, the killer clown keeps coming back to target children, and the reason behind it has finally been revealed.
IT Director Reveals Why Pennywise Targets Kids (And It Makes Sense)
In the Inside Look at IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 4, released by HBO Max, producer and director Andy Muschietti confirmed why Pennywise primarily targets kids rather than adults during his cycles, noting that "kids are the most capable of believing in things that don't exist:"
Andy Muschietti: "IT acts in mysterious ways. Very often, he appears only to his victim as their worst fear. And then when the victim is scared enough, he will eat them. Why does IT target kids? Mainly because kids are the most capable of believing in things that don’t exist."
Welcome to Derry producer Barbara Muschietti chimed in by saying that children are usually the "witnesses" to the supernatural fear, making them easy prey for Pennywise the Dancing Clown:
"The supernatural fear depends on what one believes, right? We see our children who are witnesses to this fear, and then we see the adults who create a lot of this fear."
Using fear has always been Pennywise's modus operandi when it comes to hunting its victims. Pennywise takes many forms in IT: Welcome to Derry, utilizing fear as its main weapon to torture its victims. IT also seemed to be having fun when shapeshifting in front of the kids, further proving how deeply sadistic this ancient evil really is.
Muschieti's comments suggest that kids are the ones who are easy to manipulate because adults may not initially believe that they are seeing their worst fears right in front of them. This makes them easier to isolate than adults, who may be hard to convince and control.
This idea was pushed front and center in IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 4 when Chief Bowers (one of the characters related to an IT movie character in the prequel) didn't believe Lilly Bainbridge and her friends about what Pennywise did to them in the cemetery. The fact that adults often don't think children's stories about the supernatural or monsters are real makes the kids more vulnerable and easier to exploit when the time comes.
Pennywise Underestimating Kids Proved To Be Its Greatest Downfall
While kids may be an easy target, the IT movies proved that Pennywise's act of letting his guard down when targeting children was his greatest downfall after he came face to face with the united front of the Losers' Club. Pennywise had countless children as victims throughout its cycles in Derry, Maine, but the killer clown wasn't really prepared when he faced the wrath of Bill Denborough and his friends.
What made Pennywise lose to the Losers' Club was the fact that it underestimated them, and the creature never realized that these kids found a way to weaponize their beliefs by turning their fear into their greatest weapon against IT.
This is why Pennywise's final words in IT: Chapter One's final battle were "fear" because the killer clown finally realized what that word truly means. Some even speculated that Pennywise felt fear right before falling into the abyss, marking the first time that the ancient evil knew what fear truly means on the other side of the equation (read more about The Galloo's twist involving Pennywise in Episode 4's ending).
During the events of IT: Chapter Two, Pennywise's arrogance and belief that IT could still torment the Losers' Club even as adults served as another reason for his defeat. While the members of the Losers' Club struggled at first due to forgetting about what happened in Derry in the past, the eventual realization that they don't need to be afraid proved to be the final nail in the coffin of Pennywise's actual demise.
