IT: Welcome to Derry executive producer Barbara Muschietti revealed Pennywise's greatest weapon, and it makes a lot of sense. Serving as a prequel to Andy Muschietti's IT and IT: Chapter Two, the horror series fleshed out Pennywise even more by making the creature more terrifying by brutally killing kids in the premiere's wild ending, which essentially fixed some of the fans' biggest complaints from the franchise's big screen entries.
The series also delved deep into the ancient entity's supernatural presence, which essentially corrupted the titular town for centuries, while also exploring more of his shenanigans and terrifying antics that made him a formidable threat to humanity. While Pennywise has yet to appear in full in IT: Welcome to Derry, his most effective tool is already on full display in the first batch of episodes.
In the Inside Look at IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2, released by HBO Max, executive producer Barbara Muschietti confirmed that Pennywise's ability to attack someone's fears is his greatest weapon:
"Pennywise will always attack on your fears. That's his most effective tool."
Welcome to Derry writer and executive producer Jason Fuchs doubled down on Muschietti's comments, pointing out the fact that "there's enough evil in the world itself" and that is "where the real scares lie:"
"You don't need to make up fake creatures and monsters. There's enough evil in the world itself. That, to me, is where the real scares lie. And so, IT's trying to find what the character is most afraid of?"
Pennywise's ability to feed on and amplify the deepest fear of its victims before consuming them has been demonstrated in the movies and the show. While the confirmation that this is the ancient evil's greatest weapon isn't surprising, what makes it more terrifying is the fact that fear can be anything, which presents countless options for Pennywise to exploit during its reign of terror in Derry.
Pennywise’s Greatest Weapon Is Also His Unexpected Downfall
Although Pennywise can instantly kill its victims, using fear as his fuel to terrify its prey is part of his modus operandi because it makes them easy to devour. Aside from mostly using Pennywise as its form to consume, the ancient evil also used other "projections" of fear to exploit personal trauma, using them as anchors to further weaken its victims' emotional energy.
However, IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two proved that fear could still be Pennywise's greatest downfall because of how the Losers' Club (who has relatives in HBO Max's IT: Welcome to Derry) managed to outsmart the entity by overcoming their own trauma, guilt, and insecurities to "bury" and temporarily strip the creature's power and banish it to its hibernation state.
The problem here is that the protagonists of IT: Welcome to Derry don't really understand what IT really is and the movies proved that defeating it is tricky if one doesn't have the true knowledge of what this creature is really capable of.
Despite Dick Hallorrann's intervention (who has the ability of The Shining) and a platoon of soldiers under Operation Precept, the fact that Pennywise returned 27 years later in 1989 indicate that he will eventually win by the finale of Welcome to Derry ends, which makes it even more horrifying because not even the full might of the military can defeat a supernatural entity like IT.
Unless the proto Losers Club (who has Mike Hanlon's father, Will, as a member) figure out that overcoming fear is their greatest weapon against Pennywise, it's reasonable to assume that most, if not all, of the characters in Welcome to Derry are doomed to suffer in the hands of the killer clown.
IT: Welcome to Derry has eight episodes, with its finale set to premiere on HBO Max on Sunday, December 14, 2025 at 9 p.m. EDT. The series stars Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Clara Stack, Amanda Christine, Mikkal Karim-Filder, and Bill Skarsgård. Welcome to Derry premiered on HBO and HBO Max on October 26, 2025.
