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It, also known as Robert " Bob" Gray, commonly known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown or Pennywise, is the titular main antagonist of Stephen King's 1986 horror novel It and its adaptations. The character is an ancient, trans-dimensional malevolent entity who preys upon the children (and sometimes adults) of the fictional town of Derry, Maine, roughly every 27 years, using a variety of supernatural powers that include the abilities to shapeshifting and manipulate reality. Over the course of the story, the character primarily appears in the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. A group of Derry children who call themselves the "Losers Club" becomes aware of Pennywise's presence after it kills Losers Club leader Bill Denbrough's little brother, Georgie; the children then decide to hunt it down and kill it. Pennywise was portrayed by Tim Curry in the 1990 television adaptation and by Bill Skarsgård in the 2017 film adaptation, its 2019 sequel It Chapter Two and the HBO prequel series .
Inspired by fairytale , King conceived of a shapeshifting entity living in the sewers that could embody whatever frightened its target most. Pennywise became the central form It used to lure children—appearing to be a harmless clown. Scholars and critics have noted the effectiveness of this design, as clowns are commonly viewed as uncanny (both in the sense of coulrophobia and in the form of the uncanny valley). Across the various adaptations of It, Pennywise's visual performance evolution reinforced coulrophobia. Curry's performance in the 1990 miniseries emphasized charm masking a hidden evil, while Skarsgård's version leaned into overt horror with twitchy movements and an animalistic stare. Critics praised Skarsgård's performance as sadistic and alien. Scholars also commented on how the character's various forms channeled classic childhood fears while also reflecting deeper social issues.
In the novel, the Losers believe "It" to be a taelus, a Himalayan creature that reads minds and assumes the shape of whatever his target fears most, similar to a boggart. Pennywise scares his victims first because he feeds on their fear, especially that of children. Commentators have thus argued that the character is a Lovecraftian horror dwelling beneath Derry.
English actor Will Poulter was originally cast as Pennywise in the 2017 film, with Curry describing the role as a "wonderful part" and wishing Poulter the best of luck, but the latter dropped out of the production due to scheduling conflicts and the film's original director Cary Fukunaga leaving the project. After Poulter's departure, the role ultimately went to Swedes actor Bill Skarsgård, who portrayed the character in the 2017 film adaptation, It, its 2019 sequel It Chapter Two, and its prequel television series . In 2023, it was announced that Skarsgård would not be participating in It: Welcome to Derry because he wanted to leave the character behind and focus on other roles, but by 2024 he had changed his mind.
In the films, director Andy Muschietti chose a new interpretation of the character's look and feel. He said that he wanted to stay true to the character's essence, and that Skarsgård caught his attention. Skarsgård's Pennywise is more overtly creepy, less humorous, and stands out more. Muschietti said he wanted Pennywise to look older than a typical 20th-century clown, since the creature had existed for thousands of years. He felt that modern clowns looked "cheap" and were too tied to social events and circuses, saying he preferred the look of 19th-century clowns. Thus, he and his sister Barbara (the film's producer) decided to use the 1800s and earlier periods as an inspiration. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, costume designer Janie Bryant explained that Pennywise's suit was inspired by various historical eras, including the Medieval, Renaissance, Elizabethan era, and Victorian era periods. Bryant said she wanted Pennywise to feel more organic, drawing on King's description of him wearing a silvery-gray clown suit.
Skarsgård's Pennywise appears as a background character in the 2021 family-friendly film , which is also distributed by Warner Bros.
One analysis of the television series described the creature as a "demonic, liver-eating baby". The character is described as transforming into a family of people which gradually transform into demon-like creatures. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Muschietti compared the creature's first appearance and reveal to the one seen in Jaws. He pointed out that the television series provides more space to explore the character's various forms other than that of Pennywise, whose clown form is not shown until several episodes in.
The character's true form, however, is unknown. In-universe, the closest the human mind can come to perceiving it is the "deadlights," which are capable of hypnotizing or killing anyone who stares into them. The only person to recover from the ordeal is Bill's wife Audra, although she is rendered temporarily catatonic by the experience. In It, Pennywise captures Beverly Marsh and shows her the deadlights, causing her to float and temporarily lose consciousness. In It Chapter Two, it is revealed that this experience resulted in Beverly having visions of the future. Losers' Club member Ben Hanscom comes dangerously close to seeing the deadlights and the shape behind the lights for a brief moment. He described what he saw as an endless, crawling, hairy creature made of orange light. The final physical form the character is seen in during the Losers' final battle is that of a monstrous giant spider that lays eggs.
Throughout the novel, It is generally referred to as male, calling himself "Bob Gray" and taking a male form as Pennywise the Clown. However, when confronting the character's spider form, the characters find out that the creature is most likely female, due to the character's final form in the physical realm being that of a giant female spider that was also pregnant.
His hibernation periods begin and end with horrific events, such as the disappearance of all 340 settlers from Derry Township from 1740 to 1743 (in which the settlers mysteriously disappeared without a trace) or the 1906 Kitchener Ironworks explosion, killing 108 people, 88 of whom were children at an Easter Egg hunt. He woke during a major storm that flooded part of Derry in October 1957. Bill Denbrough's younger brother Georgie was the first of many victims that year. Bill and his friends, known collectively as the Loser's Club, investigate the disappearances and note that they all had something to do with Derry's sewer system; using this information, they deduce correctly that he uses a well house as a lair. Through the use of a Native American-style Smoke hole ceremony, it is revealed that the creature came from outer space. The children go to the house and are attacked by him in the form of a werewolf. Beverly shoots a slug from a slingshot at the creature, injuring Pennywise and causing him to flee back into the sewers. The narrative then briefly switches to his point of view, where he sees himself as superior and considers the Turtle an equal and humans mere "toys." He also confirms that he chooses to prey on children because they are easier to fool and scare. He believes their fears are easier to interpret in a physical manner, which he claims is similar to "salting the meat", as frightened flesh tastes better to him. Bill establishes a telepathic connection with Pennywise through the Ritual of Chüd. The Ritual of Chüd is a psychic and spiritual battle of wills between Bill and Pennywise. Bill metaphorically "bites down" on Pennywise's tongue with humor and childish beliefs such as Santa Claus, and the two engage in a sort of mind-to-mind duel across the macroverse. Pennywise is surprised by the children's victory in battle and near the end of the book, Pennywise begins to question his preconceived notions of superiority. However, he never believes that the individual children are strong enough to defeat him, only through the Other working through them as a group could they have won in battle. After the battle, the Losers Club get lost in the sewers until Beverly has sexual intercourse with all the boys to bring unity back to the group. The Losers then swear a blood oath to return to Derry should Pennywise reawaken. The Losers eventually drift apart and go their separate ways in life and, except for Mike who continues to remember everything, forget about both Derry and each other.
Pennywise reawakens in 1984 after Adrian Mellon, a gay man, is murdered by a group of Homophobia at a festival. He then causes a string of child murders in Derry, causing an adult Mike Hanlon to call his fellow Losers back to town to defeat Pennywise once again. Stan Uris, one of the Losers who participated in the battle against Pennywise as a child, commits suicide, afraid of facing Pennywise again. After catching up over some lunch, the remaining Losers agree that this time they will make sure to kill him once and for all. The Losers split up and explore different parts of Derry to restore their memories. Pennywise manipulates Beverly's husband Tom Rogan to capture Audra and bring her to his lair in an attempt to use her as bait for the Losers. Bill, Ben, Beverly, and fellow Losers Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak learn that Mike is near death after a confrontation with Henry Bowers, and realize they are being forced into another fight against Pennywise. The adult Losers finally reach Pennywise's lair and find It has taken the form of a giant spider. Bill and Richie enter his mind through the Ritual of Chüd, but they get lost in it after Bill fails to "bite down" on Pennywise's tongue. To distract Pennywise and bring Bill and Richie back, Eddie runs towards the spider and uses his aspirator to spray medicine at it. Although he is successful in hurting the spider, it bites off Eddie's arm, and Eddie quickly bleeds to death. It runs away to tend to its injuries, but Bill, Richie, and Ben chase after it and find that it has laid eggs. Ben stays behind to destroy the eggs, while Bill and Richie head toward their final confrontation with Pennywise. Bill fights his way inside the spider's body, locates its heart and crushes it between his hands, killing Pennywise once and for all. The group meets up to head out of the lair, and although they try to bring Audra and Eddie's bodies with them, they are forced to leave Eddie behind. They make it to the surface and realize that the scars on their hands from when they were children have disappeared, indicating that their ordeal is finally over forever. At the same time that Pennywise is killed, an enormous storm sweeps through Derry. The Losers plan to return to their homes and gradually begin to forget about Pennywise, Derry, and each other once again.
IndieWire's Jamie Righetti says the most obvious difference between the book and the films is the time difference the novel, for instance, has Georgie's death in 1957 and Pennywise's final defeat in 1985, but the films have these events in 1989 and 2016 respectively. Righetti also notes that in the film the characters do not manage to recover Georgie's body. The classic horror movie villains Pennywise shapeshifts into are also gone from the films. Similar to the novel and miniseries, the character feeds on fear, targeting children because they are easier to scare. In the 2017 film, Pennywise says that fear is "tasty" and "beautiful", but does not go into much more detail than that in either film.
The Ritual of Chüd is completely absent in the first film, and the fight between the child Losers and Pennywise is a purely physical one. In It Chapter Two, the ritual is completely reimagined. In the film, Mike explains that he learned about the Ritual's existence from local Native American tribes. The Losers gather in the Neibolt Street house and summon Pennywise using artifacts from their childhood, which they collected during their exploration of Derry. The Ritual consists of burning these tokens in a vessel, which is supposed to trap him in his true form. The ritual fails to truly entrap Pennywise, however, and the Losers are forced to fight him again. In It Chapter Two, Pennywise's final form changes from a giant spider to a clown-spider hybrid. The Losers defeat him by psychologically diminishing him using insults, confronting their fears and reducing Pennywise's image of himself to something small. They then reach into Pennywise's small body and crush his heart with their hands. The storm that ensues after Pennywise's defeat is replaced with the destruction of the house where the battle took place.
Rolling Stone's David Fear praised Skarsgård's performance in 2019 as a "phobic masterpiece", adding that "onscreen, he feels like he's burrowing into your psyche". Fellow Rolling Stone reviewer Peter Travers describes Skarsgård's Pennywise as "all the fears rolled up into one creepy, dancing clown". Even Skarsgård and Stephen King themselves were scared by the character, with Skarsgård telling Entertainment Weekly that he started seeing the character in his dreams after filming and King saying in a Reddit post that he would not revisit the It story (and thus, Pennywise) because it was "too scary, even for me." He later reiterated this in an interview with Bloody Disgusting.
Audiences and critics reacted to the 2017 and 2019 film adaptations of It with a mix of fear and fascination; reviewer Katie Kilkenny of Pacific Standard felt that clowns "remaining forever terrifying" was one of the key reasons for the 2017 film's success. Other reviewers offered more varied appraisals. Christopher Orr of The Atlantic says that Skarsgård's Pennywise was less "overtly clownlike" than Curry's was, and thus less memorable. The Chicago Sun-Times' Richard Roeper described Pennywise as "a little less frightening" in 2019 than in 2017, but also praised Skarsgård's performance as "disturbingly effective". Tom Russo of The Boston Globe called the character "supremely creepy" in his review of It Chapter Two.
Gompf's examining of Pennywise's appeal found that a subset of viewers expressed an attraction or affinity toward Skarsgård's Pennywise. She saw this as the result of either the actor himself or a broader pop-culture trend of romanticizing charismatic anti-heroes such as Loki or Hannibal Lecter. Gompf also noted that fans were debating the appeal of Pennywise's new design amongst themselves; early promotional images of Skarsgård in costume divided fans over whether the character was too frightening or not frightening enough. She said that in particular, Pennywise's visual aesthetic, facial expressions, and posture helped create a sense of dread in viewers.
Chris Evangelista for /Film criticized It: Welcome to Derry attempt to answer every mystery that is presented about the character, and believed that it was not necessary to reveal Pennywise's origin since "things like that should defy a reasonable explanation". He saw Pennywise more as a "shape-shifting creature" that "enhances the show" with a higher variety of scares. Chris Hayner of Polygon said he was more interested in the lore of Derry and the influence of Pennywise on the town than in the films.
Literary scholars have observed that It uses Pennywise to represent the collective evil of Derry. Stephen King scholar Tony Magistrale says that the novel shows how Derry "institutionalizes child abuse" so much that "Pennywise's actions merely reflect the town's general indifference towards its children." In this sense, the clown is a mirror to the town's worst impulses. Critic Adrian Daub of the Los Angeles Review of Books notes that King does not distinguish between the supernatural horrors committed by Pennywise and the everyday evils displayed by the town's residents, such as racism. These mundane cruelties are not simply caused by Pennywise, but are a replica of his nature; the novel frequently draws direct comparisons between Derry and the creature. Polygon writer Chris Hayner wrote that the evils shown in the people of Derry are also present in It: Welcome to Derry, writing "the terror here isn't directly related to the actions of Pennywise, though he remains plenty terrifying". He praised the fact that Pennywise terrorized Derry and controlled the townspeople indirectly rather than directly. University of Technology Sydney associate professor Penny Crofts writes that the Derry townspeople are somewhat complicit in Pennywise's crimes through their inaction and inability to stop the creature. She cites the homophobic murder of Adrian Mellon at the start of the book as an example. Crofts compares the case of Pennywise to real-life convicted sex offender Larry Nassar, writing that both Pennywise and Nassar were shielded by the people around them while they committed crimes "with seeming impunity".
Yankovich also interprets Pennywise as both the origin and embodiment of the recurring evil seen in Derry, symbolizing a primordial source of fear and death. This, she argues, is reinforced by the Losers' vision in the smoke-hole ceremony, where they witness the character crash-landing in Derry. According to Falakata College assistant professor Diganta Roy, Pennywise and Derry act as mirrors of the hatred and psychotic rage of the Derry townspeople. Yankovich observes that Pennywise naturally takes the form of a child's worst fear; for example, Pennywise appears to Eddie (a Mysophobia) in the form of a leper, a physical manifestation of contamination and disease, or in other words, abjection.
Hannah Lina Schneeberger and Maria Wiegel from the University of Cologne argue that although Stephen King never cited John Wayne Gacy as an influence for Pennywise, that the two of them reflect the 1980s American ethos. They point to the interconnectedness of Pennywise, Gacy, and the white middle-class suburb of Derry as a representation of broader American society. Derry is a homogeneous place that represses things which its townspeople see as undesirable using racism and bigotry; hence, according to them, Pennywise reflects the anxieties faced by his victims. Both Pennywise and Gacy's clown personas present the illusion of a friendly, everyday clown while concealing something far more sinister. Schneeberger and Wiegel argue that Pennywise embodies not just Derry, but each of its neighborhoods and sub-communities. On a related note, Giannini believes that Pennywise embodies the fear of stranger danger. Pagnoni Berns concludes in his essay that Pennywise feeds from the fears of the people of Derry much like moral panics do throughout history.
Scholars have also explored deeper themes behind Pennywise's defeat. Roy also contends that Pennywise's defeat carries dual meaning; it portrays the Losers as child heroes that challenge the very social norms aimed to protect them, and it marks a turning point in the Losers' transition into adulthood. In this view, Pennywise is a coping mechanism to help the Losers find a sense of belonging. In It Chapter Two, the Losers confront the creature not with physical weapons but by standing up to Pennywise and mocking him, reducing him from a monstrous figure to a withered shell; Pennywise draws strength from fear and imagination, and is therefore weak against those who have overcome their fears.
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