As the first episode of It: Welcome to Derry ends, fans are left in shock. Now, the makers behind the show say this is exactly what they wanted.
In a chat with TV Guide, co-showrunner Jason Fuchs shares, “We always knew we wanted audiences to feel disoriented and thrown off by [the feeling of] ‘Oh, my goodness, anything can happen.”
He continues, “Characters we love might not make it…’ Forget about making it to the end of the season, but make it to Episode 2! There was always this general design of How do we convey to an audience to expect the unexpected from this series?”
Meanwhile, Andy Muschietti shares that they intentionally led the audience to believe something else from the start of the episode. “We sort of presented this little subversion, which is, OK, here are the losers that you’re going to love for the rest of the season.”
“And by the end of the [first] episode, they all die,” he adds. “We all agreed it was a great idea. We’ll see now what people think. But I think it’s that kind of kick in the balls that, for good or bad, is going to shock people and hopefully make them want to keep watching.”
Jason also credits his co-showrunner, Brad Caleb Kane, for the idea to end the first episode on a shocking note. “It was really Brad’s contribution, one of the first contributions [he] made when we partnered on this.”
“I’d written the pilot, and there was a brutal ending, but it was not the current ending. There were more survivors,” he notes.
Episode two of It: Welcome to Derry will drop on Friday.
