‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Easter Eggs: All the Small Details in the Episodes So Far
By its very nature as a prequel to Stephen King‘s It, HBO’s Welcome to Derry was always bound to be an Easter egg-stravaganza, and, indeed, the show’s first episodes have been loaded with winks to the It movies, the greater King universe, and beyond.
“Generally, every episode is fairly chock-full of Easter eggs,” executive producer Jason Fuchs teased to TV Insider. “So if you watch an episode and you think you haven’t spotted one, it’s worth rewatching with the pause button handy because there’s something in every single one of these episodes for Stephen King megafans like myself.”
Considering how many are packed just into the opening credits alone, we expect the full run of the series will contain a mountain of small details, so here’s a look at all of the ones we’ve hunted down so far.
Turtles all the way down
In The Dark Tower, Maturin the turtle is a celestial being that is benevolent and creates universes, like the one we all live in, and is the natural enemy of It a.k.a. Pennywise. So It: Welcome to Derry features a slew of turtle references, including a kid in full turtle costume at school trying to teach kids how to survive an atomic blast. A turtle is also featured on the bracelet of Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack), among other shelled sightings.
“There’s a lot of Easter eggs related to the turtle,” Andy Muschietti told TV Insider of the symbolism. “The turtle is this deity that belongs more to the mythology of it, but everything that is on the other side, and the macroverse, which we very, very seldomly have gotten a glimpse into. But the purpose of this show, among others, is to open a window to the other side — a little bit of that iceberg underwater, and give the audience the feeling that everything they know about the book and the stories and the movies is just the tip of the iceberg of a bigger story with a deeper mythology.”
Young Stephen King
This one’s an Easter egg of an Easter egg. King himself made a cameo in It: Chapter Two, portraying the impatient store clerk at Secondhand Rose who negotiates with adult Ben Denborough (James McAvoy) to buy his old bike. In Welcome to Derry, the first trip back to that thrift store finds a younger version of King’s character.
As Muschietti told us, “He’s playing the character that Stephen King plays in Chapter Two… He was just a young kid who was giving a helping hand to Rose. So, we cast that kid with a resemblance of Stephen King, and I think we found a very good match.” Listen carefully, and his list of items also rings familiar, as they both talk about “baseball cards, bowling ball, [and] beaver.”
DC & Kingverse winks galore
It’s a blink-and-you’d-miss-it-moment, but scribbled on the chalkboard in the classroom scene is a quick nod to King’s seminal novel Christine.
Posters and book covers are particularly good fodder for winks in Welcome to Derry. There’s a comic book of The Flash that nods to Muschietti’s 2023 film adaptation. (The Clayface poster seen in the show is also the same one James Gunn used to celebrate the anniversary of the character on social media, so chances are this is a wink to the fellow DCU-er.)
Also, when Margie (Matilda Lawler) drags Lilly to the school bathroom for a private conversation, there’s graffiti on the door that will catch the attention of King fans: the name “Alvin Marsh,” scribbled inside a heart, as a nod to Beverly’s terrible father.
Listen closely, and you’ll also hear the theme from “A Summer Place” in Episode 2, which is the recurrent theme throughout the story Rose Red.
In the grocery store scene, there are cans labeled “Danny Boy” as a nod to Danny Torrance from The Shining and Doctor Sleep; you can also spot Calumet Baking Powder cans as another wink to the Stanley Kubrick film adaptation of The Shining. Also in Episode 2, the bar where Leroy, Dick Hallorann, and others drink is The Falcon, which was featured in the literary version of It, and there’s also a poster of Rita Hayworth, as a nod to The Shawshank Redemption.
What's in a name?
The Hanlons aren’t the only characters from the It book and prior film adaptations that made it into the mix for Welcome to Derry. We also see that the butcher is Stan Kersh, which is a reminder of the old creepy lady from adult Beverly’s (both Annette O’Toole and Jessica Chastain’s versions) visit to her father’s old house. We also learn that poor, ill-fated Teddy’s last name was Uris, which, considering his fate, most likely means he’s a relative of Stanley Uris.
We also should’ve known things would end very badly for Matty Clemens, since there’s a three-year-old book character with the same name who died, and we’re worried about Veronica “Ronnie” Grogan (Amanda Christine in the series) for the same reason, since that name is also mentioned as someone Beverly hears in the drain.
The chief antagonist
Perhaps most chillingly, the town’s police chief is Clint Bowers (Peter Outerbridge), the father of Henry Bowers, which is foreboding about what he’s going to do. Of that unsettling revelation, Fuchs told us, “We feel like part of the themes that the original book and the films engage with are generational trauma, the way trauma is passed down from father to son, from one generation to the next. And so it felt organic to sort of understand, ‘OK, where’s the Bowers family evil coming from? What are the traumas that shaped the Bowers we meet at Chapter One and Chapter Two? And that’s where the chief of police comes in. And so we wanted to use that from the beginning. And it felt like a very natural expression to have that character sort of be one of the chief antagonists of our season, given that his son will one day be one of the chief antagonists in obviously the book and the films.”
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