HBO’s IT prequel locates an unexpected new boogeyman.
In a repulsively innovative supermarket set piece, IT: Welcome to Derry transforms common models into a real horror trigger by evoking the way Stephen King’s IT twisted birthday clowns into cultural terror.
Derry has to be more than a terror factory; it needs to be a semiological one.
The sequence feels like a franchise dissertation: Derry creates the terror; Derry ferments it, soaking everyday things until they stink of pure dread.
How a brined nightmare came to be in Lilly’s tragic past
The series plants the seed of pickle terror in Lilly, a new persona whose origin is as much a myth as it is a traumatic incident of her short but tragic life.
Her father dies in a pickle mill mishap when he climbs into the machine in search of her missing temper ring. It was such a calamity that some locals in Maine heard a hatchet, and pieces of him swirled into jars.
That publication is later used as weaponry by hostile peers who place pickled cucumbers inside her gym locker.
On view at the supermarket, her father’s walnut-sized head, contained in a jar, serves as a sawhorse for an entire section devoted to a rampant new pickle mascot, both grander and retail endcap.
On the enjoyment levels, the pickles pull double duty. Of course, horrifying things are already on the site; thereby, using the feature cannot be seen as insignificant.
Why the pickle scene hits so hard, mixing fear and disgust
Horror earns longevity when it hijacks the mundane. Clowns were once innocent party fixtures; then IT turned them into suspects. Food is much more complicated.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, specific phobias frequently intertwine fear and disgust, and food-based aversions and disgust acquire a considerable amount of associations. This contagion is well understood and has been used by diet and conduct specialists for several years to discuss food cleanliness in journals like Appetite.
Also, nothing awakens partygoers faster than a rat floating in the punch bowl. The fear of clowns is a good example. In 2023, a study led by researchers at the University of New South Wales discovered that 53.5 percent of participants were scared of clowns, while a significantly smaller subset was terrified.
Certain fear-prone individuals and populations fear that they may be repeated in film icons. Food contamination anxieties, which plant their seeds at the midterm, may produce hour-long aversions in a heartbeat. For example, even individuals who are still aware that no one has an arm dissolved in brine might feel their tummies contract.
There’s also the context and illusion gambit, and a single abomination in our imagination can spoil the entire bushel. After disgust has been established, psychiatrists also observe that it quickly transfers. A lone stomach sinker can rapidly ruin an entire trip to the supermarket.
From Clowns to Condiments: The Cultural Ripple
We have already seen what fictional menace could do in real life: during previous creepy clown waves, police departments used to receive calls, and theme park operators had silently adjusted their lineup.
The launch of pickles won’t require a public safety announcement, but brand creators embed red flags. Refrigerated “fresh” pickles are gaining more and more attention from market analysis, according to Circana, and the trend definitely freaks marketers out, raising concerns about the connection between their product and gore.
The same scene also nudges at brand iconography — the stork, the pickle being sold at a store, the one in a deli jar, the ones on the end of a backyard barbecue skewer — just far enough that it feels wrong. Horror tends to corrupt symbols, and once a symbol is corrupted, it takes a little longer to leave your mind than a jump scare.
Credit is all due to the creative team for choosing a fear vector deemed so personal and bizarrely plausible. Andy and Barbara Muschietti come back to the universe they revolutionized on the big screen, while showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane take advantage of the fact that their prequel retains some freedom from Stephen King’s original.
The episode from writer Austin Guzman turns the horrors of grief, gossip, and grocery shopping into a million-dollar con game, just as Pennywise — once again, personified with a carnivorous anatomy by Bill Skarsgård — turns Lilly’s fear into a weapon.
Technically, the showrunners utilize a practical blend of props, glassware, and sound to make brine seem like contaminants. The PA hiss, jar clacks, and liquid march stand in for a thousand digital tendrils; when the tentacled slobber arrives, it does not seem arbitrary.
What this portends for IT: Welcome to Derry and its rituals
If IT has redefined what clowns are, Welcome to Derry is eager to colonize everyday rituals — shopping, snacking, locker checks — and twist them with the municipality’s mythology of loss.
The proximity keeps Pennywise omnipresent without letting Derry itself feel outrageous and allows space for evil in these too.
And suppose the pickle aisle might become a portal of misery. In that case, the rest of the shop is a potential target. Proceed to manufacture at your own risk.
IT: Welcome to Derry airs on HBO and runs on Max. Whether you want to watch it with a snack or not is a personal choice.