The second trailer for IT Chapter Two features a grotesque shot of Pennywise that could be his deleted origin scene from the first movie. Andy Muschietti is back in the director’s chair for the sequel to 2017’s smash-hit, IT. This time around, the story will take viewers back to Derry 27 years after the events of the first movie. Bill (James McAvoy), Beverly (Jessica Chastain), Ben (Jay Ryan), Richie (Bill Hader), Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), Eddie (James Ransone), and Stan (Andy Bean) have been living normal lives since their first encounter with Pennywise the Clown, but now he’s back and the Loser’s Club must reunite.

And, in order to defeat him, it would help to learn about his origin. In the novel from Stephen King, Pennywise was said to be an ancient entity that crash-landed in Derry through an asteroid in the 1700s. The original IT movie didn’t spend much time on that backstory, but according to Pennywise himself, Bill Skarsgård, an origin scene was shot only to be cut from the finished product. However, it now looks like that specific flashback scene has made it into IT Chapter Two.

At the end of the new IT Chapter Two trailer, there’s a brief shot of Skarsgård as Pennywise letting out a terrifying chuckle as his face bleeds over his clown makeup, an additional look into a scene from the first IT Chapter Two teaser trailer showing Pennywise was tearing the skin on his own face. These two shots appear to be detailing Pennywise’s origin: Pennywise still a normal set of hair and is tearing the infamous scars onto his own face.

The new IT movies have long intended to show Pennywise’s origin. Early drafts of the script included a scene from the colonial period where Pennywise eats a child, and Chapter One shot a scene in the past - just as the IT Chapter Two moment appears to be. Skarsgård elaborated on the deleted scene while on Variety’s Playback podcast:

Whether the centuries-old scene of Pennywise in the trailers is the one that Skarsgård shot for the first movie is yet to be confirmed. It’s possible that Muschietti reshot the Pennywise origin to better fit IT Chapter Two, although given the work was already done it would make sense that they held it back with the explicit purpose of using it in the sequel. Since IT Chapter Two will be the end of the story, the Losers’ Club will need any kind of advantage they can find to take down Pennywise. Knowing how Pennywise arrived in Derry and what kind of entity he truly is will be priority number one.

“There was a scene we shot that was a flashback from the 1600s, before Pennywise [was Pennywise]. The scene turned out really, really disturbing. And I’m not the clown. I look more like myself. It’s very disturbing, and sort of a backstory for what It is, or where Pennywise came from. That might be something worth exploring in the second one. The idea is the ‘It’ entity was dormant for thousands and thousands of years. The [flashback] scene hints on that.”

Next: IT Chapter Two’s Trailer Spoils Two Major Deaths

  • IT Chapter Two Release Date: 2019-09-06