With It: Welcome to Derry, set to release on October 26, 2025, fans are drawing parallels between its plot and The Shining, yet another Stephen King story. The upcoming series will focus on the events in 1962 when Pennywise affected the town of Derry.
HBO has dropped just a trailer of the same, but viewers have picked apart several key moments that connect the story to a wider Stephen King universe.
Is It: Welcome to Derry a prequel to The Shining?
Fans do seem to think that It: Welcome to Derry is a prequel to The Shining, but the creators have not confirmed anything regarding it. However, there are reasons why viewers feel this way about the upcoming series.
The first point is the story’s timeline. It is set decades before the It films. This gives them a reason to explore the plot of Derry’s history. This will allow the showrunners to include references from other Stephen King stories.
The biggest piece of evidence that It: Welcome to Derry might be a prequel to The Shining is the presence of a young Dick Hallorann. He was in The Shining and later Doctor Sleep. In the HBO series, the character will run the Black Spot, a bar tied to Black soldiers from a nearby airbase. He possesses a gift of telepathy, referred to as “The Shine.”
Thus, including him will mean that this will be a part of the new series as well. Also, various interviews and even the trailer suggest that his powers are an important element of the plot. It is because Hollorann is a character in The Shining at the Overlook Hotel. Having him in Derry will mean that the plots of the two stories coincide.
Actor Chris Chalk, who will play Dick Hallorann, talked about his character and said (via Entertainment Weekly), “The beauty of Dick Hallorann is he is not gonna die in this [show] because he’s got to get to the Overlook. We already know who he is as an older man, where the shine is more controlled. No one knows this dude at this reference point. I got to create what I thought he was based on what was written.”
