Based on everything we know about Derry, the town at the centre of Stephen King’s IT novel and HBO’s new IT: Welcome to Derry prequel series, it’s pretty much the last place in the world you’d want to visit.
But could you actually visit it, if you chose to? Is Derry a real town? We’ve broken down everything that’s known about Pennywise’s base of operations below.
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Is Derry in IT: Welcome to Derry a real town?
The short answer is no. Derry is, thankfully, a fictional place created by King — but if you wanted to visit its inspiration, you’d need to go to Bangor, Maine in the U.S.
This is the town where the horror master was living when he wrote his novel — a note at the end of IT says King started writing the book in Bangor in 1981 and finished a little over four years later. The author has also confirmed in interviews that Derry is essentially a fictionalised version of the Maine town.
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“Bangor became Derry,” King has said. “There is a Bangor in Ireland, located in the county of Derry, so I changed the name of the fictional town to Derry. There is a one-to-one correlation between Bangor and Derry.”
As such, various locations in Bangor will be immediately familiar to people watching IT: Welcome to Derry, including the town’s Paul Bunyan statue and the Thomas Hill Standpipe.
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Does Derry feature in other Stephen King stories?
It certainly does. The town is also the setting for King’s novels Insomnia and Dreamcatcher, and it’s mentioned in a large number of his other books and short stories as well.
Like King weaving connections between his books, the prequel series is littered with Stephen King Easter eggs — and judging by the “weeks ahead” trailer, there’s going to be more where that came from in the upcoming episodes.
IT: Welcome to Derry episodes land on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
