The Shawshank Redemption set up Pennywise’s origin 30 years before It: Welcome to Derry

It: Welcome to Derry has fleshed out the origin of Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgard), but his backstory was already set up by a scene 30 years ago in The Shawshank Redemption that fans had no idea about.

The 2025 horror TV series is set 27 years before Andy Muschietti’s first IT movie during Pennywise’s previous hunting cycle in the town. It examines the events that lead up to the Black Spot fire, which is mentioned in Stephen King’s original book as one of the darkest incidents in the town’s sordid history.

Welcome to Derry relishes in looking at where the Pennywise persona came from, and how the creature adopted Bob Gray’s clown persona as a way of luring children to their grisly deaths. Not only that, but it further adds to the mythology of how the Shokopiwah people managed to use meteor shards to essentially lock the creature in a section of land that would later become Derry.

But a key line from The Shawshank Redemption set up Pennywise’s origin story 30 years ago, but fans had no idea what it meant at the time.

The Shawshank Redemption unintentionally references Pennywise’s cage in It: Welcome to Derry

HBO

Although the reference might not have been intentional, The Shawshank Redemption mentions black volcanic glass being buried underground, just like the meteorite shards that the Shokopiwah buried around Derry to contain Pennywise.

In the 1994 movie, when Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is talking to Red (Morgan Freeman) about what he would do if he was freed, the innocent banker tells Red that if he ever makes it out he should go to a field in Buxton, Maine to find something buried underground.

“Promise me Red, if you ever get out, you find that spot. At the base of that wall you’ll find a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield: a piece of black volcanic glass. There’s something buried under it I want you to have.”

Now, it’s unclear how close Buxton is to Derry, but they both exist in the state of Maine in King’s universe. The huge meteorite shards in It: Welcome to Derry are black and glass-like, and the show even references Shawshank Prison because Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) is wrongly sent there for the theater massacre (although he never makes it due to a bus crash).

It’s important to know that It: Welcome to Derry introduced the idea of the meteorite shards and they’re not in King’s original novel. So the reference in The Shawshank Redemption movie was not intentional at the time, but now works because of Muschietti’s storyline in the TV series.

This doesn’t ruin either project, but just further adds to the universe’s mythology in It: Welcome to Derry, making it closer to a Stephen King crossover event than fans previously thought. Of course, a younger version of The Shining’s Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) also plays a key role in the show.

While we wait for It: Welcome to Derry Season 2, find out what happened to Mrs. Kersh in the series, discover the one lesson the co-creator learned from the iconic writer, and check out our ranking of the best Stephen King movies.