Throughout “It: Welcome to Derry” Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise has exposed numerous victims to the Deadlights. Whereas Pennywise is just one physical form used by the entity known as “It,” the term “deadlights” describes the entity in its most fundamental form. This is where the real cosmic horror aspect of the “It” franchise comes in.
The surprisingly scary and gruesome “It: Welcome to Derry” delved deep into the lore of the franchise, and even invented some of its own. Serving as a prequel to Andy Muschietti’s “It” (2017) and “It Chapter Two” (2019), the HBO series revealed the titular evil entity’s backstory from Stephen King’s original 1986 novel, wherein It is explained as an extra terrestrial force that crash landed on Earth millions of years ago. But the show also added its own element to the story, whereby indigenous tribes trapped It within Derry using fragments of the object that originally carried the entity to our planet. The show similarly elaborated on the concept of the Deadlights, which are just one of Pennywise’s powers showcased throughout season 1.
In the series, the Deadlights were depicted as a glowing orange portal that emerges from Pennywise’s own head. But what exactly are they and why do they send observers into a stupor? Well, it’s all a bit complicated, but the Deadlights are essentially a look at It’s fundamental form, which is beyond human comprehension and therefore devastating to any onlooker’s mental state. There’s a little more to it than that, though. Here’s everything you need to know about the Deadlights in “It: Welcome to Derry.”
The Deadlights are It’s true form
“It: Welcome to Derry” doesn’t just give us an origin story for It. The show also reveals how It came to take on its most well-known form: Pennywise the Clown. Flashbacks show how It lured a man named Bob Gray into the woods and devoured his essence. Gray performed as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and It assumed that form as a way to appeal to (and terrify) the children of Derry. All of which is to say that Pennywise is just one form the evil entity takes, alongside multiple other non-Pennywise monsters in “Welcome to Derry.”
This is the case in both the show, the movies, and Stephen King’s original 1986 novel. In that novel, King writes, “Before the universe there had been only two things. One was Itself and the other was the Turtle” (the unsung hero of Stephen King’s It was a giant turtle named Maturin). This line confirms It came from a realm outside our universe, and at that point it was not Pennywise but just pure evil cosmic energy. It’s only when that energy became trapped on Earth that it began to take physical forms. So, what exactly is the original version of It?
At the end of the novel, the Losers Club face off against It for one final time. At this point, they see the entity as a giant spider, which might seem confusing to some. Is It’s true form a spider? Well, King writes that Richie Tozier’s mind “translated the shape of It into a Spider.” In reality, no human mind can comprehend the true essence of It and so the Losers Club saw it as a spider. The actual true form is the Deadlights, and these are much more terrifying than a giant arachnid.
What exactly are the Deadlights?
In Stephen King’s original novel we learn that the entity’s true form is the Deadlights. Otherwise, the titular evil uses what King refers to as “the masks of horror,” i.e. monstrous physical forms to terrify victims. But in its most basic essence, It is pure energy — the Deadlights.
In the book, King describes the Deadlights as “that unspeakable living light which crouched at the doorway to the macroverse,” which introduces another crucial concept. The “macroverse” refers to the area that contains all the universes and timelines created by Stephen King. At the center of this macroverse is the Dark Tower, about which the author has also written several novels (sadly, the 2017 “Dark Tower” movie crashed and burned on the big screen). The macroverse is where It originates. Specifically, the entity hails from what’s known as “Todash Space,” the endless void between universes and worlds in the Stephen King macroverse. In “It,” King refers to “the Deadlights, and the trip into the black to the place where they had been.” This dark place is Todash Space.
So, when the Losers Club encounter It as Pennywise on Earth, they are merely encountering a physical form that’s being puppeteered by the evil cosmic energy known as the Deadlights. That energy still exists in Todash Space, which means that when Pennywise reveals the Deadlights to his victims, he is exposing them to what is essentially a tear in the fabric of reality. The Deadlights are like a window to Todash Space. When Pennywise reveals them to his victims, he’s exposing them to his true form, which is utterly beyond human comprehension.
The Deadlights in the It movies and It: Welcome to Derry explained
The Deadlights are also seen in both “It” and “It Chapter Two.” In the former, Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis) is exposed to them, sending her into a temporary coma, while in the latter Richie Tozier (Bill Hader) witnesses the Deadlights and momentarily falls into a catatonic state. In the movies, the Deadlights are depicted as glowing orange lights, which at one point descend from the sky. In “It: Welcome to Derry,” however, Pennywise uses the Deadlights much more often, unleashing a wave of orange light from within his own cranium.
“It: Welcome to Derry,” episode 7 not only managed to beat the movies with a major character death, it also contained one of the most memorable vignettes in the entire show. Towards the end of the episode, Pennywise is seen waking from his hibernation below Derry, submerged in the viscera of his victims. He immediately targets Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James) and exposes him to the Deadlights, before doing the same to the entire student body of Derry High School in episode 8. This reduces every single onlooker to a motionless drone, allowing Pennywise to march them in a grim procession to a place beyond Derry. The clown also uses the Deadlights on Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe), which sends her permanently insane.
Based on everything we’ve seen from the movies and prequel series, then, three things happen when victims are exposed to the Deadlights. They either die, go insane, or enter a temporary trance. All three are the result of victims witnessing something beyond their comprehension: the true form of It as it exists in the macroverse.
