2025 has been another banner year for Stephen King adaptations, and not just in terms of quantity but also quality. Even though the year began with a low point, as Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey debuted to a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, things only went up from there. Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck scored an impressive 80% rating, while The Long Walk took things even higher with an 88% approval rating on the review aggregator. Even on television, the master of horror had a hit with MGM+’s first season of The Institute with a still mostly positive 64%. Now another hit has arrived from King and Co.
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HBO’s IT: Welcome to Derry, the new prequel TV series that exists in continuity with the two IT feature films from the 2010s, is set to premiere this Sunday, and the first reviews have finally arrived. As of this writing, Season 1 of IT: Welcome to Derry has an 80% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a “Certified Fresh” distinction from the site. With 35 total reviews for the show submitted, it’s becoming clear that the new chapter in the horror series is already getting major praise and continuing Stephen King’s critical trend for the year.
IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1 Reviews Call It A Worthy Prequel
Many of the reviews, even the negative ones, for IT: Welcome to Derry are quick to note that the series does one thing very well: it expands on the mythos of the movies and Penynwise the clown in ways that are very satisfying. ComicBook’s own Marco Vito Oddo awarded the series a 3 out of 5, specifically praising how the series expanded the larger mythology of the town and the story’s connectivity to other King stories while noting that it relies too much on CGI and has uneven pacing throughout. Discussing Film awarded the series a 4 out of 5, specifically calling out that the series is able to expand on the “rich Stephen King lore that the previous two movies never had time to explore” and called it a “worthwhile prequel.”
Not every critic was convinced, though as there are some notable derisions regarding IT: Welcome to Derry. The Daily Beast called the series “The worst King adaptation in many moons” adding that it “ruins” the 1,000-plus page tome that it’s based on. FandomWire gave the series a 5 out of 10, noting that it should have just been a single theatrical movie rather than a streaming TV series, due to the low energy throughout. TheWrap took their criticsm even further, saying the new series “mainly plays like a Stranger Things knockoff.”
Despite some mixed and purely negative responses to the series, IT: Welcome to Derry still has a bright red, shiny tomato next to its score on Rotten Tomatoes, keeping it in line with all the other Stephen King adaptations of the year. The best part about it is that there’s still one more adaptation set to arrive this year as Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man with Glen Powell debuts this November. To date, a movie by Wright has never scored less than a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, so look for King’s winning streak to continue in just a few weeks.
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