Once there, IT adopted its usual pattern of hibernation that lasted between 27 and 30 years, awakening to kill and eat and then going back to sleep. However, each awakening (which lasted roughly a year to 18 months) and return to hibernation was marked by events of great violence.
It slept for millions of years, then, when humans appeared in the area, It awoke and began a feeding cycle lasting about a year, feeding on people's fears and frequently assuming the shape of whatever its prey feared the most. After feeding, It would resume hibernation for approximately 30 years before reappearing.
Pennywise slumbered beneath the Earth for millions of years, awaiting the arrival of humankind. When the town of Derry was built in 1715, IT awoke and began a cycle of feeding on the fears of the people of Derry and then resuming hibernation for cycles of 27 to 30 years.
The Losers return to Derry 27 years later to confront the creature one last time and finally defeat it, and in the process, they learned more about IT's backstory and nature, and discovered that it has never left Derry, raising the question of whether Pennywise can leave Derry or if it simply has decided to stay there.
It's preference for children prey may be due to how they taste, but also may be due to the fact that children are easier to scare. It's only goals are to eat and sleep. It will hunt and kill for a year, before entering a 27-year dormancy.
Related: What Does Pennywise Really Look Like In IT? IT arrived on Earth through an event similar to an asteroid impact, landing in what would later become Derry, Maine. Once there, IT adopted its usual pattern of hibernation that lasted between 27 and 30 years, awakening to kill and eat and then going back to sleep.
1935: IT awakens after the Bradley Gang shootout. 1962: IT awakens when the The Black Spot is burned down by a cult. 1989: IT awakens to eat kids for a year before going into hibernation. Georgie Denbrough dies by Pennywise biting his arm off and dragging him into the sewers.
The novel explains that IT landed on Earth during an asteroid impact and established itself under the land Derry would be later built on, and initially preyed on indigenous tribes. From that point of view, IT/Pennywise would be billions of years old, but his clown shape wouldn't be that old.
He is also a mentioned character in 11/22/63. He was the youngest of the seven members of The Losers' Club, and the only member Pennywise is afraid of.
They reach the conclusion that Pennywise has all of the adults under some sort of spell that prohibits them from seeing him. The adults of Derry are shown to be villainous in their own right as well. The adults of Derry are shown to be true villains of the story in the same way as Pennywise.
Pennywise is just a mask, an act that It uses when convenient. It is the real monster behind the monster. If you want to get technical, It is an alien, but It's origin goes well beyond that. It is actually an ancient cosmic deity.
It describes that it prefers to kill and devour children, not by nature, rather because children's fears are easier to interpret in a physical form and thus children are easier to fill with terror, which It says is akin to marinating the meat.
At some point in the novel, King explained part of IT's backstory but left enough of it untold to raise many questions about it, and everything about Pennywise's origins is a bit confusing, as it's connected to the macroverse and the turtle Maturin, who's the only being IT is afraid of.
Twenty-seven years after their first showdown with the murderous clown, the now-grown members of the Losers' Club converged on Derry to defeat Pennywise forever. In their final battle, the Losers' Club was able to kill Pennywise by reducing him to a child-like form as they overcame their fears.
The presence of courage and heart are Its main weaknesses. This appears to have a phycological effect that installs fear and enables it the inability to function properly in its physical form. Given that it feeds on fear, it makes sense that courage and heart can overcome it.
Unfortunately, King's imagination ran a little wilder than alluded to in the movies or earlier in the books, and the consequence of that is a pregnant Pennywise.
Originally Answered: Is the clown in “It” real? Nowhere in the original novel, the miniseries or the movies is it suggestioned that IT's form as Pennywise is based on a real clown, in fact intrbiews for the movies specify that “Pennywise” is only what IT thinks clowns are like.
Being such a powerful being, Pennywise clearly sensed that the yellow coloring was unsettling to Georgie, so he changed his eyes to blue on the fly as a way to make Georgie associate him with family and safety. This made Georgie all the easier to lure in to his bloody demise.
He explains to Conan how in his childhood, he used the demonic smile to frighten his little brother after learning his older brother Gustav was also able to point his lip.
The prosthetic teeth that Bill Skarsgård wears made him drool. Bill Skarsgård wears prosthetic teeth to get that big, bucktoothed grin of Pennywise. The prosthetics made him drool excessively but they leave a lot of that in the movie as director Andy Muschietti felt it nicely fit into the ravenous nature of Pennywise.
George "Georgie" Elmer Denbrough is a fictional character created by Stephen King from his 1986 epic horror novel It. Georgie is the younger brother of Bill Denbrough, and falls prey to Pennywise the Clown. He is used by Pennywise to taunt Bill throughout the novel.
Pennywise is billions of years old and originates from the space beyond the universe. Carried to Earth countless years ago by a meteor, Pennywise found a new home living below the area of land that would eventually become the town of Derry, Maine.
Long answer: Pennywise is just another form used by the real creature. IT is the Deadlights, which are a sentinent, soul consuming energy. Very little is revealed about IT's true origins, even in the novel, as most information is either speculation from the Losers Club or a lie IT told to frighten them.
