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.
The character is an ancient, trans-dimensional evil entity who preys upon the children (and sometimes adults) of Derry, Maine, roughly every 27 years, using a variety of powers that include the ability to shapeshift, manipulate reality, and go unnoticed by adults.
Photo: Courtesy of WArner Bros Pictures. Every 27 years, a shape-shifting entity known as IT crawls out of the sewers to prey on the children of Derry, Maine. IT plasters himself with an unnatural grin, takes on the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and wreaks havoc.
I believe it was because Pennywise likes his victims afraid and fearful. And while Georgie was laughing he wasn't really afraid and Pennywise needed to make him feel suspicious and scared again so he could eat him.
27 years is the average for how long IT's hibernation lasts, but it's usually 3 decades so it could last longer or shorter. The feeding cycle usually lasts only about one year, but in the novel also lasted up to 3 years in earlier cycles.
Stephen King's IT introduced readers to a one-of-a-kind creature that can take any form, the most common one being Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and as menacing as it is, this creature has one big enemy it's truly scared of: Maturin, the turtle.
Regardless, she's one nasty beast and not alone due to the egg sack she's carrying. 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.
However, It must surrender the the laws of whatever shape It takes. Pennywise's strength is also his weakness. For example, if he were to take the shape of a werewolf (as he does in the novel), silver bullets would harm him.
(According to King's book, Pennywise actually is a spider—sort of. That's really just the closest visual approximation to what Pennywise's true form actually is, at least to our puny human minds.)
According to It, when humans got scared, "all the chemicals of fear flooded the body and salted the meat". This is why he prefers to feast on children -- their fears are simple, pure, and powerful compared to the complex, pathological fears of adults. Basically, children are delicious.
Kersh is Pennywise's daughter. Or at least the daughter of the man who originally had Pennywise's face. Additionally, the trailer offers a first glimpse of Bill (James McAvoy), Ben (Jay Ryan), Richie (Bill Hader), Eddie (James Ransone), and Mike (Isaiah Mustafa) back together.
With that in mind, IT is billions if not infinite years of age, as it existed before the universe itself and thus, as pointed out by fans, essentially has no beginning.
Almost certainly the most well-known evil clown (save for Batman¹s archnemesis, the Joker; more on him later), Pennywise is modeled after real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy, aka Pogo the Clown, a.k.a. "The Clown Killer." Gacy was convicted of sexually assaulting and killing 33 boys in 1980; he posed as a clown ...
The rest of the group realizes they can defeat it by shrinking it and therefore weakening it, which they achieve by standing up to it. They take out IT's heart and proceed to crush it, finally killing it. Eddie dies and his body is left behind.
Bill Denbrough described them as writhing, destroying orange lights, and IT as an endless, crawling, hairy creature made of that same light. The theory, then, suggests that the balloons are a representation of the deadlights and contain the souls of the children killed by IT.
“I told Bill, 'I want it in both directions, I want you to send your eyes looking away and give a really unsettling look'. He said, 'I can do it', so he did it. What are the chances? It's one in a million and he was cast already.
The spider-clown shrinks as the Losers hurl taunts at It, until it's tiny and weak enough that they pluck out its heart and squash it into nothingness. In the end, they defeat Pennywise by, uh, making him feel really bad about himself. It author Stephen King.
In Season 5, Georgie started a relationship with Mandy, and it wasn't long before she was pregnant. Among other problems, they weren't married, which caused the church to turn its back on the Coopers. Even with that, George, Mary and Meemaw embraced Mandy and brought her into the family.
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. The drooling around children was worked into the story.
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. A god of destruction, not just of our world, but of multiple worlds and even multiple universes.
Though there are some IT characters just as scary as Pennywise, the film's main villain proves to be its deadliest, with a kill count that actually reaches into the tens of thousands. Reddit user u/angelholme estimates that Pennywise actually took the lives of between 12,117 and 18,011 people.
