IT: Welcome To Derry Had To Cut The Origin Story For One Of Its Most Hated Characters

You'd think that going back through the pages of Stephen King's "It" to find enough material for a prequel series might leave you with a dearth of content. But the creatives behind the surprisingly gruesome and scary "It: Welcome to Derry" actually wound up having to cut some planned aspects of their HBO show, including an origin story for one of the most-hated characters in the franchise's history: Eddie's mother Sonia Kaspbrak.

Originally appearing in King's 1986 novel, Sonia was played by Molly Atkinson in Andy Muschietti's 2017 film adaptation "It" and its 2019 follow-up "It Chapter Two." The character is a paranoid, manipulative, and overbearing mother who convinces her son, Eddie (played by Jack Dylan Grazer in the two Muschietti films, with James Ransone portraying the older version) that he has various health issues as a way of limiting his freedom. In the book and movies, Eddie eventually learns he's perfectly healthy and that his medication is a placebo which his mother used to exert further control. What's more, she actively discourages his friendship with the Losers Club kids and blames them for Eddie sustaining a broken arm. In the Muschietti films, Sonia dies from cancer between the first and second movie but returns in the latter during one of Eddie's nightmarish visions conjured by It.

As such, Sonia isn't exactly a fan-favorite character, but with "Welcome to Derry," she might have become slightly more sympathetic. That is, if Andy and Barbara Muschietti, along with their co-creator on the show, Jason Fuchs, stuck to their original plan to give her an origin story that would have explained some of her controlling behavior.

Early episodes of "It: Welcome to Derry" — which was designed to answer three main questions — touched on the creation of a Paul Bunyan statue in Derry, with a poster promising construction would be completed in 1962 — 27 years before the events of "It Chapter One." That's significant because It emerges every 27 years to terrorize the local residents, and the show was foreshadowing what was to come. In "It Chapter Two," the titular evil entity even uses the Paul Bunyan statue to terrify Richie (Finn Wolfhard), transforming it into a giant monstrosity that chases the youngster through Derry.

In "It: Welcome to Derry," the origin of that statue would have coincided with the origin of Sonia Kaspbrak. In an interview with Straw Hat Goofy, Andy Muschietti explained how the original plan for the series included a young Sonia arriving in-town. "At one point we had Eddie Kaspbrak's mom," explained the co-creator, who also directed the show's first two episodes. "She was an outsider [...] She came from Portland, she came from another city, and she's a reporter, and she's like covering for a small paper, she's covering the drama of Paul Bunyan being built, and people hate it, and they're protesting." According to Muschietti, after arriving in Derry, Sonia soon begins to realize there's a much darker, more important story to tell. "She comes and sees that there's something wrong," he continued "[...] There's, like, disappearing kids and all these things, so she's very fast and switches and is like, 'I gotta cover this story.'"

Had Sonia's storyline been kept in the show, we would have eventually seen her transform into the controlling mother we saw in 2017's "It." Unfortunately, the series was simply too packed.

"It: Welcome to Derry" is a complex series in terms of the various storylines it follows. Not only is it a prequel to the "It" films, but "Welcome to Derry" also has a major link with "The Shining" via Chris Chalk's Dick Hallorann and weaves in multiple elements from other King novels. Unfortunately, that meant Sonia Kaspbrak had to be dropped from the show, which is a shame because her evolution in the series would have explained a lot about her later behavior.

According to Andy Muschietti, after arriving in Derry, Sonia would have been subsumed by the fog which hangs over the town — a metaphorical representation of humanity's ability to overlook injustice and suffering but also a literal tool of the dark forces in Derry that causes residents to forget the terrors wrought by It. As Muschietti went on to explain, "The funny thing about Sonia is that she starts as a real person, 'I want to actively denounce what's going on,' and questioning people about the fog [...] and slowly over the course of the episode she falls into the fog and she becomes like a very complacent member of this community. And eventually she becomes the mother of Eddie Kaspbrak."

Alas, Muschietti and his co-creators simply had to drop Sonia from the show because "there was so much story," with the director adding, "We couldn't put all the scoops of ice cream that we wanted." He also noted that Sonia and Taylour Paige's Charlotte Hanlon shared similarities in terms of being outsiders who start to question the strange occurrences in Derry, which also seems to have played into his decision to cut Sonia from the series.

"It: Welcome to Derry" is streaming on HBO Max.