IT: Welcome To Derry's 5 Scariest Monsters That Aren't Pennywise, Ranked

"It: Welcome to Derry" introduced itself with a horrifying opening scene that perfectly set the tone of the series. Since that surprisingly violent and disturbing debut, the "It" prequel series has gone on to showcase a variety of grotesque sequences in which the worst fears of It's victims are realized. Of course, the main draw here is Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise, who is on top form throughout the show as he terrorizes the citizens of Derry circa 1962. But Pennywise is far from the only form the titular evil takes in order to torture its victims.

"Welcome to Derry" takes elements of the Stephen King "It" novel and creates a whole new prequel story, weaving in parts of the King-verse to produce an impressively complex and interconnected tale that is basically a King fan's dream. But the show hasn't been without any missteps. For one thing, many viewers have voiced their disappointment with "Welcome to Derry" repeating a major mistake from the "It" movies, i.e. relying too much on CGI to depict some of the biggest scares.

Still, the HBO series has showcased some impressively inventive scares, even if it hasn't always executed them as well as viewers might have hoped. Some of the ideas behind the monsters in "Welcome to Derry" represent some delightfully twisted thinking on the part of the show's creators, and, dodgy CGI aside, it has — for the most part — made for some compelling horror. While Pennywise has, naturally, been the standout, there are plenty of other grim visions contained in "Welcome to Derry." Here are five of the scariest.

Long before Bill Skarsgåard's Pennywise shows up, "It: Welcome to Derry" kicks off with a horrific scene. But before things get outright twisted, we're treated to a more eerie and unsettling moment involving Miles Eckhardt's Matty Clements. The youngster is seen in a Derry theater sucking on a pacifier before he's chased out by an usher. During their pursuit, Stephen Rider's Hank Grogan talks to the usher and hints at Matty coming from an abusive home. We also see that the kid has a black eye, and it soon becomes clear he is really just trying to get away from a troubled home life and that the pacifier is a coping mechanism.

That makes the next section all the more haunting, as Matty seemingly comes across a family that represents everything he's ever wanted. He tries to hitch a ride out of town and eventually the family of four stops, promising to take him with them to Portland. Matty gets in the back seat alongside the two children and all seems to be well. But we soon learn that he is just the first victim of a newly re-awakened It, who's preying on Matty's longing for a stable home life and loving parents.

As the ride goes on, things get more and more disturbing, with the family's conversation becoming increasingly inappropriate before they all break out into uncanny laughter. Matty clearly realizes something is wrong, and it's just kind of sad to see him sucking on his pacifier as things descend into pure horror. What happens next is just downright gross (more on that later), but the fake family is scary in a truly tragic and upsetting way.

Pennywise has a lot of powers, and as this list shows, many of them involve poking at some of the most traumatic experiences in his victims' pasts. In the third episode of "It: Welcome to Derry," however, we see It indulge in a more straightforward scare that also happens to be frightening on a strangely elemental level. The episode reveals why James Remar's General Francis Shaw is so intrigued by Derry; in a flashback sequence to 1908, we see that Shaw previously visited the area as a child. When the young Shaw (Diesel La Torraca) visits a traveling carnival, he's disturbed by one of the performers: an emaciated elderly individual who's missing an eye and is known as the Skeleton Man (Peter Schoelier).

Later, we see that Shaw has befriended a young Rose (Violet Sutherland, with Kimberly Guerrero portraying Rose as an adult). The pair play in the Derry countryside, but Shaw wanders into the forest that, for years, has been It's hunting ground. There, the creature appears as the Skeleton Man, but this version is, of course, a more exaggerated, horrifying figure who eventually morphs into a giant version of himself (complete with a set of vicious teeth) and chases the kids through the trees.

This particular monster isn't as disturbing as most of the others on this list in that it doesn't seem to play into any of Shaw's deep-seated trauma. Instead, it's just a classically horrifying monster. What's more, the CGI used to animate this particular creature could have been better. But there's still something elementally scary about the Skeleton Man, who, even before It transforms him into an exaggerated monster, almost represents a sort of archetype of terror — like the old figure that frequently shows up in sleep paralysis hallucinations.

This actualization of It falls into the category of being more disturbing in theory than it is in practice. In "It: Welcome to Derry," we learn that Clara Stack's Lilly Bainbridge lost her father in a horrible pickle factory accident the year prior, wherein he was crushed by one of the machines while trying to retrieve a ring Lilly had left behind. This traumatic incident obviously led to a lot of guilt for Lilly, who soon after was sent to Juniper Hill Mental Asylum (a terrifying Stephen King location in its own right). When we meet the middle-schooler in 1962, she's clearly still haunted by the whole thing.

It's no surprise, then, that in order to scare the poor youngster, It resorts to re-animating Lilly's dead father as a series of mangled body parts contained in pickle jars. We first witness this horrifying vision during a sequence in the second episode, when Lilly finds her grocery store trip descending into chaos as It uses its powers to trap her in an aisle before the gruesome pickle dad monster emerges from the jars on a nearby shelf. The fact that this monstrosity talks to Lilly as it crawls its way towards her just makes the whole thing even worse.

Sadly, this particularly dark idea is somewhat undercut by, again, the heavy use of CGI. But there's no escaping the disturbing concept of witnessing your beloved dad returning as a series of mutilated body parts. Pickle Dad also makes a brief return later in the series when Lilly discovers the monster in her school desk, but again, the CGI leaves a lot to be desired. Still, the thought of it is enough to make this one of the most effective scares in the whole show.

The horrific opening scene of "It: Welcome to Derry" sees Matty Clements trying to hitch a ride out of the titular town before he's picked up by a family of four. By the end of his fateful trip, however, poor Matty has witnessed the birth of an abomination in the form of a flying demon baby monster that seems to be an actualization of the youngster's fear of nuclear-mutated offspring and a twisted subversion of the idea of family and birth.

We witness the god-forsaken "child" being birthed in a deeply upsetting moment that thankfully doesn't suffer from the CGI over-use problem that undermines several other scares in the show. Once this hell-spawn tears its way free, we see its nightmarish form in full. The demon baby's hollow eyes and grotesque visage are scary enough on their own, but the fact this thing has wings just makes it even more threatening. As it flaps its way around the car, still attached to its unholy umbilical cord, there's a palpable sense of danger for Matty, who at any moment could meet his end via a flying dive bomb from this airborne abomination.

But this opening scene isn't even the worst to feature the flying baby, who returns later in the "Welcome to Derry" pilot to deliver a shocking twist ending. The horrifying sequence sees Phil Malkin (Jack Molloy Legault), Teddy Uris (Mikkal Karim-Fidler), and Susie (Hunter Storm Baker) absolutely eviscerated by the tiny demon as they cower in a movie theater. It's a shockingly violent scene that proved absolutely nobody was safe in "Welcome to Derry."

"It: Welcome to Derry" is surprisingly scary and gruesome, with Ronnie Grogan's (Amanda Christine) vision of her dead mother being one of the best examples. It has a penchant for preying on the memory of deceased loved ones, as evidenced by the entity's Pickle Dad trick. But the evil beneath Derry outdoes itself with its cruel torture of Ronnie in the show's second episode. There, Ronnie encounters a warped vision of her dead mother that recalls the perverse subversion of childbearing showcased in the demon baby scene from the previous episode.

As Ronnie lays in bed, she becomes trapped under her covers, which transmogrify into a bizarre womb, forcing Ronnie to fight her way out. In one of the more inventive scares in the whole series, we then see the bed itself transform into Ronnie's mother, who tells her daughter, "You came out of me and ripped me right open." It's truly nightmarish and one of the most intense moments in the entire show. It helps that the VFX in this scene are much more convincing than in others, thanks to the whole thing playing out in the low light of Ronnie's bedroom.

That would be enough by itself to traumatize anyone. (It's a miracle these kids aren't permanently rocking back and forth in the fetal position for the rest of this show.) But episode 2 of "Welcome to Derry" also goes on to give us one of the most gruesome sequences of the whole show when the mother's stomach turns into a pair of serrated jaws, with Ronnie being dragged towards the ungodly maw via an umbilical cord. It's an unholy sight that no other scare in this series can match.

You can catch "It: Welcome to Derry" in all its depravity on HBO Max.