It: Welcome To Derry's Black Spot Episode Has A Stephen King Homage Hardly Anyone Caught

This article contains spoilers for "It: Welcome to Derry."

"It: Welcome to Derry" delivered a stunner of an episode with its seventh installment, all while continuing to deliver references to wider Stephen King lore and even sneaking in what might be the show's most obscure reference yet. As co-creator and showrunner Jason Fuchs confirmed in a recent interview, episode 7 included a blink-and-you'll-miss-it homage to lesser-known Stephen King miniseries, "Storm of the Century," and if you happened to catch it, you might just be able to call yourself a King mega-fan.

Today, the author is just as ubiquitous as he's ever been. In 2025, King's movie shows us how the world is ending, but there were a ton of films based on the author's less terrifying work. The best King movie of 2025, for example, wasn't even a horror film. As if that wasn't enough to satiate fans, the writer stayed part of the cultural conversation via his terse social media reviews of new movies and TV shows (evidently, he liked "The Black Phone 2"). Then, there was "It: Welcome to Derry," the HBO series that not only expanded the story started by 2017's "It" and 2019's "It Chapter Two," but introduced audiences to aspects of Stephen King lore that had previously represented as abstruse artifacts within the author's expansive oeuvre.

With a catalog as considerable as King's, such artifacts are plentiful, and "Welcome to Derry" snuck several in throughout its eight-episode first season. If you caught the "Carrie" reference in the finale episode, for instance, you're clearly a big King fan. But only the die-hards would have caught the "Storm of the Century" reference in episode 7.

Speaking to Deadline, Jason Fuchs said "Welcome to Derry" is "a love letter to Stephen King canon" and explained that "more often than not, the references are King." One aspect he points to is how the series suggested Pennywise was a time traveler (it's actually way more complicated than that). As Fuchs put it, "in terms of the reference to its uncertain relationship with time, that to me is more inspired by things like the Wheel of Ka, which is a piece of Stephen King mythology [from the 'Dark Tower' books] about the cyclical forces of destiny and fate."

Another reference that Fuchs said nobody had "picked out yet" came in episode 7 when the Maine Legion of White Decency (a gaggle of racists led by Peter Outerbridge's Clint Bowers) set the Black Spot bar alight. "When Bowers and his gang storm into the barracks [...] they are looking for Hank," said Fuchs, "and they say, 'Give us what we want, and we go away.' Well, that's actually a very specific reference to the miniseries 'Storm of the Century.'"

This 1999 horror miniseries wasn't based on any of King's novels. Instead, the author wrote an original screenplay for the show, which debuted on ABC in February of 99. It ran for three episodes and followed the residents of Little Tall Island, Maine, as they braced for a blizzard in 1989. Tim Daly starred as constable Mike Anderson, who not only has to prepare his secluded community but also contend with the arrival of mysterious stranger Andre Linoge (Colm Feore), who seems to possess an extensive knowledge of the community's dark secrets, which he ultimately uses to influence the residents to commit awful acts.

"Give me what I want, and I'll go away," the sinister demand made by Andre Linoge throughout "Storm of the Century," is the element that Jason Fuchs and co. used for one of the most subtle allusions in "It: Welcome To Derry." Not only is the line spoken by a minor character, but the show otherwise seemed concerned with expanding the "It" backstory and exploring the more grandiose meta-narrative of the King-verse. A brief reference to a little-known TV series was fated to pass by unacknowledged, but knowing it's there tells us that "Welcome to Derry" really was the "love letter to Stephen King canon" that Fuchs said it was. As the showrunner put it, "We're trying to make things feel like they are echoes in other corners of the Stephen King universe."

The showrunner went on to explain how the writers didn't want the show to feel like "a grab bag of Stephen King influences," which seems at odds with the "Storm of the Century" line. But as Fuchs said, "so many moments" in the series are "inspired by other Stephen King works," and in this instance, it was less about linking "Welcome to Derry" to the events of "Storm of the Century" than acknowledging this lesser-known King creation.

If you liked "It: Welcome to Derry," Netflix has the perfect Stephen King series with which to follow it up. The short-lived "Castle Rock" should scratch that small-town horror itch, especially since it also combined elements of King lore to create an original story. "Storm of the Century," however, is truly unique for being written specifically for TV by the author himself, and is also currently available on Hulu and Disney+ as an antidote to your "Welcome to Derry" blues.