It: Welcome To Derry Changed A Key Detail From It (And For A Good Reason)

"It: Welcome to Derry" season 1 revolved around adapting the most disturbing moment from Stephen King's original "It" novel. That moment was the Black Spot fire, wherein white supremacists burn down a speakeasy for Derry's Black military members. But this wasn't the first time we'd seen that speakeasy in the "It" universe crafted by Andy Muschietti. The Black Spot was seen in a photograph in 2017's "It," but the version seen in "Welcome to Derry" looked significantly different. That raises the question of why the series essentially ret-conned the movie to which it serves as a prequel. Ultimately, however, it seems it simply came down to the fact the show was developed long after the movie debuted. 

"Welcome to Derry" was an ambitious project from the get-go, expanding brief interludes from Stephen King's 1986 novel "It" into a full season of television. Somehow, co-creators Jason Fuchs and Andy and Barbara Muschietti pulled it off, delivering an engrossing, surprisingly scary and gruesome series with "Welcome to Derry." Of course, making an entire series based on short extracts from the source material meant the creators had a lot of creative freedom, resulting in a show that contains all sorts of additions to established King lore. What's more, the creative team also had to keep in mind the continuity established by Andy Muschietti's two "It" films.

In theory, that meant Muschietti and his cohorts had to adhere to a version of the Black Spot speakeasy depicted in that photo from 2017's "It." But rather than feel beholden to this original vision for the bar, the creators simply did what they felt was best for the series.

In the "It" novel, the Black Spot fire moment is recalled by Loser's Club member Mike Hanlon's dying father, Will Hanlon (played by Blake Cameron James in "It: Welcome to Derry"), who recounts how the Black Spot was a speakeasy for Derry's Black military members. He then explains how it was burned down by a white supremacist group called the Maine Legion of White Decency and even remembers seeing a sinister bird hovering over the massacre — a reference to Pennywise taking on another form in order to hunt for terrified patrons amid the chaos.

The 2017 "It" movies references the horrific event when Loser's Club member Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor) researches the history of Derry and reports back to his friends. Among Ben's photocopies of past newspaper reports is a picture of the Black Spot, which is shown to be a brick and mortar store on a street lined with other similar businesses. In prequel series "It: Welcome to Derry," however, the Black Spot — the site of a major character death — is shown to be a converted storage unit out in the woods, which means the show ret-conned this aspect of the Muschietti "It"-verse and, as it turns out, was far more faithful to the book in doing so.

In Stephen King's "It," Will Hanlon recalls how Black military members built their own "club" in an "old requisition shed." Hanlon says the shed was "dark and smelly, full of old tools and boxes of papers that had gone moldy," with just two small windows, no electricity, and a dirt floor. But the soldiers soon transformed it into a makeshift club, which became a haven for Derry's Black military members.

In "It: Welcome to Derry," the Black Spot is depicted with the same makeshift aesthetic. It's secluded in the woods and was clearly never meant to be used as a social gathering place. In that sense, it's much closer to how King described the original Black Spot in his novel. All of which means Andy Muschietti and his co-creators essentially ret-conned their own movie by making the speakeasy much closer to its original form with the TV show. If Andy and Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs could invent an entire origin story for It, then they could surely rework elements of the movies to better serve the story they were telling — especially since "Welcome to Derry" was developed after the movies became successful.

Ultimately, the HBO series was never about staying entirely faithful to established "It" lore, so Muschietti and co. simply extended that ethos to their own work and created a Black Spot that better served their story. "Welcome to Derry" continued that approach by changing one of Pennywise's biggest murder scenes. Instead of hovering in his bird-form like in the novel, the crazed clown appears in his harlequin form during the Black Spot fire to feast on the faces of the trapped patrons. It's another major change, but that proved to be the best overall approach.