How Pennywise Fits into Stephen King’s Massive Book Universe

If you thought Pennywise was confined to one book, this article shows you the ways It pops up through King’s books.

Aigner Loren Wilson
3 min readDec 10, 2020
Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash

We all remember our first time meeting the infamously scary clown known as Pennywise. It came from the sewers or poked its big red nose out of an old drainpipe. Maybe you saw it in passing and were too afraid to go back and check to see what it really was. Pennywise has a way of seeping in through the cracks of Stephen King’s books and our minds as viewers and readers. King didn’t just create a monster that could scare us, he created a myth that hangs in the air of many of his books and ties them all together in a universe of his own making.

Recently, they’ve adapted the old miniseries ‘It’ into a movie directed by Andy Muschietti. In the movie, we are treated to a new, arguably more, disgustingly terrifying clown with an appetite that goes beyond gluttony. Pennywise’s debut novel and movie, though original in its horror and lore, only gave us a snapshot — a bloody and terrifying snapshot — of what and who this creature is. For fans who have delved deeper into King’s book universe, they know that Pennywise’s story doesn’t end or even truly begin in Derry, Maine.

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Aigner Loren Wilson

Helping writers tell better stories and sell their work. Work in Better Humans| The Writer| The Writing Cooperative. Follow to level up your writing.