Stephen King: How IT’s Pennywise Makes a Creepy Cameo in 11/22/63

It didn’t make the TV adaptation, but Stephen King’s 11/22/63 novel features a creepy cameo by none other than IT villain Pennywise the Clown. Dozens and dozens of King’s novels and short stories have been adapted into movies and TV shows over the years, but one area they’ve been lacking in is depicting the overall King universe. The author’s diehard fans tend to love how he often includes references to or even outright characters from past works within his latest books.

Unfortunately, Hollywood adaptations will always be at least somewhat limited as to how they can approach creating some kind of connected King cinematic universe, thanks to the hurdles of legal rights deals, and different studios controlling different stories. To be sure, references to other King projects do happen in King adaptations, they’re just generally not to another specific adaptation, thus preventing them from tying directly together in a matter similar to something like the MCU or The Conjuring-verse.

One of King’s coolest callbacks to a prior book came in his 2011 novel 11/22/63. The book centers on Jake Epping, a teacher who goes through a time portal into the past, on a mission to prevent the infamous assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy. During his adventure though, Jake ends up spending some time in Derry, Maine, and needless to say, he doesn’t end up fond of the place.

How IT’s Pennywise Makes a Creepy Cameo in 11/22/63

11/22/63 features one of the most direct connections to IT found in any later Stephen King book, as Jake Epping runs into Losers’ Club members Beverly Marsh and Richie Tozier not long after his arrival in Derry. He’s able to get information from them concerning a side quest he’s looking to carry out, as the two immediately sense that there’s something special about him. When thinking about the the things he’s seen in Derry later though, Jake recalls a visit to the Kitchener Ironworks, and while he doesn’t know about Pennywise, it’s pretty obvious who he ran into while there. Here’s the passage from King’s book.

I can tell you one more thing: there was something inside that fallen chimney at the Kitchener Ironworks. I don’t know what and I don’t want to know, but at the mouth of the thing I saw a heap of gnawed bones and a tiny chewed collar with a bell on it. A collar that had surely belonged to some child’s beloved kitten. And from inside the pipe—deep in that oversized bore—something moved and shuffled.

 

Come in and see, that something seemed to whisper in my head. Never mind all the rest of it, Jake—come in and see. Come in and visit. Time doesn’t matter in here; in here, time just floats away. You know you want to, you know you’re curious. Maybe it’s even another rabbit-hole. Another portal.

 

Maybe it was, but I don’t think so. I think it was Derry in there—everything that was wrong with it, everything that was askew, hiding in that pipe. Hibernating. Letting people believe the bad times were over, waiting for them to relax and forget there had ever been bad times at all.

 

I left in a hurry, and to that part of Derry I never went back.

Jake’s brief but terrifying encounter with some incarnation of Pennywise kind of comes out of left field, as it’s almost like IT decided to intrude into 11/22/63, briefly hijacking the story. Thankfully, Jake was able to resist Pennywise’s attempt to lure him in, as there’s no doubt what he would’ve encountered at the end of that pipe was not a time portal, but instead Pennywise’s rows and rows of razor sharp teeth. While it doesn’t really seem like King ever plans to write an IT sequel, the above sequence in 11/22/63 is one of many references in later King books that make it pretty clear Pennywise isn’t quite dead after his defeat by the Losers’ Club, even if he’s not quite at full strength.

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