Pennywise appears to be a male clown, but its gender is a mystery. Indeed, It might be a female or male. At one point in the book, the creature turns into a pregnant female spider. The Losers Club then assume they're battling a female.
Pennywise slumbered beneath the Earth for millions of years, awaiting the arrival of Mankind. When the town of Derry was built in 1715, IT awoke and began a cycle of feeding on the fears of the people of Stephen King's Derry and then resuming hibernation for cycles of 27 to 30 years.
Basement. The first hidden appearance we have here of Pennywise is actually his first appearance in the actual movies. If you pay attention, you'll see Pennywise's eyes peeking through the shadows of the basement while Georgie heads down the stairs.
In the novel, It claims that its true name is Robert "Bob" Gray, but decided to be named “It”. Throughout the book, It is generally referred to as male due to usually appearing as Pennywise.
In the novel, It's origins are nebulous. He took the form of a clown most frequently, Mr. Bob Gray or Pennywise, but his true form is an ancient eldritch entity from another universe who landed in the town that would become Derry by way of an asteroid and first awoke in 1715.
According to It, when humans got scared, "all the chemicals of fear flooded the body and salted the meat". This is why he prefers to feast on children -- their fears are simple, pure, and powerful compared to the complex, pathological fears of adults.
Red balloons are Pennywise's calling cards, and he often uses them as bait to kidnap children.
Image via Warner Bros. Finally, Pennywise is beaten into submission. He scurries away, utters the word "fear," and partially disintegrates before falling into the void. It's a powerful defeat of a powerful monster, and it's satisfaction enough were IT to remain a single film.
It's primary goal is to feed on humans, generally preferring children over adults since they were easier to scare and manipulate.
In one scene, Jessica Chastain's Beverly sees a vision of Pennywise the clown before he puts on his white paint and we finally get a glimpse of Bill Skarsgård's actual face. He's the man behind the terrifying evil entity that's giving an entire new generation a clown phobia.
Stephen King's 'IT' introduced readers to a one-of-a-kind creature that can take any form, the most common one being Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and as menacing as it is, this creature has one big enemy it's truly scared of: Maturin, the turtle.
The simplest and most obvious interpretation is that all the talk of floating is a reference to the fact that Pennywise (aka the titular "It") murders his victims and drags them down to the town's sewer system where he dwells, which is full of water. And what do dead bodies do in water? That's right — they float.
The Losers moulded it into the form of a spider because that was all their puny human minds could perceive it as, but it wasn't really the spider. In the same way that a spider cannot truly understand what a human being is.
Though it is just before the next twenty-seven year IT cycle, this is our first glimpse of Pennywise in IT Chapter One. In the opening scene of the film, young Georgie Denbrough playing with a paper boat made for him by his brother Bill. He loses the boat down the sewer and faces Pennywise when he tries to get it back.
The Deadlights are orange writhing lights that exist in Todash Darkness. Pennywise uses its Deadlights to break a person's mind because one look at the Deadlights will make a person go insane due to it not being able to be comprehended by a human mind.
Related: What Does Pennywise Really Look Like In IT? IT arrived on Earth through an event similar to an asteroid impact, landing in what would later become Derry, Maine. Once there, IT adopted its usual pattern of hibernation that lasted between 27 and 30 years, awakening to kill and eat and then going back to sleep.
Still, the film gives viewers a pretty good sense of who Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), Beverly (Sophia Lillis), Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), Richie (Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard), Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer ), Stanley (Wyatt Oleff), and Mike (Chosen Jacobs) are.
I'll drive you crazy and I'll kill you all! I'm every nightmare you've ever had! I am your worst dream come true! I'M EVERYTHING YOU EVER WERE AFRAID OF!
In Stephen King's book, an ancient turtle named Mataurin, who created the universe, gives those kids, known collectively as the Losers Club, the information to defeat It during a psychic ritual.
Being such a powerful being, Pennywise clearly sensed that the yellow coloring was unsettling to Georgie, so he changed his eyes to blue on the fly as a way to make Georgie associate him with family and safety. This made Georgie all the easier to lure in to his bloody demise.
In It, the symbol of the red balloon is turned on its head. What symbolizes a child's sense of imagination is manipulated to lure children to the clown, Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård).
Jackson Robert Scott, the 8-year-old who played Georgie in the mega-blockbuster hit that was It, went to a weekend screening of his movie dressed as ... Georgie. As in, the film's first on-screen victim of Pennywise the Clown, who later repeats the phrase "You'll float, too!"
Georgie Denbrough - Wikipedia
dies, Pennywise was thinking about his first meal in 27 years, and in Pennywise's words, fear in a kid is like “salting the meat.” So, when Georgie was laughing, Pennywise knew Georgie was not scared so he stopped laughing to make sure he was still fearful.