It: Welcome to Derry: parents' guide
Best for ages 16 and up. Rated TV-MA.
A gory, frightening prequel series for older teens who can handle more than the It movies. Set in 1962, it follows a group of kids and a Black Air Force family in a town where children keep vanishing, and it does not spare children: nearly a whole group of kids is slaughtered in the first episode, and more die later. Expect bloody body horror, frequent f-words (many from kids), a racist mob setting a deadly fire, kids getting drugged on a parent's sedatives, and an epilogue in which a girl finds her mother dead by suicide. The graphic child death puts it at 16.
What's in it
Violence
StrongVery graphic: a creature tears apart children in a movie theater, leaving one holding a friend's severed hand, a girl caught in a vision injures her own eye with shop tools, masked men beat a man with pipes, and a mob burns a Black-owned club.
Language
StrongPlugged In counted 10 f-words and 8 s-words in the first episode alone, plus 'ass,' 'dick' and misuse of God's name. The kids swear as freely as the adults.
Sex and nudity
MildNo sex scenes. Kids joke about breasts and bras, a boy spies on a woman undressing, and an affair is mentioned. A bloody birth scene shows a woman from the waist down without underwear; Plugged In says her genitals are visible.
Drinking, drugs and smoking
StrongAdults drink beer and whiskey. In episode 5 the kids each swallow three of a friend's mother's prescription sedatives to blunt the creature's hold on their fear before entering the sewers, then stumble on in a drugged haze.
Scary or intense scenes
StrongRelentless jump scares and disturbing images: a monstrous baby born in a bloody sac, a living lampshade of human skin, a dead father's insides attacking his daughter, children's bodies in the sewers, and a girl discovering her mother's suicide.
Sensitive topics
- Death of a child
- Death of a parent
- Racism
- Bullying
- Self-harm
- Suicide
Worth talking about
The show ties Derry's monster to the town's human cruelty, especially racism toward the Hanlon family and Black airmen. Talk about which horrors in the story are supernatural and which echo real history.
On our lists
Similar picks around 16+
Checked October 13th, 2026 against Common Sense Media, Plugged In, Wikipedia, tvline.com, popheist.com, tvobsessive.com, classificationoffice.govt.nz, aol.com, thedailybeast.com. The age is our judgment, not an official rating, and every family draws its lines differently: read the notes, not just the number. Spotted something we missed? Tell us. How we rate.