The Spooky Character That Stephen King Knows Will Outlive Him

Through the 65 books adorned with Stephen King's name and the 200 short stories sprinkled among them, there are good, bad, and truly monstrous characters filling the worlds he's created and cracked open to spill into others. With such a wide variety, everyone has a favorite that has more often than not, jumped from the page and onto the screen to gain a second life. There's one above all, however, that the author feels will outlive them all and be a name that will perhaps even outlive his own, long after he's gone so long as there's fear to feast on.

In an interview with The New York Times, King predicted that Pennywise the Clown, the nefarious child-eating monster from "It" will stand the test of time, even if he doesn't. "When I was growing up, the big paperback writer was John D. MacDonald. When he died, his work pretty much disappeared," King recalled. "I don't know what will happen to my stuff when I die, but one thing I'm pretty sure of is that Pennywise will be around. The rest of the stuff may disappear, but 200 years from now, people will say, 'Pennywise is really scary.'" Beep, beep, Mr. King.

There's no doubt that King's tale of Derry's most monstrous resident became an even stronger scare magnet thanks to the notable efforts of both Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgård taking on the role of Pennywise in their respective adaptations of "It" in 1990 and 2017. Reaching audiences with their balloon-bursting, child-devouring monsters they no doubt increased the number of coulrophobia sufferers (fear of clowns). But perhaps the secret to him still being scary is that just like the very nature of King's beast, the trauma of Pennywise, like the losers that battle him, grows with us.

So many beloved nightmares of literature, film, and television are something to be feared because they have time on their side. They're an evil that can only die through specific means, and it takes a worn down, flawed hero (or heroes) to vanquish them. Pennywise, however, is to King's team of daring kids, the embodiment of a past they blocked out. He's childhood trauma with a button nose, tapping into the fears they'd fought to forget, which makes him perhaps an all the more relatable monster that really will last longer than his maker. Regardless of the story's disappointing ending (which even Tim Curry wasn't satisfied with), the presence of Pennywise sticks in the minds of anyone who's looked down a storm drain, or seen a stray red balloon floating through the sky and is all the more likely to stay there given the plans for the killer clown's future. 

Just like any horror, if the dread and fear that it manifests are strong enough to strike fear into its audiences, it'll linger for years for future generations and Pennywise is no exception. King's character is one that can be brought back to life for any brave soul daring to step into those terrifying clown's shoes whether it's in another 27 years or more later and they'll be joining a limited legacy that has done impressive work handling the creature.

While Tim Curry might be a favorite for /Film readers, Skarsgård's stint as Pennywise was certainly commendable and enough to even warrant his return to the yet-to-be-released Max anthology series, "Welcome to Derry." That show will focus on the chilling history that predates the "It" films and will see what kind of antics Pennywise got up to before Bill Denborough and the rest of the Loser's Club decided to kill that f*****g clown. With this effort alone, there's no doubt that Pennywise will still chill spines for a few more years proving that if in doubt, there's always time to send in the clown.