It: Welcome to Derry, from the very first episode, has been nothing short of a blood-soaked, petrifying, yet highly entertaining and thrilling horror ride that could take the upcoming seasons in interesting directions.
SPOILER WARNING!
Season 1 culminates with a sense of relief and satisfaction as the main characters successfully defeat Pennywise. However, the ending cleverly hints at future stories by including a dark twist.
The finale (Episode 8) starts with the military accidentally freeing Pennywise into the town when they blow up a shard that was keeping him trapped in the woods. Pennywise immediately targets all the town’s children, leading them to his secret lair. The show’s three young female protagonists, Marge, Lilly, and Ronnie, must race against time to stop him.
Meanwhile, Hallorann joins forces with Hanlon and Rose to find the only thing that can truly defeat Pennywise, the piece of the fallen star. While the main characters of the Stephen King show manage to resolve the immediate threat, a final plot twist and a cameo appearance show that Pennywise’s evil impact is still around.
The final episode drops a major twist. Pennywise explains his perception of time to Marge. The entity sees time not as a straight line (past to future) but as a simultaneous continuum, where the past, present, and future all happen at once. To prove this, Pennywise shows Marge a picture of Richie Tozier, claiming Richie will be Marge’s son in the future.
Pennywise explains that defeating him in one timeline (like 1962 or even the 2016 defeat in It Chapter Two) makes no difference because his past versions still exist.
While he is defeated for good after 2016, the entity will remain powerful and omnipresent in the time between his arrival on Earth and his final death. This means each generation will be forced to fight him to prevent Derry from letting its fear spread.
We even see It: Welcome to Derry jumping to 1988, showing a scene at Juniper Hill Asylum where Beverly Marsh’s mother dies by suicide (before the events of the 1989 IT movie). A patient possessed by Pennywise appears, suggesting the entity was responsible for the mother’s death. This confirms that the characters only achieved a temporary victory, but they did not end the cyclical nature of Pennywise’s evil.
The ending also provides a connection to The Shining. Dick Hallorann leaves Derry after finding a job at a hotel in London. This sets him up to eventually work at the infamous Overlook Hotel in Colorado within eight years, as the timeline aligns with the 1970 events of The Shining.
Moreover, Rose’s final warning suggests that future residents of Derry will surely release the monster when it’s time for him to feed. Upcoming installments of the series are expected to fill in the timeline between 1962 and 1989, revealing the precise events that led to Pennywise being fully freed before the movies begin.
Because of the time travel twist at the end of It: Welcome to Derry Season 1, the show can keep featuring Pennywise in its stories as long as those events happen before 2016. This essentially gives the franchise unlimited options for how it can continue. Stay tuned for more updates.
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