IT: Welcome to Derrys chaotic ending, explained
Well, that was a lot, wasn't it? The near feature-length finale of IT: Welcome to Derry casts the whole of Derry in grim fog, with the military working to try and let Pennywise loose on America while the kids, Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk), and Major Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) try and recage IT.
There are flash forwards, hints of time travel, and some ties to Stephen King's novels and the IT movies that you may have missed. We've broken down all the major questions below.
What happens to Pennywise?
At the end of episode 7, Pennywise's cycle of killing came to an end with the fire at the Black Spot, and the creature was ready to return to the sewers to sleep for another 27 years — until the army got involved. General Shaw (James Remar) and the gang decided it would be a great idea to let the clown loose, and they ended up destroying one of the pillars that forms a circle around Derry and acts as a cage for the creature.
In the finale of episode 8, Pennywise makes a break for the far bank of a river surrounding Derry, which is apparently the point at which it'll be totally free of the other pillars acting as its cage. Fortunately, it doesn't get that far. Using their own fragment of the meteor that IT crashed to Earth in years before, the kids are able to reform the cage moments before the creature tears them to pieces. It's dragged away from them into the distance, presumably to return to hibernation until the 1988 cycle starts.
IT: Welcome to Derry's finale introduces the possibility of time travel.
Before the kids capture Pennywise, the clown drags Marge (Matilda Lawler) away and reveals to her that she'll one day have a son: Richie Tozier, a key character and member of the Losers' Club in the book and movies.
"The seed of your stinking loins and his filthy friends bring me my death! Or is it birth?" growls Pennywise. "I get confused. Tomorrow? Yesterday? It's all the same for little Pennywise."
Later, back at the safety of the stand pipe, Marge talks to Lilly (Clara Stack) about what Pennywise said.
"He said, to him, the past, present, and future are all the same. And that his death was actually his birth," Marge says. "I know it sounds crazy, but what if he tries to go back and kill someone from the time before we were born, like our parents?"
Lilly's response? "I guess it'll be someone else's fight."
This conversation seems to be a set up for future seasons of IT: Welcome to Derry. We already know that co-creator Andy Muschietti wants there to be three seasons, with Season 2 and Season 3 jumping back in time to Pennywise's previous killing cycles. Marge and Lilly's exchange is the perfect lead-in to this.
What's next for Major Hanlon and Dick Hallorann?
The final scenes with Hanlon and Hallorann are nods to both Stephen King's wider work and the IT movies. Hallorann, who is best known as a key character in The Shining, tells Hanlon that he's going to work in a friend's hotel in London as a chef — the start of a career that we know will eventually take him to The Overlook Hotel.
"How much trouble can a hotel be?" he says. Of course, readers of the book will know exactly how much trouble.
Hanlon, meanwhile, decides to stay in Derry with his family and start work on a farm. As readers of the book know, his grandson will be Mike Hanlon, another key member of the Losers' Club.
What's with the flash forward in the final scene?
The final scene in the series has an unexpected flash forward to 1988, where we meet yet another Losers' Club member, Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis, reprising her role from the movies), witnessing her mother's suicide at Juniper Hill.
Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe), now an old lady who has presumably been in the asylum since the events of the 1960s cycle, appears behind her, smiling, and tells her that nobody in Derry ever really dies.
This scene essentially brings things back full circle to the movies, linking to a scene in IT: Chapter Two when an older Beverly (Jessica Chastain) is terrorised by the creature in Mrs. Kersh's form.