‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Creators Finally Explain Why the Story Unfolds in Reverse

Note: This story contains spoilers from “It: Welcome to Derry” Episode 8.

The “It: Welcome to Derry” season finale finally revealed why the show planned to release seasons going further and further back in time.

The Season 1 finale of “Welcome to Derry” featured a square-off between Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) and the kids and adults trying to stop the military from releasing the monster from its cage. In the middle of that climax, Pennywise singles out Marge (Matilda Lawler) and moves to kill her specifically. He reveals that Marge goes on to mother Richie Tozier – one of the core Losers Club members – and says her son is responsible for killing him. That is, unless he can kill the girl that grows up to be Richie’s mom.

Here lies the explanation for why “Welcome to Derry” pushes each season further back in time toward Pennywise’s past Augury events. The monster is so cosmically ancient and powerful that it doesn’t experience time normally. Knowing the Losers Club eventually defeats it, a time-uncoupled Pennywise is traveling backward to ensure an ancestor is killed and they are never born. Creator and finale director Andy Muschietti told TheWrap that a few brief lines from Stephen King’s novel prompted him to think more deeply about how Pennywise exists alongside time.

“There’s something very mysterious in the book, there’s one moment of the Losers speculating about the way that It experiences time, but there’s not a single answer in the book,” Muschietti said. “It’s all questions. Sometimes there are assertions of what It is. I just picked on that – a couple of things from the book that are just like, barely mentioned, and we got very curious about. One of them is It’s experience of time. How does he move in time?”

He added: “We made it bigger to the point where the whole reason why we’re telling the story backwards – because a monster that doesn’t experience time linearly can live in time in a very different way, and at the same time, can rewrite history, right? Given that it’s a prequel, and that people normally with prequels are like, ‘Oh, okay, so why should I watch that if we know that the monster dies at the end?’ Well, not if he can rewrite history, right?”

The reveal of Marge’s future son also ties a link back to poor Rich (Arian S. Cartaya), who saved her during the Black Spot fire in Episode 7. The little girl clearly grew up and named her son after the boy who saved her life from Pennywise in the ’60s. But that’s not where Rich’s story ends, because, as the show notes, nobody is ever really gone in Derry. Muschietti explained that they wanted a “photo finish” to the season — and what better way for the kids to stop Pennywise in this Augury than with the ghostly return of their friend helping them out?

“There was a time in the script where Rich died and that was it,” Muschietti said. “We’re trying to figure out the final act of the last episode and I really wanted a photo finish there at the end – Pennywise crawling to the finish line and the kids not being able to just f–king sink the dagger. And I’m like, ‘Let’s bring f–king Rich. We have a character on the scene that sees dead people, Dick, we are completely not using. If this is a world where the dead are still around, which is true, where would Rich be?'”

As Dick says in the final moments — while Rich runs in to help his friends trap Pennywise one last time — he’s witnessing a “goddamn f–king miracle,” with the monster’s physical form finally contained in the town. Unfortunately, that’s only Pennywise’s body. Should the show get a Season 2 renewal, the creature’s mind is likely headed back to the ’30s to target another ancestor of the Losers’ Club during his last Augury event: the Bradley Gang Massacre.

“It: Welcome to Derry” is now streaming on HBO Max.

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