How the ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Finale Expands the Stephen King Universe

IT: Welcome to Derry ended its first season on Sunday with the episode titled Winter Fire. The season finale closed the loop on pressing storylines, opened up the possibilities for new narrative directions, inspired a handful of new questions and revealed just how high the stakes can go with Stephen King’s classic killer clown.

After all the iterations I’ve seen of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the HBO prequel unveiled some new sinister tricks the extradimensional entity had up its sleeve. That is by design. Co-creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti (along with showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane) have a long game planned for the horror series. 

If everything goes their way, we’ll get a total of three seasons here, with each taking place further in the past. That means a second season would take us back to the year 1935; a third would dial it back to 1908. 

I’m not here to talk about the future — I mean, past? — of the show, though. This is about Sunday’s season finale. My focus is on the key events that transpired here and why I think they made this a way better episode than the show’s pilot. There are major story spoilers below. Let’s get into it.

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Will’s class gets caught in the Deadlights 

Something I have truly enjoyed about this series is the disturbing lengths it goes to in order to deliver a scare. This season has had some truly unsettling sequences throughout. The finale has a handful of them, but there’s one specifically I can’t get out of my head: Pennywise’s school performance.

One of the pillars keeping the extradimensional entity caged up was removed by the military in Episode 7, unleashing Pennywise to do his worst to the townspeople of Derry. Instead of just taking one or two children in a fit of violence, he went and took ’em all in a creepy scene that found the clown doing a vaudevillian performance that ended with his head cracking open and all hell breaking loose.

Will Hanlon and the rest of the kids were taken by the creature’s Deadlights, leading to what I can only describe as a Pied Piper-style procession of children to their doom. I’ll admit, a handful of plot points felt hackneyed throughout this eight-episode run. But the visuals (even the sloppy CGI ones) delivered a sinister tone. I can only imagine that if the show continues, things will just get more unsettling. I’m here for it.

The redemption of Dick Hallorann 

Dick Hallorann, who you may know from The Shining, has a drive-by role in Stephen King’s IT novel, alluding to a disastrous fire at a place called the Black Spot. That little detail was expanded upon in Episode 7 of HBO’s prequel series, and thankfully, Hallorann’s role in the show was way bigger than that tragic event. 

Throughout the season, the character of Hallorann was given delightful new shades, thanks to the stellar performance by Chris Chalk. Until that penultimate episode, Hallorann did as he was told and served the military as their psychic secret weapon. His skills helped them track down one of the ancient pillars that kept Pennywise imprisoned. Once that was removed — and once Dick’s mental lock box was opened, freeing the dead souls and voices that haunt him — the man had lost his will to go on.

That was until Leroy Hanlon asked for his help to find his missing son. Instead of using his Shining powers for the benefit of the Military Industrial Complex, he did his part to slow Pennywise down, which led to the kids winning and Pennywise being put back in his cage.

Where will he go from here? As Dick tells Leroy after all the action had subsided, there’s a hotel that’s hiring him as a cook. “How much trouble can a hotel be?” he said in his final scene. Oh, Dick. If you only knew.

Beep beep, Margie

A good portion of the episode takes place on an icy lake. Lilly, Ronnie and Marge got the pillar a good distance before the military intervened. Then Marge was separated from her friends. This was her first face-to-face encounter with Pennywise, and while it was super terrifying for the young lady, it was also super informative on a narrative level.

It turns out Marge here is the future mother of Richie Tozier, played by Finn Wolfhard in IT: Chapter 1. This is noteworthy in that we now gain insight into the character’s name as Marge’s first love, Richie Santos, sacrificed himself in the Black Spot fire to save her life. This revelation may also explain why that once she becomes his mom, she ends up being overly protective of him. 

“The seed of your stinking loins and his friends bring me my death. Or is it birth?” Pennywise says. 

It seems that time is but a flat circle for Ol’ Pennywise, leading Marge to voice a valid concern that the supernatural clown may target her ancestors and those of her friends to prevent them from being born, thus stopping all of this from happening in the first place. If you want to break your brain, just sit in that thought for a while. Talk about a horror retcon that’ll set the fandom on fire.

About that final moment…

I wasn’t a big fan of the Ingrid Kersh storyline, even though it was cool to see the Pennywise of the past — before he started eating children and all. That said, the finale’s final moments put a fun nail in the proverbial coffin by showing her growing old in a psychiatric facility. 

A cut to the year 1988, 26 years later, finds her interacting with a young girl after the girl’s mother was found hanging in her room. That girl is Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis reprises her role), who is in tears. Her father’s there, too, and he forcefully pushes her, alluding to the abuse that follows after Elfrida Marsh exits the picture. 

Kersh says to Beverly, “You know what they say about Derry. No one who dies here ever really dies,” further connecting the series to the movies that put the Muschiettis on the map. 

This iteration of Ingrid Kersh also appears in IT: Chapter Two. In the sequence, older Beverly Marsh (played by Jessica Chastain) visits the woman, who informs her of her father’s death. And then she transforms into Pennywise — who cosplays as a giant naked old woman, because of course he does. 

When all is said and done, I was pleasantly surprised with IT: Welcome to Derry. It introduced a new, likeable Losers Club, expanded on certain classic Stephen King storylines and upped the ante regarding what Pennywise the Dancing Clown could actually do. Turns out, there’s a bunch of violence up that monster’s sleeve. 

This show is a reminder that, really, I’ll never turn down a trip to King’s troubled town of Derry, Maine. And I’m glad to say this journey was way more satisfying than Castle Rock was eight years ago. Here’s hoping we get a Season 2 because I’m eager to return for more.