The finale of IT: Welcome to Derry left many viewers with questions. The HBO prequel series concluded its first season with a confrontation against Pennywise that looked very different from the clown’s defeat in the 2019 movie IT: Chapter Two. Creators of the series have now explained this key difference, revealing it is not a contradiction but a crucial piece of a larger story.
In the 2019 film, the adult Losers’ Club defeats Pennywise by overcoming their fear, causing the entity to shrink until they can rip out its heart and crush it. The finale of Welcome to Derry, however, shows a group of children and adults in 1962 not destroying Pennywise, but using a magical artifact to force him back into a dormant state. According to the show’s makers, this was not a death, but the entity being forced back to sleep for another 27-year cycle.
How Pennywise Was Contained in 1962
The season’s climax centers on a cosmic cage that has trapped the entity under Derry for centuries. This cage is made from pieces of the meteor It arrived in. In the finale, the U.S. military, seeking to weaponize the creature, destroys one of these pieces. This weakens the cage, allowing Pennywise to grow more powerful and nearly escape Derry entirely.
To stop him, the young protagonists—Lilly, Will, Marge, and Ronnie—must retrieve their own fragment of the meteor. In a tense sequence at a frozen river, they succeed in placing it back into the ground just in time. This action repairs the cage. Instead of being killed, a screaming Pennywise is dragged away by an unseen force, returning to his hibernation in the sewers until the next cycle.
“It wasn’t a death… He literally just went back to sleep because the fence went back up and limited his power again,” explained one observer of the finale.
This directly contrasts with the movies’ final battle, which was a permanent end. The series shows a temporary containment, a victory that only delays the horror.
The Creators’ Explanation: A Being Beyond Time
Co-creators Andy Muschietti and Jason Fuchs have provided insight into this different outcome. They emphasize that for Pennywise, time is not linear. A major clue is revealed when Pennywise drags Marge away and tells her she will one day have a son: Richie Tozier, a key member of the future Losers’ Club.
“The seed of your stinking loins and his filthy friends bring me my death! Or is it birth?” Pennywise snarls. “I get confused. Tomorrow? Yesterday? It’s all the same for little Pennywise”.
Pennywise
This line suggests the entity experiences its own future death in 2016 at the hands of the Losers’ Club even while operating in the past in 1962. From its perspective, its defeat in the movies and its containment in the series are interconnected events across time. The show’s creative team wanted to explore this “hidden story” within the gaps of Stephen King’s original novel.
Connecting to the Movies: Beverly Marsh’s Cameo
The series finale includes a direct link to the films with a cameo from Sophia Lillis, who reprises her role as a young Beverly Marsh. The epilogue jumps forward to 1988, showing Beverly as a child witnessing her mother’s suicide at the Juniper Hill Asylum.
An elderly Ingrid Kersh, who encountered Pennywise in 1962, approaches the grieving Beverly. She tells her, “Oh dear, don’t be sad. You know what they say about Derry; no one who dies here ever really dies”. This line is later repeated by the monster when it terrorizes an adult Beverly in IT: Chapter Two while disguised as Mrs. Kersh.
The creators explained this cameo was a last-minute addition to forge a stronger connection to the films. It recontextualizes a key scary moment from the sequel, suggesting the monster was tapping into one of Beverly’s deepest, half-forgotten traumas.
Bill Skarsgård’s Performance Without CGI
A newly released behind-the-scenes clip from the finale highlights the raw performance of Bill Skarsgård. The footage shows Skarsgård filmed on a soundstage, screaming into the camera with only his prosthetic makeup. The actor’s terrifying facial expressions and inhuman voice are his own, without the aid of computer-generated effects that were added later to create the final scene’s dark sky and Pennywise’s glowing yellow eyes.
This clip proves that the core horror of the character comes directly from Skarsgård’s physical and vocal commitment.
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Setting the Stage for Future Seasons
The conversation between Marge and Lilly after the battle hints at the show’s future. Marge theorizes that because Pennywise experiences all time at once, he could travel back to an earlier cycle to attack their parents. Lilly simply replies, “I guess it’ll be someone else’s fight”.
This directly sets up the planned structure for the series. Andy Muschietti has stated he envisions three seasons, with subsequent seasons jumping back to explore Pennywise’s previous feeding cycles in Derry’s history. The ending of Season 1 provides the perfect narrative doorway to move “backwards” in time.
The first season of IT: Welcome to Derry is now streaming in full on HBO Max in the U.S. and on NOW in the U.K..
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