The first season of IT: Welcome to Derry concluded with the episode Winter Fire. This finale saw Pennywise cause major damage before a group of brave kids and adults managed to lock him away again. The episode also changed what viewers know about the killer clown and connected this story directly to the future events of the main IT films.
The show is now available to stream on HBO Max.
The Final Battle on the Ice
A thick, supernatural fog covers Derry, a sign that Pennywise is free and active. He goes to Derry High School, where he controls the principal’s body and forces the younger students into the gym. After a terrifying performance, he uses his Deadlights to put all the children into a trance and leads them out of town.
Three friends, Marge, Lilly, and Ronnie, avoid this fate and find missing posters for their classmates, including their friend Will Hanlon. They find a piece of the ancient dagger needed to stop Pennywise and take a milk truck to follow the trail.
Meanwhile, Will’s father, Leroy Hanlon, learns his son has been taken. He asks for help from Dick Hallorann, a man with psychic abilities who is struggling with tormenting visions. To help Hallorann focus, Rose, a member of Derry’s Indigenous community, gives him a tea made from Maturin root. This allows him to use his powers to track the dagger and the kids.
All paths converge on the frozen Penobscot River, where Pennywise leads the floating children. The girls find Will, but Pennywise attacks. He separates Marge and reveals a shocking truth about her future.
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A Major Reveal About Time and Fate
While alone with Marge, Pennywise calls her Margaret Tozier, a name she does not recognize. He shows her a missing poster featuring Finn Wolfhard, the actor who played Richie Tozier in the 2017 IT film.
“The seed of your stinking loins and his filthy friends bring me my death. Or is it birth? I get confused. Tomorrow, yesterday? It’s all the same for little Pennywise.”
Pennywise explains that Marge will one day have a son named Richie Tozier, who, along with his friends in the Losers’ Club, will be responsible for the clown’s ultimate defeat in 2016. This means Pennywise experiences all of time at once—past, present, and future are the same to him. He tries to kill Marge to prevent Richie from ever being born, but is stopped when Dick Hallorann uses his mind to temporarily trap the clown in a vision.
A Costly Victory and New Beginnings
With Pennywise frozen, the children wake up. The adults arrive to help them to safety. Leroy Hanlon and Rose’s nephew, Taniel, try to plant the dagger in a specific deadwood tree to restore the magical cage around Derry. However, the military, led by General Shaw, arrives and opens fire. Taniel is shot and killed.
A wounded Leroy gives the dagger to his son, Will. Will, along with Marge, Lilly, and Ronnie, must complete the task. Pennywise breaks free from Hallorann’s control and kills General Shaw, remembering him as a boy he once terrified.
As the kids struggle to push the dagger into the hard ground, they get help from an unexpected source: the ghost of their friend Rich, who died in the previous episode. With his aid, they succeed.
Dick Hallorann saw the ghost and called it “a motherfucking miracle.”
The dagger’s power is restored. Pennywise is shown various monstrous forms peeling away from his face before he is thrown back into his prison. The immediate threat is over.
How the Finale Sets Up the Future
The episode ends by showing where the main characters go next and hinting at stories to come.
- The Hanlon Family Decides to Stay: After planning to leave Derry, Leroy and Charlotte Hanlon accept Rose’s offer to take over her farm and keep watch over the town. This decision directly sets up the future for their grandson, Mike Hanlon, the future Losers’ Club member.
- Dick Hallorann’s New Path: Hallorann, finally at peace, leaves Derry. He tells Leroy he has a new job as a cook at a hotel.
> “How much trouble can a hotel be?”
This is a direct reference to his future role at the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining. - A Glimpse of Another Loser: A post-credits scene jumps forward to October 1988. It shows an elderly Ingrid Kersh in the Juniper Hill asylum. She encounters a young girl crying on the floor after her mother has died by suicide. The girl is Beverly Marsh, played again by Sophia Lillis. Kersh tells her, “No one who dies here ever really dies,” linking directly to Beverly’s terrifying encounter with Mrs. Kersh in IT Chapter Two.
Finally, the conversation between Marge and Lilly hints at where the series could go next. Marge worries that if Pennywise exists across time and wants to stop his future killers, he could travel to the past to target their parents or ancestors.
“I guess it’ll be someone else’s fight,” Lilly replies.
This idea supports the creators’ reported plan for future seasons to explore Pennywise’s earlier feeding cycles, possibly in 1935 and 1908.
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