The first season of HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry has come to a close, leaving us with a long list of questions that need to somehow be answered when the show leaps back in time another 27 years for season 2. Major revelations have shaken up the lore of the It movies, reframing what we know not only about the town of Derry but also about It/Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård).
Given the first season just ended, there’s no telling when we’ll see the next installment of It: Welcome to Derry. Chances are it’s going to be at least a year, though, before Pennywise haunts our screens again.
Luckily, there’s plenty to talk about in the meantime. While season 1 was an excellent and horrifying ride, we need to dissect the season finale to really understand how radically the lore of It has changed.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for It: Welcome to Derry episode 8.]
Time doesn’t matter to Pennywise
The biggest revelation of the finale not only changes the way we see Pennywise operate in the It films and the first season of Welcome to Derry, but what’s to come in season 2. In the final episode, Pennywise reveals to Marge (Matilda Lawler) that he experiences time differently than humans. To him, all of time is happening simultaneously — past, present, and future. That means when he’s attacking the kids in 1962, he does it with the knowledge that he will ultimately be killed in 2016 during the events of It: Chapter 2.
Experiencing time this way allows It the opportunity to snuff out the threats he faces in the future, which explains why he focuses on Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James) for so much of the first season. Will is the father of Mike, a member of the Losers’ Club that will eventually kill Pennywise. He also hints that he will next go back further in time to a previous feeding cycle.
Marge is the key
When Marge was first introduced, it was as little more than a former friend of Lilly’s (Clara Stack) who had fallen in with a group of mean girls. Once It started haunting her, though, we saw a drastic change. Her friendship with Lilly was rectified, and she became part of the group of kids tracking Pennywise.
Marge won’t return in the next season, as we’re going back in time, but we know she plays a massive role in the franchise’s future. In the finale, Pennywise reveals that one day she will have a son named Richie, and that he will be one of the people that kills It.
Marge is 13, so revealing that one day her son is going to kill this evil force is a lot for her to take on. While utterly confused that the clown is predicting her future, Marge eventually comes to understand what Pennywise means when he says he experiences time differently.
Pennywise was coming for Marge because he knew that her son would be a charter member of the Loser’s Club. If he managed to take her down, it would change his future. The same could be said for Will, who Pennywise had trapped in the deadlights for the majority of this episode.
How Richie Tozier got his name
Now that we know Marge eventually becomes the mom of It and It: Chapter 2‘s Richie — played by Finn Wolfhard as a kid and Bill Hader as an adult — the character’s name makes so much more sense. In the previous episode, we saw the death of Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) after the fire at the Black Spot. Right before he succumbs to smoke inhalation, he and Marge reveal they love each other in one of the sweetest and most tender moments imaginable.
While he’s gone, he’s clearly not forgotten, as Marge gives her son his name. It should also be noted that by the time Richie and his friends are battling Pennywise, his mother no longer goes by Marge, opting instead to be known as Maggie.
What happens to Ronnie and her dad?
Given so much of this season hinged on Ronnie (Amanda Christine) helping to free her father as he faced punishment for murders committed by Pennywise, it should come as no surprise she and her dad, Hank (Stephen Rider), leave Derry at the end of the first season.
Clearly, Ronnie and Will cared deeply for each other. Still, when you leave Derry, you forget. That means the memories they share will slowly be wiped away, at least for Ronnie. Will promises to write to her to keep the memories alive, but we all know that’s not going to happen unless she finds herself back there one day.
If we had to guess, that’s probably not the way this plays out. We know the broad strokes of Will’s story from here. He ultimately marries a woman named Jessica, who gives birth to their son, Mike. Both Will and Jessica are killed in a house fire before the events of the first It film.
Why didn’t the Hanlon family leave Derry?
At the start of the series, nobody seemed more likely to leave Derry by the end of the season than the Hanlon family. After all, they just arrived in Derry, and, almost immediately, Leroy (Jovan Adepo) and Charlotte (Taylour Paige) knew something was very wrong with the town.
As the season rolled on, they got to see exactly what It was capable of, and it was enough to make them want to leave. That is, until Rose (Kimberly Guerrero) asks them to take over her farm and watch over Derry, as she and her tribe know Pennywise will eventually return.
This sets up most of Mike’s life, leading into the first film. Leroy and Charlotte decide to stay and raise their family on the farm. When Will and Jessica die in the future, that leads to Mike living on the farm with his grandparents.
As we see in It, Mike does not take kindly to the duties of the farm, including killing sheep. Leroy, on the other hand, is a shell of the man we met in Welcome to Derry. He comes across as cold and missing any of that flicker of hope he had on the show. He also remembers what happened to Derry in the ’60s. He warns his grandson about what’s to come and chastises him for not killing a sheep meant for slaughter, potentially in an attempt to encourage him to take the job of killing Pennywise seriously when the time comes.
However, knowing Mike grew up on the farm with his grandfather — surrounded by Derry’s indigenous community — helps fill in a lot of blanks where his knowledge of the town’s history is concerned.
As you may remember, It: Chapter 2 saw Mike introduce the idea of Derry’s indigenous population having a connection to It. Growing up around them would not only give him access to vital information but also supplies useful against the monster. Mike knowing about the Ritual of Chüd because he scoured old newspapers looking for tiny details doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, Mike getting the information from the source helps tie this story together.
The dawn of Beverly
Finally, the season finale features a post-credits scene. It’s certainly not one anybody expected, though. We jump forward in time to meet a young Beverly, with Sophia Lillis reprising her role from the movies. We see her and her father at the Juniper Hill Asylum, following the discovery of her mother having hanged herself.
It’s here that we see a much older Ingrid (Madeleine Stowe), daughter of the man who played the original clown version of Pennywise, now at the point in her life where we know her as Mrs. Kersh (Joan Gregson). She is still a patient in the asylum, but this marks the moment she lays eyes on Beverly for the first time.
While Beverly doesn’t say anything, this moment — Ingrid revealing herself to Beverly at her lowest point — sets the stage for the trauma this young girl will be facing thanks to Pennywise for the majority of her life, including when she returns as an adult to be tormented by a version of Mrs. Kersh that is being controlled by Pennywise.
It also teases the idea that Mrs. Kersh is setting up yet another young girl to make Pennywise re-emerge, possibly as another chance to see It take the form of her father, Bob Gray.
The first season of It: Welcome to Derry managed to do far more than many ever expected it to. When the idea of an It prequel series was first announced, it sounded like a questionable idea. With season one in the rearview mirror, we can’t wait to see what the eventual season two will introduce to the franchise.
