Warning: This post contains spoilers for the IT: Welcome to Derry finale.
In the opening of the eighth and concluding installment of the IT prequel series , General Shaw’s (James Remar) ill-advised move to extract and burn one of the Shokopiwah tribe’s mystical containment pillars has roused It from its slumber and opened a chance for it to break free from Derry’s limits. Following Its use of the Deadlights manifestation to abduct every underclassman from Derry High, It attempts precisely that.
Thankfully, the blade that Lilly (Clara Stack) recovered from the sewers—crafted from the same celestial stone as the pillars—possesses the power to seal the cage once more. This is contingent on them being able to embed it in the correct location underground before It flees. The complication is that the dagger constitutes a missing piece of the comet that brought It to Earth, which crashed at the site where Neibolt House would later stand, and the fragment seeks to go back “home.” Consequently, the greater distance the children carry the dagger from Neibolt, the more harm it inflicts on their psyche and the stronger its opposition becomes. This renders their mission exceptionally difficult.
Matters are further complicated when Lilly, Ronnie (Amanda Christine), and Marge (Matilda Lawler) hurry onto the frozen waterway to rescue Will (Blake Cameron James) from the Deadlights’ grasp, discovering that It harbors a hidden agenda. Manifesting again as Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard), It separates Marge from her companions and discloses that she will one day wed a man named Tozier and become parent to Losers Club member Richie Tozier (portrayed by Finn Wolfhard in youth and Bill Hader as grown-up in Muschietti’s films). Pennywise even produces one of Derry’s traditional missing child flyers to display Marge an image of her future son. “The spawn of your foul body and his disgusting companions deliver my demise,” Pennywise informs her. “Or perhaps it’s birth? I become muddled. Tomorrow? Yesterday? For little Pennywise, it’s all identical.”
Essentially, given that It exists beyond temporal constraints, It appears to believe that by murdering Marge in the past, It can stop Richie from ever being conceived, forming bonds with fellow Losers Club members, and ultimately contributing to Its destruction. This logic isn’t entirely coherent considering It had already captured Will and presumably could have simply killed him to forestall the later birth of Losers Club member Mike Hanlon (played by Chosen Jacobs as a youth and Isaiah Mustafa as an adult in the films) instead of postponing Marge’s murder, but the narrative proceeds accordingly.
Nevertheless, Pennywise fails to fulfill his menace as (Chris Chalk) succeeds in employing his Shine capabilities to briefly seize control of Its consciousness precisely in time to stop him from devouring Marge. Yet once the grown-ups venture onto the icy river, the situation deteriorates further when soldiers commence firing from the bank, fatally striking Taniel (Joshua Odjick) and wounding Leroy (Jovan Adepo) in the leg. Shaw additionally commands his troops to recover Dick, releasing It from his psychic grip. Shaw, naturally, swiftly discovers that It cannot be mastered when Pennywise attacks him and rips his face off entirely, though this diversion doesn’t afford the children much additional time as they struggle against the dagger’s force and try to implant it in the deadwood on the river’s opposite shore.
Just when all appears hopeless, Dick glimpses the apparition of the Native woman (Morningstar Angeline) with whom he initially connected during the Black Spot blaze and observes that she has led the spirit of young Rich (Arian S. Cartaya)—for whom Richie is evidently named—to assist his comrades in accomplishing their quest. With Rich’s spectral aid, Will, Lilly, Ronnie, and Marge succeed in embedding the dagger into the deadwood’s root system, resealing the cage, and forcing It into another of its 27-year dormant cycles.
Afterward, when Marge recounts to Lilly what It told her on the ice, this appears to establish the groundwork for Welcome to Derry‘s future direction. Given that the series is designed to unfold across three seasons—taking place in 1962, 1935, and 1908 respectively—the reality that, as Marge articulates, “the past, present, and future are all identical” for It suggests that It will endeavor to stop the Losers Club from ever destroying it in the 2016 timeline of Muschietti’s IT: Chapter Two film by altering history. “What if he truly perceives time differently?” Marge inquires of Lilly. “What if he can travel backward?…I realize it seems insane, but what if he attempts to return and murder someone from before our time, like our parents?”
“Perhaps it will become another person’s battle,” Lilly pointedly replies.
The season concludes with a temporal leap forward that provides a concluding acknowledgment of how the series’ events link to the films. Shortly before the commencement of Its next feeding period, around October 1988, an aged Ingrid Kersh (portrayed in the ’60s by Madeleine Stowe and in the ’80s by Joan Gregson) is spending her final days at Juniper Hill Asylum. Viewers familiar with the IT films recognize Ingrid as the unsettling elderly woman manifestation of It that adult Beverly Marsh (played by Sophia Lillis in youth and Jessica Chastain as grown-up) meets when attempting to revisit her childhood residence in Derry in 2016. In 1988, we witness Ingrid overhear a disturbance outside her quarters before proceeding down the corridor to discover a grieving father and daughter lamenting the self-inflicted death of a woman named Elfrida Marsh, an asylum patient.
As the daughter averts her gaze from her mother’s suspended corpse and regards Ingrid, she is unveiled as a youthful Bev (with Lillis returning to the role). To Bev’s considerable distress, Ingrid then utters the initial version of what her It incarnation will repeat to Bev many years later: “Oh, dear. Don’t be sorrowful. You’re aware of what they say regarding Derry. No person who perishes here truly passes away.”
