Warning: This post contains spoilers for the IT: Welcome to Derry finale.
By the start of the eighth and final episode of Andy Muschietti’s IT prequel series Welcome to Derry, the foolish decision by General Shaw (James Remar) to remove and incinerate one of the Shokopiwah people’s magical caging pillars has reawakened It from hibernation and created an opportunity for it to escape the bounds of Derry. And after It uses its Deadlights form to kidnap all the lowerclassmen of Derry High, it tries to do exactly that.
Fortunately, the dagger Lilly (Clara Stack) retrieved from the sewer that was made from the same cosmic rock as the pillars has the ability to re-lock the cage. That is, as long as they can plant it in the right spot in the ground before It makes a run for it. The bad news is the dagger is a lost fragment of the comet It arrived on that crash landed on Earth where Neibolt House was later built, and it wants to return “home.” That means the further the kids take the dagger from Neibolt, the more damage it does to their minds and the more it resists. This makes their task a near-impossible one.
It also doesn’t help that when Lilly, Ronnie (Amanda Christine), and Marge (Matilda Lawler) rush out onto the frozen river to try to free Will (Blake Cameron James) from the hold of the Deadlights, we learn It has an ulterior motive. Appearing once again as Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard), It isolates Marge from her friends and reveals she will eventually grow up to marry a man with the last name Tozier and become the mother of Losers Club member Richie Tozier (played by Finn Wolfhard as a child and Bill Hader as an adult in Muschietti’s IT movies). Pennywise even pulls out one of Derry’s classic missing kid posters to show Marge a picture of her son. “The seed of your stinking loins and his filthy friends bring me my death,” Pennywise tells her. “Or is it birth? I get confused. Tomorrow? Yesterday? It’s all the same for little Pennywise.”
Basically, since It exists outside of time, it seems to think that if it kills Marge in the past, it can prevent Richie from ever being born, befriending the other Losers Club members, and eventually helping to kill it. This doesn’t fully make sense considering It had already kidnapped Will and seemingly could’ve just killed him to prevent the future birth of Losers Club member Mike Hanlon (played by Chosen Jacobs as a child and Isaiah Mustafa as an adult in the movies) rather than waiting to kill Marge, but we’re going with it.
Matilda Lawler as Marge in IT: Welcome to Derry. Brooke Palmer—HBO
However, Pennywise isn’t able to make good on his threat as Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) manages to use his Shine abilities to temporarily take over It’s mind just in time to prevent him from eating Marge. But once the adults make their way onto the frozen river, things go from bad to worse when the military starts shooting from the shore, killing Taniel (Joshua Odjick) and hitting Leroy (Jovan Adepo) in the leg. Shaw also orders his men to retrieve Dick, freeing It from his mental hold. Shaw, of course, quickly learns It isn’t something that can be controlled when Pennywise turns on him and bites his face clean off, but that distraction doesn’t buy the kids too much extra time as they battle the dagger’s powers and attempt to plant it in the deadwood on the river’s far bank.
Just as it seems like all hope may be lost, Dick spots the spirit of the Indigenous woman (Morningstar Angeline) he first communicated with during the fire at the Black Spot and sees she has guided the ghost of young Rich (Arian S. Cartaya)—who Richie is clearly named after—to help his friends complete their mission. With Rich’s ghostly helping hand, Will, Lilly, Ronnie, and Marge are able to plant the dagger in the deadwood’s roots, re-lock the cage, and send It back into one of its 27-year hibernation periods.
Read More: What the Introduction of That Legendary Stephen King Character Means for IT: Welcome to Derry
Later, when Marge tells Lilly what It said to her on the ice, it seems to set the scene for where Welcome to Derry is going next. Since the show is intended to play out over the course of three seasons—set in 1962, 1935, and 1908, respectively—the fact that, as Marge explains, “the past, present, and future are all the same” for It indicates It will be attempting to prevent the Losers Club from ever killing it in the 2016 timeline of Muschietti’s IT: Chapter Two movie by changing the past. “What if he does see time differently?” Marge asks Lilly. “What if he can go backwards?…I know it sounds crazy, but what if he tries to go back and kill someone from the time before we were born, like our parents?”
“I guess it will be someone else’s fight,” Lilly tellingly responds.
The season then ends with a flash forward that offers a final nod to how the events of the show connect to the movies. Just before the start of It’s next feeding cycle, circa October 1988, a now elderly Ingrid Kersh (played in the ’60s by Madeleine Stowe and ’80s by Joan Gregson) is living out the end of her life in Juniper Hill Asylum. Those who have seen the IT movies know Ingrid as the creepy-old-woman version of It grown-up Beverly Marsh (played by Sophia Lillis as a child and Jessica Chastain as an adult) encounters when she tries to return to her childhood home in Derry in 2016. Back in 1988, we see Ingrid hear a commotion going on outside her room before walking down the hall to find a distraught father and daughter mourning the suicide of a woman named Elfrida Marsh, a patient at the asylum.
When the daughter turns away from her mother’s hanged body and looks at Ingrid, she’s revealed to be a young Bev (with Lillis reprising the role). Much to Bev’s dismay, Ingrid then voices the first iteration of what her It form will say to Bev again decades later: “Oh, dear. Don’t be sad. You know what they say about Derry. No one who dies here ever really dies.”
