Welcome to Derry Explains How IT: Chapter 3 With Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise Can Finally Happen

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…Or did they?

HBO’s prequel/spinoff series IT: Welcome to Derry has wrapped its first season, and the finale took the boldest step yet by making the reveal that Pennywise can see across the past, present, and future simultaneously, allowing him to have foresight of the moment when the Losers’ Club finally destroys him. Knowing who brings about his demise sets Pennywise on the mission to kill his killers before they are ever born. Hence, the events of Welcome to Derry, which chronicle Pennywise’s attempt to kill the parents of the Losers’ Club or stop them from ever producing their heirs.

The Losers’ Club of 1962 managed to re-seal the mystical cage and banish Pennywise for his 27 years of dormancy. However, before doing so, the kids of Derry learned that the monster could strike again at their ancestors in the past. That has set up Welcome to Derry for seasons 2 and 3, taking place in 1935 and 1908 (respectively). However, it also set up the entire IT franchise to move into truly uncharted territory for the very first time.

How Welcome to Derry Just Set Up IT: Chapter Three

Warner Bros. Pictures / HBO

When Pennywise confronts Marge Truman (Matilda Lawler), he doesn’t just reveal to her that he sees the past, present, and future simultaneously: he also reveals that Marge is the future mother of Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard and Bill Hader in the It movies), and that when her “baby boy” and his friends eventually kill the evil entity, it’s also, somehow, the moment of Pennywise’s birth.

As you can see below, this particular aspect of the new lore that Welcome to Derry introduces is dividing fans in a big way. Stephen King’s IT novel was a massive saga, one that provided a definitive, satisfying end to Pennywise’s reign of terror. Welcome to Derry has already undone that climactic payoff with its finale reveals, as we now know the Loser’s Club didn’t actually rid the world of that dark evil, despite all the bloody, maddening sacrifices that were made.

On the bright side, Welcome to Derry has also laid the groundwork for a third IT film to begin a new story. That would presumably follow Pennywise’s “birth” and how the entity becomes self-aware and consolidates its power, going through the trial and error of wearing different forms, until it settles on Bob Gray and his Pennywise persona. That new story could be set further down the timeline, after Pennywise returns from… whatever happened to him at the end of Chapter Two – it could also be a time loop device that takes back into the distant past, in a move similar to what the Predator franchise did with its period piece prequel, Prey (2022).

Either way, there’s now plenty of runway for Bill Skarsgård to keep his arc as Pennywise growing, going much deeper than Stephen King’s novel ever did, and truly getting to put his own stamp on the character and lore. No matter how King purists feel about all the changes being made to literary canon, they can probably root for getting more Skarsgård as a shiny silver lining.

The two IT movies and Welcome to Derry are all streaming on HBO Max.