‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Explained: Pennywise Opens the Door to Time Travel in Season 2

WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for It and It: Welcome to Derry 

Constant Readers and fans of Stephen King’s 1986 novel It know that “no one who dies in Derry ever really dies.”

That’s the eerie aphorism shared with Losers’ Club member Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain) as she sips tea with the deceptively monstrous Mrs. Kersh (Joan Gregson) in the story’s modern timeline. King’s terrifying novel follows Beverly and her friends on a quest to destroy a shapeshifting child-killer known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård). Every 27 years, this creature emerges from the sewers to feast on the frightened children of Derry before returning to sleep in Its subterranean lair.

After watching the finale of Andy Muschietti’s prequel series It: Welcome to Derry, perhaps we can expand on Mrs. Kersh’s ominous warning to say that nothing in Derry ever truly ends. Season 1 takes place in 1962, one cycle before the events of King’s book, and we think we know how the overall story will end. But an ominous interaction with the monster Itself calls an ostensibly solid timeline into question. 

Season 1 has been building to the horrific fire at the Black Spot speakeasy while following a military quest to free Pennywise from a metaphysical cage confining him within the town. With a key pillar of this perimeter missing, a de facto Losers’ Club has formed to bury a powerful artifact and essentially close the gate again. Desperate to save Will (Blake Cameron James) — and scores of other kids — trapped in the monster’s hypnotic Deadlights, Marge (Matilda Lawler) and her friends confront Pennywise on a river strangely frozen by a monstrous mist. As It prepares to devour Marge, he taunts the frightened girl with information about her future and reveals that her married name will be Margaret Tozier. This confirms the fan theory that Marge is the mother of Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard, Bill Hader), a member of the Losers’ Club that finally manages to kill the clown. 

Though admittedly exciting, this revelation opens the door for larger horrors. While Marge cowers on the ice, Pennywise toys with the idea of killing her, thus preventing Richie from ever existing. But It seems amused by the situation and waxes poetic on the nature of time. As an eternal being, It notes that past, present, and future are all the same and his end will also be a beginning.

Early episodes have shown that the entity known as Pennywise is an interdimensional being who arrived on Earth within a star, crash-landing in a forest that would one day form the town of Derry. He will later call himself a “god” and an “eater of worlds,” implying that his existence transcends our understanding of time and space. Pennywise is ultimately prevented from devouring Marge, momentarily frozen by a mental distraction. But she’s haunted by this interaction and what it could mean for her future safety. 

With the dust still settling on their victory, Marge discusses this disturbing conversation with her friend Lilly (Clara Stack). Not only does she now know the name of her future son, but that he will be partially responsible for killing It, which places her own existence in danger. What she does not know is that Will’s future son Mike (Chosen Jacobs, Isaiah Mustafa) will also be part of this group and similarly pivotal to the monster’s destruction. As the only Loser to stay in Derry, the future town librarian will bide time between the monster’s cycles by compiling a dark town history, writing the very Interludes upon which It: Welcome to Derry is based. He will also be responsible for calling the adult Losers back home in order to stop the monster once and for all.

Muschietti’s Richie is an integral member of the Club that finally kills the clown, but King’s source material gives him an even more important role. While embarking on the Ritual of Chüd, a telepathic battle of wits, an adult Bill misses his grip and it’s Richie who manages to save the day. Though they are two of a seven-person team, Richie and Mike are absolutely essential to the Losers’ Club’s victory and ridding Derry of the monstrous clown. Marge worries that if this interdimensional creature has the ability to see forward in time, perhaps It can travel backwards as well. Lilly assures her that this will be someone else’s fight, alluding to cycles past and future, but Marge’s existential worry presents a horrific possibility: if Pennywise is indeed eternal and has the ability to travel through time, could he find a way to murder the ancestors of the Loser’s Club, negating their heroic actions before they begin?  

Muschietti stops short of pulling on this thread, instead choosing to wrap the series on an emotional beat. But these conversations cast new light on the expected events of seasons 2 and 3. Written in 1986 and twice adapted for the screen, King’s story is a closed loop in which the adult Losers defeat the evil entity, nearly destroying Derry in the process. Based on four literary Interludes, It: Welcome to Derry will likely chronicle earlier cycles of death, leading up to mass casualty events.

The 1935 cycle will end with the massacre of the Bradley Gang, an outlaw family attempting to hide out in Derry. Previous episodes have featured flashbacks to the 1908 cycle in which the monster adopts his Pennywise persona, sparking a deadly obsession in  Ingrid Kersh (Emma-Leigh Cullum, Madeleine Stowe). This earlier cycle will end with a devastating explosion at the Kitchener Ironworks during a town-wide Easter Egg hunt. This disturbing event is referenced along with the Bradley Gang shootout in the series’ eerie opening sequence. 

Marge’s fears of a time-travelling killer clown seem to reference James Cameron’s Terminator franchise in which a murderous cyborg arrives in the past to kill a prominent military leader before he can rise to power. But King has provided precedent for this mind-boggling theory in a subsequent Derry novel. 11//22/63 follows Jake Epping, a teacher from the 21st century who travels back in time to prevent the Kennedy Assassination via a portal located in Southern Maine. The invisible tunnel Jake calls a rabbit hole leads him to the neighboring town of Lisbon Falls circa 1958, the year of King’s first literary cycle. On his way to Dallas, Jake makes a stop in Derry and interacts with Losers Beverly and Richie in the aftermath of their first battle with It. Perhaps there are other portals surrounding the monster’s hunting ground linking travelers to the deadly cycles of 1935 and 1908?

While Pennywise would be unable to use a portal located outside Derry’s protective perimeter, his human familiars could. King sets precedence for this as well. In the novel’s adult timeline, Pennywise assists the sinister Henry Bowers (Teach Grant) in breaking out of the Juniper Hill asylum and attempting to kill the returning Losers before they can enter It’s subterranean lair. We also know that Mrs. Kersh has been luring children to Pennywise, hoping to catch a glimpse of her long-lost father, the original dancing clown. Having been caught in the Deadlights in the previous episode, her mind appears to have been destroyed by the evil entity and reprogrammed to do Its bidding.

Or, now that she knows the truth about her father’s murder and assimilation, perhaps Mrs. Kersh will use a rabbit hole to save her father’s life, thus preventing the Entity from killing Robert Gray (Skarsgård) and adopting the clown persona altogether. Marge and her friends could also use this passageway to travel backward or forward in the Derry timeline, providing assistance to their children — or parents — as they also attempt to defeat the clown.

And there is one additional option. We’ve assumed that It: Welcome to Derry follows the human experience, backtracking through linear time. But if this universal constant is actually malleable, perhaps we’ve been experiencing events from Pennywise’s point of view. If It truly has the power to bend time and space, maybe his near death in 1989 and defeat in 2016 (1958 and 1985 in King’s source material) has sparked the eternal monster’s defense mechanism. This end at the hands of the Losers’ Club could be the beginning of a new attempt to survive. Instead of traveling back in time, perhaps It is reliving the 1962 timeline after the events of 2016 and each trip backwards in human time is a subsequent attempt to stop the Losers’ Club from ever existing.

If Pennywise has the power to adopt any shape or form, maybe It can transform time as well. After all, if no one ever really dies in Derry, doesn’t that extend to the monster too?

For more coverage of It: Welcome to Derry, check out episode by episode coverage on The Losers’ Club: A Stephen King Podcast.

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