Welcome to Derry Showrunner Explains Pennywise’s New ‘Start’ Scene & Its Impression On Chapter 2’s Ending

Warning: SPOILERS lie forward for IT: Welcome to Derry episode 8, “Winter Hearth”!IT: Welcome to Derry season 1’s ending provided some extra perception into Pennywise’s mysterious origins, and co-showrunner Jason Fuchs teases that it has wider implications for the franchise. The HBO prequel sequence has taken viewers again to a few of the titular alien entity’s prior dealings with the eponymous city, primarily his reign of terror in 1962, in addition to glimpses of his 1908 actions.

IT: Welcome to Derry season 1’s ending noticed Pennwyise reveal he sees each his previous, current and future all concurrently, together with going all the best way again to his start. Not solely does this see him acknowledge his future demise by the hands of Richie Tozier and the remainder of the Losers’ Membership in IT: Chapter Two, but in addition Stephen King’s earlier affirmation that the malevolent being is ceaselessly alive, each previous to and past his demise.

In a current interview with ScreenRant‘s Grant Hermanns, Jason Fuchs provided some additional perception into what Pennywise’s new start scene meant for the broader franchise after IT: Welcome to Derry‘s ending. For starters, the co-showrunner confirmed {that a} “third movie was not on our minds after we constructed that beat,” with the artistic crew as a substitute specializing in tackling a prequel story to a “well-known, well-loved story.”

Describing it as being “tremendously satisfying” to construct on the lore of King’s novel, with the present providing “a familiarity and an affinity for the characters and the world,” whereas additionally answering “questions you’ve got considered” because the unique publishing. Nevertheless, Fuchs additionally admits that the “fairly apparent downside” to tackling a prequel story is discovering “the stakes“ for the story, given “there is a ceiling on how excessive these stakes can go” with out messing with canon:

Maybe not the place every particular person character will go, or whether or not every particular person character survives, however you recognize in a extra international sense that IT dies. Spoiler alert for that very small phase of your readership that is watched each episode of Welcome to Derry, however by no means made it to the top of Chapter Two! There’s actually nowhere to go ahead from there, so how do you generate stakes? How will we create a narrative that’s not simply an intriguing reply to lingering questions and some good self-contained tales? How do you do that in a means that’s impactful, the place it issues, in the best way a sequel is? Empire Strikes Again issues as a result of it is the subsequent chapter. What is going on to occur? How do you obtain that whenever you’re telling the reverse of that?

This led to the artistic crew’s planning of the episode 8 second, wherein the present highlights “that IT has a special relationship with time than you and I do.” Expressing his hope to maintain making future seasons of IT: Welcome to Derry, the co-showrunner teased that this plot thread raises quite a few mysteries for the present’s future, together with what Pennywise’s relationship with time means for the previous, and for IT’s demise, in addition to “the place the tales go from right here and what their impression on the long run may convey.”

Calling them “tantalizing potentialities,” Fuchs defined that this tackling of Pennywise’s so-called start got here as “half and parcel of an effort to discover a story engine and a personality engine that justifies transferring backwards in time.” Saying it is extra than simply tackling “unclaimed narrative territory,” the co-showrunner teased that this reveal might have huge ramifications for wanting again at IT: Chapter Two‘s ending and past:

I needed us to seek out one thing that actually drove that on a personality and plot stage, and that raised the stakes and possibly recontextualized for audiences what a prequel might be and what impression this story might have on the broader IT universe at massive. Now we have to see the place it goes, however I’d say that IT clearly is aware of some issues concerning the future. I ponder how that can impression the alternatives IT makes prior to now, or if IT even sees the previous in these phrases.

King has at all times stated he is reluctant to convey Pennywise again in bodily kind for a brand new story after IT‘s ending seemingly killed the entity correctly with the Losers beating and dismembering it, whereas additionally destroying the eggs it laid. Chapter Two‘s adaptation took a slight deviation from the novel, particularly within the lack of eggs laid by Pennywise and the extra definitive sight of the meteor stays from IT’s touchdown on Earth dissolving.

That being stated, if the 2 movies had not already launched previous to the sequence, one might have thought IT: Welcome to Derry‘s ending was additionally the top of Pennywise. With the cage simply narrowly restored in time, the clown was seen melting bodily and solely turning into the Deadlights, flying away to an unknown location to hibernate. Although there is a post-credits stinger bringing issues full-circle to the movies, the unassuming might simply as simply have believed the clown would by no means be again.

With Fuchs teasing that Pennywise’s so-called demise can also be like a start in IT: Welcome to Derry season 1’s ending, future seasons of the sequence may present an excellent greater impression with every subsequent defeat of the character. It might even result in the event of a 3rd IT film, which co-creator/government producer Barbara Muschietti has teased as being a risk, even when Fuchs and the artistic crew did not develop this scene with such in thoughts.

Finally, the 2 issues that Pennywise’s start scene in IT: Welcome to Derry‘s ending set up are that the evil clown might be defeated in plenty of methods, and his weird relationship with time may give him a leg up in stopping his defeats. Specifically, with the subsequent two of the deliberate three seasons of the HBO prequel going backward in time, his rebirth may really see him efficiently kill in even bigger numbers.

Make sure to dive into our different IT: Welcome to Derry protection with:

All eight episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 can be found to stream on HBO Max.

Launch Date

October 26, 2025

Community

HBO

Administrators

Andy Muschietti

Franchise(s)

IT