IT: Welcome To Derry Finale Confirms Pennywise Isn’t Really Dead: Here’s How He Could Alter History
Pennywise returns in IT: Welcome to Derry finale with a disturbing time perception twist that confirms the mystery around his potential death, and it could rewrite the franchise’s history
IT: Welcome To Derry Finale Confirms Pennywise’s Fate (Photo Credit –Facebook)
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Pennywise does not stay dead, and IT: Welcome to Derry makes that clear in its finale by giving him a new trick that quietly changes everything. The show drops the reveal without warning, and suddenly the clown feels older, wiser, and most importantly, far more dangerous than before.
Pennywise Reveals Richie Tozier Before His Birth
In the finale, Pennywise corners Marge and does what he always does: he tries to scare her enough to feed. Then he pulls out a missing poster of Richie Tozier, the same Richie played by Finn Wolfhard in It and Bill Hader in It Chapter Two. Pennywise calmly tells Marge that Richie is her son in the future.
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Now, the moment feels wrong because Richie is not born until the mid-1970s in the movie timeline, and as a result, in 1962, he should not even exist.
However, without much delay, Pennywise explains it himself. He says time does not move for him the way it moves for humans. The past, present, and future exist together for him in one continuous stretch, and he can stand inside any moment before 2016 at the same time, even though the Losers kill him in that year. He sees time like a landscape, not a straight line, which makes him closer to a higher-dimensional being than a simple monster in the sewer.
Now, because of this, Pennywise already knows Marge will name her future son after her dead friend, Rich. That child grows up to be Richie Tozier, one of the Losers who helps destroy Pennywise in 2016. Pennywise believes that killing Marge in 1962 would erase Richie before he is born.
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You see, the calculation is simple: no Richie means no Losers victory, and no defeat means Pennywise survives past 2016 and becomes immortal.
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However, there is a limit, though. Pennywise ceases to exist after 2016, even with all his power. He can stretch himself across every year before that point, but nothing beyond it. To truly secure his future, he would need to go even further back and kill Marge and Richie’s ancestors. If they never exist, the Losers never form, and Pennywise never dies.
This twist adds a bold layer of time travel to the franchise, but it also opens a nest of paradoxes. If Pennywise erases the Losers’ ancestors, the events that led to his defeat in 2016 never happen. Without that defeat, the motive to change the past collapses and the logic starts eating itself.
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There is also the problem of perception. If Pennywise already exists across all pre-2016 timelines at once, then any change he makes should already be part of what he sees. A reality where he survives past 2016 should already replace the one where he dies. The fact that he feels the need to change anything suggests that he does not fully see all outcomes, which weakens the rule the show just introduced.
How This Twist Affects The IT Movies
It also brushes up against the movies in an awkward way. If Pennywise can wipe out an entire generation of the Losers before they are born, the events of both films lose their weight. If everything runs in a closed loop instead, then Pennywise never truly has a path to victory.
If bill skarsgard doesn’t get emmy recognition for pennywise after this performance in it: welcome to derry then it’s over for the industry. #ITWelcomeToDerry pic.twitter.com/HeHfQYsIs1
The cleanest solution has always been destroying Pennywise at the source, back when he fell to Earth on a fallen star. But that option never works because humans did not exist at that point. Every generation, from the earliest humans onward, has to fight him again and again to stop him from reshaping the larger timeline.
However, the finale hints at other answers. The show could trap Pennywise in some form of time isolation, cutting off his ability to see across eras. Another option appears through characters with shining like powers, such as Dick Hallorann, who can enter Pennywise’s mind and strip away his belief that he is cosmic. If Pennywise starts to see himself as human, the time becomes linear, and his grip on every timeline slips away.
