IT: Welcome to Derry Finale Nails a Brilliant Twist That Sets Up Season 2 and Finally Solves the Prequel Problem

Turns out the clown has a plan. And so do the people making the show about the clown. The IT prequel on Max, Welcome to Derry, isn’t just rolling back the clock for nostalgia. It’s using time like a weapon. The season 1 finale finally explains why this story is moving in reverse, and yeah — it’s a wild swing that actually lands.

Quick refresher: this prequel runs in reverse

Season 1 is set in 1962. The current plan is to jump back to 1935 in a second season (not officially greenlit yet), then back again to 1908 for a third and final season. On paper, starting at the beginning and marching toward the movies might seem cleaner. But director Andy Muschietti teased there was a reason for the reverse order back in October:

'Of course, everybody that knows the movies knows that It is alive in 1989, but there is a trick. There’s something that happens and it’s related to the reason we’re telling the story backwards.'

That line makes a lot more sense after the finale.

Major spoilers for the Welcome to Derry finale below.

What actually goes down in the finale

Episode 8 opens with one of the ancient pillars that pin It to Derry being pulled out. That’s enough to wake Pennywise up. He immediately blasts a group of school kids — including Will — with the Deadlights. Lilly, Ronnie, and Marge chase him out onto the ice, armed with a dagger made from the same stuff that binds him to the town. It buys them a minute, but the clown yanks Marge off her feet and isolates her.

Then he starts talking, and the trash talk is the point. Pennywise calls Marge by her full name, makes a nasty little rhyme about love and marriage, and drops a bomb: he knows she’s going to have a son named Richie. He also says that son and his friends grow up to end him. Or start him. He’s not super clear because — and this is the big reveal — he doesn’t experience time the way we do. Past, present, future? All one moment to him.

Before he can make a meal out of Marge, Dick Hallorann shows up and freezes him long enough for the kids to get away and turn the tide. They win the day. Emphasis on the 'seemingly.'

The twist that ties straight into the movies

Marge is Richie Tozier’s future mom. Yes, that Richie — Finn Wolfhard’s wisecracking Loser from the films. Pennywise even flashes Marge an image of baby Richie via a missing poster from his future killing spree. Fans guessed this after Rich (the kid Rich, not Richie Tozier) sacrificed himself for Marge in the 'Black Spot' episode. Her naming her son Richie tracks as a tribute. But the reveal isn’t just a cute connection. It’s the skeleton key for the show’s entire structure.

After the fight, Marge tells Lilly what the clown told her: she will have a son; that son and his friends take Pennywise down; and to Pennywise, the moment he dies can also be the moment he’s born. The group saved 1962. Another group will save 1989. But if Pennywise had killed Marge here, he might have erased the Losers’ Club victory we already watched in the movies.

Marge takes it a step further: if he really moves through time like that, what stops him from jumping even further back to kill their parents before any of them are born? Lilly, exhausted and grimly practical, basically says: then it becomes someone else’s fight. The kids mourn Rich and celebrate for a beat, because they earned it. We don’t get to move on that easily.

So why tell it backward?

Because Pennywise isn’t just feeding; he’s course-correcting. The finale reframes Welcome to Derry as a time war where It is trying to undo his own death by attacking the timeline from earlier and earlier points. That’s why each season goes further back: we’re following his attempts to change the past to save himself in the future. And since the earlier kids can’t be told what their future is — both for plausibility and paradox reasons — the stakes are nastier. Even the win we’ve already seen in the films is suddenly not guaranteed.

In other words, Muschietti’s 'trick' isn’t just a storytelling flex. It’s the premise.

Where it all sits now

• Season 1: 1962 (done, streaming)
• Season 2: 1935 (talked about, not officially confirmed)
• Season 3: 1908 (planned as the endgame)

All episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry are now streaming on Max in the US and on NOW in the UK.