Pennywise’s New Power in IT: Welcome to Derry Makes No Sense

IT: Welcome to Derry has successfully expanded the mythology of Stephen King’s most famous creation by offering a terrifying look at the entity’s history. The prequel series has spent its first season meticulously detailing the origins of the creature’s connection to the town, explaining the adoption of the Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) persona, and showcasing the horrifying versatility of its shapeshifting abilities. In addition, by rooting the horror in a specific period of Derry’s history, the show has used the monster’s actions to explore structural racism in the United States. However, the season finale introduces a new ability that fundamentally alters Pennywise’s nature. This revelation, while shocking, introduces a set of narrative complications that threaten to undermine the internal logic of the franchise.

Warning: Spoilers below for IT: Welcome to Derry season finale

During the final confrontation between the children and the monster, Pennywise singles out Marge (Matilda Lawler) for a specific torment. The creature teases her with the knowledge of her own future, revealing that she will eventually be known as Margaret Tozier and will give birth to a son named Richie (Finn Wolfhard). This moment confirms that Marge is the mother of a prominent member of the Losers’ Club, effectively bridging the gap between the prequel and the films. More importantly, the scene establishes that the entity possesses knowledge of the past, present, and future, perceiving time in a non-linear fashion. Pennywise is fully aware that Richie and his friends are destined to cause its death, and its attempt to kill Marge is a calculated move to prevent that future from coming to pass.

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Following the battle, Marge shares this harrowing insight with her surviving friends, formulating a theory that sets the trajectory for the future of the series. She posits that if time functions differently for the cosmic being, Pennywise might utilize previous hunting cycles to track down their parents or ancestors and ensure the Losers never exist. This narrative pivot strongly suggests that the upcoming second season of IT: Welcome to Derry, set in 1935, and the third season, set in 1908, will feature the creature attempting to prune the timeline to secure its own survival. While this establishes a clear structure for the anthology-style seasons, it introduces complex logic problems regarding the creature’s power level and motivations.

Time-Traveling Is Not the Best Tool for IT: Welcome to Derry

Time travel is a notoriously difficult concept to execute effectively, as it often introduces paradoxes that unravel the established rules of a story. Introducing temporal manipulation into a narrative that is already dense with ancient cosmic lore risks bloating the plot rather than refining it. The most glaring issue arises from the creature’s motivation. If Pennywise is truly aware of its impending death at the hands of the Losers’ Club, its behavior throughout the franchise becomes inexplicable. In both the IT movies and the television series, the monster is characterized by its desire to toy with its victims. It savors the buildup of fear, which it uses to season its meals before feeding.

However, IT is also capable of quickly dispatching threats, like the soldiers looking for its lair, just to remove an obstacle from its path. If the entity knows its existence is on the line, wasting time on the psychological torture of its future murderers is a fatal tactical error. Pennywise should prioritize efficiency, dispatching threats immediately rather than playing with them. By revealing that IT knows exactly who will kill it, IT: Welcome to Derry forces the audience to question why it does not simply slaughter the ancestors of the Losers’ Club (or the Losers themselves) without fanfare.

Furthermore, this narrative direction creates a restrictive scope for the future seasons. The anthology format of IT: Welcome to Derry offered a unique opportunity to explore the history of the town through fresh eyes, highlighting how the evil affects different people across generations. By tethering the creature’s motivation to the preservation of its own future, the show risks locking its focus on the same few bloodlines. The story shifts from a tragedy about a cursed town to a repetitive chase sequence where the clown hunts the Tozier or Hanlon families across decades. This approach limits the world-building potential of the series, replacing the wide-reaching horror of Derry’s history with a narrow prequel checklist that prioritizes continuity connections over original storytelling.

All episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1 are now available to stream on HBO Max.

Do you think giving Pennywise knowledge of the future makes the monster scarier or creates too many plot holes? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!