Did It: Welcome to Derry just ruin Stephen King's timeline?

A chilling revelation rocks Derry in this week's episode, but at what cost?

It: Welcome to Derry continues to cement itself as one of the year’s best shows, paying off last week’s setup with revelations about the origins of Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård), closing out Ingrid’s (Madeleine Stowe) arc, and delivering a devastating depiction of the Black Spot tragedy. The fire that erased Derry’s landmark Black nightclub also snuffed out the fragile romance between Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) and Marge (Matilda Lawler). However, it’s what happened next that has perhaps the biggest implications.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for It: Welcome to Derry episode 7.]

With Ingrid revealed as the architect of the Black Spot’s horrors, feeding fear to empower It, the killer clown slips back into hibernation after consuming the club’s victims, sending Ingrid floating as a final, chilling reward. However, since the military was able to dig up one of the artifacts the Indigenous people of Derry used to keep It contained, the monster wakes up from what should have been its 27-year hibernation to attack, now that nothing is holding It back.

This sets up for a rather bloody finale for Welcome to Derry season 1, with a ton of potential victims, the first being Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James). However, it may also break the current timeline of Stephen King’s story as we know it. Pennywise can only awaken every 27 years. But now that the barrier has been weakened, we see the entity has reawakened after his Black Spot killings, something that was never mentioned in the original novel.

We also know the military is attempting to weaponize It against American citizens, looking for a means to essentially turn the nation into Derry (which is particularly poignant as a nod to how the town reflects present-day horrors). Now that the artifact has been melted down, perhaps the Eldritch creature will stalk the new generation of Indigenous people who kept him bound all this time. The Hanlons have proven Pennywise stalks through generations of families, and perhaps this is how he re-enters the lives of those in Wabanaki Country.

In the future, Will dies in a fire, according to the 2017 film, similar to the one he escaped in this episode. However, given the events of this episode, it’s possible that Pennywise had something to do with the fire that inevitably claims Will’s life. Making him float now may be a way It was always able to torment and keep track of him throughout the remainder of his life, similar to how Pennywise was able to affect Ingrid until her old age in It: Chapter 2.

Either way, the final episode is taking fans into unexpected territory, covering another Pennywise spree that went unrecorded in the original novel and director Andy Muschietti’s two films. We don’t know where the series goes from here, but we do know season 2 will jump backward by another 27 years. Muschietti previously said, “The first season is 1962, the second season is 1935, and the third season is 1908.” These time periods are drawn from the novel's interludes, which follow Mike Hanlon’s research into Derry’s dark history and the three major incidents believed to be caused by It. That means season 1 is as close as the series will ever get to the films' timeline, and its finale may just recontextualize a few things from those two movies.

You know what that means; as soon as Welcome to Derry ends next week, official rewatches of It and It: Chapter 2 are in order.

It: Welcome to Derry

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