In the chilling finale of IT: Welcome to Derry season 1, Pennywise’s time travel link stood as the most shocking twist

IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 ends its eight-episode run on HBO Max on December 14, 2025. Titled Winter Fire, the climactic season finale brought plenty of twists and reveals about the strange, curious beast as deep fog engulfs Derry. 

Those who've watched the movies know that IT is alive in 1989 and was killed in 2016. However, there is a trick. And it takes the end of IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 for filmmaker Andy Muschietti's plan about Pennywise to fall into place. 

The finale episode kicks off with Pennywise's reawakening to renew his dancing terror over an entire cohort of school children. Marge, Lilly, and Ronnie follow in pursuit until the grand confrontation with the demon clown on the ice. 

But they can only fend him off with the dagger for so long before he pulls Marge and separates her from the rest. Now alone with the clown, Pennywise reveals something about Marge's future - she's going to be Richie's mother. 

But besides the revelation of Marge's future, the finale also teases Pennywise's time travel storyline. Now, his monologue, "I get confused. Today, tomorrow, yesterday... All the same for little Pennywise," in the finale with Marge makes sense. The clown more or less sees time as an ever-present landscape and not a series of sequential moments as humans understand time. 

What does Pennywise's time travel plot in IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 finale mean?

Pennywise's face-off with Marge in the IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 finale and everything the clown knows about her future reveals that It is an atemporal entity. It experiences the past, present, and future simultaneously. 

Marge herself acknowledged what Pennywise had said, that the past, present, and future are all the same - that his death was actually his birth. She also voices a potential huge plot twist in Pennywise's story. If he can time travel, she asks, "What if he tries to go back and kill someone from the time before we were born, like our parents?"

Pennywise was killed in 2016. Which means he doesn't exist beyond that year. But if his perception of time allows him to exist across all pre-2016 timelines, it means he can go back in time and kill Marge and Richie's ancestors. If that happens, there's going to be no Marge and then Richie in the story because they are never born.

It also means Pennywise wouldn't be killed in 2016, which also implies that he can achieve immortality. It means he could exist beyond 2016. This intriguing twist of time travel makes Pennywise even scarier. 

But succeeding in altering history to ensure that he survives beyond 2016 contradicts the version of reality of his death in It: Chapter 2. 

Pennywise's story is not over after IT: Welcome to Derry season 1, says Andy and Barbara Muschietti

IT: Welcome to Derry is a prequel to the movies that unravels backwards, starting with season 1 being set in 1962. The second season is expected to jump further back to 1935 and season 3 to 1908.

After the season 1 finale's allusions to Pennywise's atemporal reality, brother-sister duo creators of the series, Andy and Barbara Muschietti, confirm that the clown's story is not over. Talking about their plan for the still unconfirmed season 2 and season 3, Andy Muschietti told Variety in an interview published on December 14: 

"Our first pitch to Stephen King was to tell the story backwards. I can't say too much about the logic behind it, because I don't want to spoil it, but it has to do with how Pennywise experiences time in a non-linear way. We sort of hinted at it at the end of the [first] season."

Watch all eight episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 on HBO Max.