5 Burning Questions After the IT: Welcome to Derry Finale — Is This Blockbuster Revealing Too Many “Flaws”? As Season 1 comes to an end, IT: Welcome to Derry leaves behind a strangely mixed feeling: satisfaction with its tightly crafted horror atmosphere, but also an underlying restlessness that grows the more you think about it. Certain timelines don’t quite line up. Some of Pennywise’s actions make viewers pause and wonder: are these carefully planted hints, or unresolved plot holes being left behind? Most notably, there are questions that feel far from minor, yet the finale seems to glide past them almost too quickly — as if the show is deliberately choosing not to answer them just yet.

Spoiler Alert: This list contains spoilers for the ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Season 1 finale.After some laughs, some tears, and a few beheadings, the first season of IT: Welcome to Derry is in the books. The series lived up to the high expectations from horror fans and, dare I say, surpassed the movies in a variety of ways. IT: Welcome to Derry enjoyed pulling the rug out from its audience with major surprises from the very first episode, delivering consistent high-quality horror to the small screen week to week.

IT: Welcome to Derry managed to introduce a few batches of interesting kids to follow, allowed Bill Skarsgård the opportunity to make his performance of Pennywise cut even deeper, and build on an already beloved story. Overall, IT: Welcome to Derry did an excellent job of closing out major plotlines while still opening the door to deeper exploration of Pennywise and the town of Derry. However, there are a few things I’m still wondering about, and I hope we can get answers in the seasons to follow.

1. Are We Completely Finished With the Characters From 1962?

Image via HBO

Introducing new characters into an already established world, such as that of Derry, is an intimidating task, especially when there’s already a bond to the original Losers’ Club. However, IT: Welcome to Derry managed to give viewers a strong new offering of adolescent heroes, some of whom, like Rich (Arian S. Cartaya), caused great emotional stress upon their deaths. By the end of the season, Pennywise was temporarily defeated, and the survivors made their peace, as much as they could, and it looked like smooth sailing for the next few decades. But does that mean we’re finished with our new friends from 1962?

It seems overwhelmingly likely that the stories for the class of 1962 are over, with the slight possibility of cameos in a flash-forward scenario, but even that is stretching it. If Season 2 takes us 27 years into the past, the story will no doubt expand on brief moments we’ve already seen and flesh out more of the lore surrounding Pennywise and the artifacts that keep him trapped within Derry’s city limits. Although, if Pennywise is trying to change the future by killing key figures from the past, there’s always the possibility of alternate timelines…

2. Will We See Alternate Timelines That Revisit Eras Already Covered?

Arguably, the largest reveal in the IT: Welcome to Derry finale was learning that Pennywise experiences time in a non-linear way, where he is aware of his past, present, and future all at the same time. This is a smart plot twist that bolsters Pennywise as a cosmic being in possession of unfathomable powers, while also doing the very important job of adding stakes to future seasons. If every season goes back in time to Pennywise’s previous emergence, there is the challenge of investing the viewer in a story where they already assume a certain outcome to be true. However, could there be a more shocking outcome for viewers than seeing Pennywise temporarily change the future by killing someone of importance in the past?

Obviously, we won’t be able to return to 1988 and see a different path play out between Bill (Jaeden Martell) and Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) or any of the Losers’ Club without CGI or advanced animatronics to make those actors young again. That said, I think the writers did an excellent job with IT: Welcome to Derry in their efforts to expand the lore and incorporate things that have yet to happen into past events. Pennywise has impacted many lives during his all-you-can-eat buffet trips to Derry, so it’s completely possible to introduce characters that were on the periphery of the Losers’ Club or even the people we’ve met in the first season of IT: Welcome to Derry. Having a season predominantly set in one era, but time-hopping to see the ramifications of actions would be nothing short of amazing, but it already gives me a headache thinking of how to present that coherently.

3. Will Ingrid’s Role Be Larger in the Next Season?

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There is no more devoted daughter in fiction than Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe) in IT: Welcome to Derry. The daughter of Bob Gray (Skarsgård), the original human to wear the costume of Pennywise, Ingrid has committed herself to following in her father’s footsteps, no matter what he does. Ingrid is first introduced as a friendly face for Lily inside Juniper Hill Asylum, but it’s revealed that not only is she related to who she thinks is Pennywise, she’s also been complicit in his murders. Stowe was fantastic in the role, riding a line between comforting and creepy in a way that captures the essence of some of Stephen King’s most memorable villains.

It’s a given that Ingrid will be present for each season, with her being the one character besides Pennywise who exists in all eras that IT: Welcome to Derry plans to visit, but the question is, how much of her will we see? We’ve already seen her in the present day, thanks to a brilliantly clever cameo in the final moments of the finale, tying Ingrid into a defining moment for a young Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis). We’ve seen glimpses of her in the past via a stylish black-and-white reunion between “father” and daughter in Episode 6, when Ingrid was a young woman working at Juniper Hill Asylum, but it’s implied that more interactions are to come. There seems to be a road map in place for future seasons, but hopefully, Ingrid plays a pivotal role, because her unique and warped perspective was an inspired addition to the mythos of Derry and Pennywise.

4. Can We Expect More Stephen King Cameos in Future Seasons?

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Stephen King has such an expansive library of iconic stories and unforgettable characters that fans have grown to expect Easter eggs in adaptations of his works. IT: Welcome to Derry exceeded fan expectations by offering more than a simple wink and nod when Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) was introduced as a major character in the first season. The character of Hallorann is famously featured in another of King’s most revered novels, The Shining, where he gives young Danny Torrance guidance on how to navigate his psychic powers. In IT: Welcome to Derry, we are introduced to a younger Hallorann who is still in many respects coming to terms with his own powers and the responsibility of using them.

Exploring Hallorann’s early years before he clocked in at the world’s spookiest hotel added more depth to an already well-liked character and gave King fans a little something extra to enjoy. Since Hallorann was handled with such care, I wonder if there could be opportunities for other King characters to be used in future seasons. This could prove challenging because if we’re going back 27 years each season, it does limit who would be alive in that era to make an appearance. It’s not like Carrie can pop into a 1930s Derry and introduce them to the concept of a prom before jumping back into her time machine. If there are opportunities for future crossovers, fans would love to see them, albeit without a time machine factoring in.

5. Why Doesn’t Marge Give Her Son a Heads-Up?

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Marge (Matila Lawler) is one of the children who has a clearly defined character arc over the course of the season. She starts out as someone who is driven by popularity and acceptance from the mean girls who always travel in threes for some reason, but she learns to be proud of who she is after almost being killed by a cosmic entity. She becomes a better friend to Lilly (Clara Stack) and becomes an important player in the fight against Pennywise. In one of the most touching, turned heartwrenching subplots, Marge and Rich take part in a sweet but brief romance that is cut short when he sacrifices himself so that she may live in the fire at the Black Spot. Fan theories began to swell that Marge would grow up to be the son of Pennywise slayer Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard and Bill Hader), which is confirmed in the season finale when Pennywise tells Marge what her future holds. Marge will grow up to marry and have a son, whom she names Richie after the boy who saved her life, and she pays it forward by not warning her son about the monster she once fought.

We’ve established that if you leave the town of Derry, your memories will quickly fade, no matter how many living nightmares almost killed you, but that same brain wipe doesn’t extend to people who stay in town and have direct contact with Pennywise. I will be the first to say, supernatural elements don’t need to come into play to forget things within the time frame of 27 years. I haven’t been able to find my car keys for two days, and there’s no ancient evil clouding my vision, but I would remember if a clown with shark teeth told me I would one day sire a son who would kill him. I just have a knack for remembering things like that. This all borderlines on nitpicky, and is meant in good fun, but these are the type of problems that occur when playing the retcon game, and puzzle pieces do not quite click together after all is said and done. Maybe Marge remembered that Pennyise said Richie would succeed in killing him, so she felt relaxed about the situation and knew her wisecracking kid had everything under control.