EW went to set for the climactic season finale to get the scoop.

Inside the It: Welcome to Derry season finale and that world-shaking Pennywise revelation (exclusive)

EW went to set for the climactic season finale to get the scoop.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in *Vanity Fair*, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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December 14, 2025 10:06 p.m. ET

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Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard) in the 'It: Welcome to Derry' season 1 finale. Credit:

Courtesy of Brooke Palmer/HBO

- *It: Welcome to Derry* cast and crew unpack the big Pennywise reveal that explains why the show is telling the story in reverse.

- Matilda Lawler explains how the revelation changed her approach to the character of Marge.

- Co-showrunner Jason Fuchs reveals the legacy characters that almost made it into the show.

**Warning: This article contains major spoilers from *It: Welcome to Derry* episode 8, "Winter Fire."**

Back in June 2024, after months of Hollywood strikes, the cast and crew of *It: Welcome to Derry* returned to Toronto to film a crucial sequence of their season finale.

"Just a warning, it's foggy," Barbara Muschietti, an executive producer and co-creator with brother Andy Muschietti, mentions while feeling for the small opening in a floor-to-ceiling wraparound blackout curtain inside Cinespace Studios.

In the center is a leafless, crooked tree growing out of boulders. Its skeletal branches reach out over the stage floor, which the team dressed to look like a frozen river. Fog machines pump in mist, while large fans billow plumes of fake potato-based snow across the set.

"We were inhaling that all day so thank goodness it was potato based," Matilda Lawler, who plays Marge, recalls of that day a year-and-a-half later. "For Marge in particular, there was a lot of floor acting. So a lot of it would just end up in my mouth or in my eyes or in my hair. I definitely ate like a gallon of that."

It's the site of the final showdown on *It: Welcome to Derry*, the moment when the adults and the new Loser's Club of this 1962 timeline gather to repair the cage that keeps the shape-shifting entity locked inside Derry. It's also the point when a crucial revelation is made that drastically changes the world that Stephen King envisioned in his original novel and paves the way for future seasons.

Ripples through time

Matilda Lawler, Arian S. Cartaya, Clara Stack, Blake Cameron James, and Amanda Christine on 'It: Welcome to Derry' season 1 finale.

Courtesy of Brooke Palmer/HBO

Lawler remembers when she first learned about the big secret. It was about five months after her initial audition when the Muschiettis called her to reveal their ultimate vision for Marge.

Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) approaches Marge on the ice as wanted posters of missing children litter the solid surface. One of them belongs to Richie Tozier, Finn Wolfhard's character from the first 2017 *It* movie. Richie, of course, doesn't exist yet at this point in time, but the entity, as we come to discover, experiences the past, present, and future simultaneously. It knows what's coming decades ahead: Marge will grow up to marry a man named Wentworth Tozier and conceive a son whom she will name Richie, after her first love, the late Rich Santos (Arian S. Cartaya).

Wolfhard's Richie is Lawler's favorite character from it. "It's kind of a joke in my family," she says. "When I see him in something, it'll be like, 'That's my son!'" The actress always related to Richie more than any other character in the *It* movies and wanted to find the personality traits Marge might have passed down to him.

"I watched Finn Wolfhard's work quite a bit and studied that character a lot beforehand," she continues. "I was trying to pick up on some of his mannerisms and get as much of a sense of him as I could."

For the young Cartaya, the reveal made him feel more important walking onto set, knowing that Richie Tozier is named after his own character. On set of the finale, when he comes back as a ghost to help his friends, Andy coaches him before his big moment: running across the frozen battlefield to flip off Pennywise — something the child actor is visibly eager to do, even with his father watching on the sidelines.

Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier in 'It' (2017).

courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

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"Rich loves his friends. All he cares about is his friends and helping his friends," he says. "Coming back on the lake and saving the day, defeating Pennywise, is just the best feeling ever."

The creature's relationship with time is one of the bigger new pieces of lore expansion and the key to cracking the entire vision for the prequel show. Jason Fuchs, series co-creator with the Muschiettis and co-showrunner with Brad Caleb Kane, spoke with Andy early on in the process to discuss the pitfalls of prequels. His biggest question was around how to keep the stakes high.

"It's very hard to do in prequel storytelling because the future is set," he remarks. "That led to me saying to Andy, 'What if there is something unique about Its relationship to time?'"

The initial pitch for *It: Welcome to Derry* was a three-season arc. The first one would go back in time 27 years before the events of the first movie to chronicle how the entity nearly broke out of its cage and spread its fear to the rest of the world. Subsequent seasons (of which none have officially been greenlit as of press time) would have 27-year gaps in between to focus on other Pennywise cycles.

The Richie wanted poster and the Marge reveal, Fuchs continues, "ties in with the mystery that Andy has been hinting at, which is why we're telling this story in reverse... The seeds of that are sewn in that specific moment when It reveals to Marge and to the audience that it knows exactly where this story is going, which raises questions certainly about where our story is going."

Chris Chalk as Dick Hallorann in the 'It: Welcome to Derry' season 1 finale.

It's something the season 1 actors are now pondering, especially Chris Chalk. As someone with the "shine," Mr. Dick Hallorann has existed in many forms in the King canon. In *The Shining*, he's a man with psychic abilities working in the kitchen of the haunted Overlook Hotel — as the character alludes to at the end of the *It: Welcome to Derry* season 1. But in *Doctor Sleep*, his ghostly consciousness remains active long after the death of his physical body.

Chalk may, perchance, have already suggested to the powers that be to bring Dick back, especially if they are playing around with time.

"No one's taking me seriously, or if they are, they're doing it behind closed doors," he admits. "But I do really think that anything surrounding Dick Hallorann could be a win, like an easy layup."

These musings, he says, come from that final episode of the season.

"We talked about the idea that Dick can travel through realities, as well. How could that impact the idea?" he continues. "This was well before there was any talk of a second season out loud.... I knew he could do a lot of cool stuff, but that's when I was like, 'His power's bigger than he realizes.' It was a very late-in-the-game conversation of realizing, if Dick can travel across realities, he can be in any version of this show that you create — only if it's useful and interesting and serves the story. Of course, selfishly, I want 'em."

Movie sync-ups and lost storylines

Joshua Odjick, Jovan Adepo, and Blake Cameron James on 'It: Welcome to Derry' season 1 finale.

Courtesy of Brooke Palmer/HBO

The first season is a proof of concept for how the rest of the series can play with time. Aside from the inclusion of future Margaret Tozier, Sophia Lillis returns as Beverly Marsh in a flash-forward that also includes the late Joan Gregson, portraying the version of Mrs. Kersh we know from the second movie. It's a scene that takes place just one year before the events of the first It, directed by Andy Muschietti.

"One of the hardest things about making a TV show is having a big overview, a big-picture understanding of the thing, even before it's fully edited," Andy says. "But I knew one thing. I felt like all the connections with the movies were on people's minds in general, which is great because it's very stimulating for the audience to put the pieces together. But there was a visual, a link that was missing."

Fuchs confirms the other legacy characters the team toyed with for season 1. A younger Sonia Kaspbrak, Eddie's mom from the films, "was gonna play a significant role," he reveals, as was the son of Derry police chief Clint Bowers (Peter Outerbridge) who would go on to conceive Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton), the future bully of the Loser's Club.

The story ended up dictating itself, Fuchs explains. Sonia, for example, is a journalist in the canon of It who came to Derry to report on the Paul Bunyan statue. The idea was for her to then to trade that boring puff piece for an investigation of all the missing kids.

"She notices this fog of Derry that's covering the town. She then investigates, and by the end of the season falls prey to that fog and goes from someone who's deeply inquisitive to just accepting that bad things happen in Derry," Fuchs says of the lost storyline. "That ultimately felt like it was duplicative of what we're doing with Charlotte [Taylour Paige], two outsiders who are probing."

Ingrid Kersh (Joan Gregson) in 'It Chapter Two'.

Even that character-selection process relates directly to how the show handles time. The season 1 finale's epilogue with Bev and Ingrid is adding new meaning to the events of the movies. We now know why It took the form of Mrs. Kersh to torment grown Beverly (Jessica Chastain) in *It Chapter Two*: her earliest interaction with Ingrid is directly linked to the trauma of losing her mother. The proposed second and third seasons can only enhance that experience.**

Fuchs points to Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), specifically, who decides with Charlotte to live just outside the bounds of Derry to keep an eye on things for years to come. When we next see him, he's presented as Mike's stern grandfather, working on the family sheep farm.

Adepo, the man behind Lee, recalls how the team "added a more developed ending" to the season finale after the Hollywood strikes. "We were gonna leave, and then me and Charlotte talked and decided to turn around," he recalls. "Then I think they added Kimberly [Guerrero]'s character coming to say, 'Hey, there's a duty here.'"

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Though there were already sheep in the background of the scene, the actor remembers suggesting to Andy that Lee mention them in the dialogue. It wasn't scripted, but it turned into the character asking Charlotte if she'd help him with the animals.

"It was fun to get to put a bookend to it, so that people who've never seen the movies can watch the whole show and then go jump straight into the movies," Adepo says.

The Leroy of the *It* film, as played by Steven Williams, imparts a piece of wisdom onto his grandson, Mike (Chosen Jacobs): "There are two places you can be in this world. You can be out here, like us, or you can be in there, like them." Audiences assumed at the time he was referring to a proverbial cage, but one could argue that he was referring to the actual cage holding the It entity inside Derry.

"We went back and lined it up exactly with that," Fuchs says. "I would encourage people to go back and rewatch [the movies] 'cause there are moments that have different meanings."

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