'Welcome to Derry's' Last Big Twist Makes No Sense

I am not Jon Osterman. My molecules were not torn apart, forcing me to reassemble them over time. I did not emerge from that journey with blue skin and an exposed penis. Never once have I sat on Mars, lamenting human beings and their petty issues. So, of course, I don’t experience time all at once. Nor, to be fair, am I well-read on such a theoretical discussion. That said, I can confidently say that It: Welcome to Derry’s version of this concept makes no sense.

Regardless, that was the big reveal in the show’s eighth episode, which was so filled to the brim you might have forgotten all about it. In this chapter, we saw General Shaw get murdered (as anyone with a brain assumed he would), the town get enveloped in a mist that was both too thick to see through or too thin to notice (depending on what was needed), the macguffin/dagger starts turning the kids against each other for reasons, a gymnasium’s worth of school kids are kidnapped by Pennywise after it gets let off the leash. It was a lot, and I’d love to say it was mostly satisfying, but it wasn’t, as has been one of the show’s main issues.

There were certainly some bright spots! Visually, Welcome to Derry has hardly missed. It has consistently conjured frightening images meant to lodge themselves in your psyche. We got to see Dick Hallorann invade Pennywise’s mind, which was cool even if it makes no sense given that IT is a Lovecraftian horror that may not even have a mind in the traditional sense. You could argue that he’s able to invade IT’s mind because it is in the form of Pennywise and has to adhere to those rules, but if that were the case, all that gunfire IT has been subject to should have dropped the creature for good.

There was also a lot of nonsense. We finally saw the culmination of the military’s “plan,” which amounted to letting Pennywise leave Derry, something it shouldn’t really… want. At this point, it seems almost silly to compare it to the book or even the movies to which it is a prequel, but the monster goes to great lengths to make sure it can feed in peace. Why would it gleefully try to escape all of a sudden? Why would it suddenly emerge from its slumber just because someone essentially left the door open?! Why try and take those kids when, last I checked, there are kids all over the planet for IT to eat?!?! WHY?!?!

One of the most confounding aspects of the episode was the reveal that Marge will one day give birth to one of the Losers: Richie Tozier. Pennywise explains this to her, noting that he experiences time all at once, and can see that, one day, her son will cause his death (or birth, as he notes, cause why not make a needlessly complicated scenario more so). He excitedly announces that he will eat Marge, preventing his death, until he is stopped by Dick. Looks really cool, makes zero sense.

Again, I’m not Dr. Manhattan, and I’ll even go a step further and say I’m a big ole dumb dumb, okay? Ain’t got no smarts aside from what the show tells me. Even in this scenario, if I’m told that Pennywise can see his death as time is happening all at once, how would it be possible for him to prevent it?! It happened/is happening! Later on, Marge and Lily Bainbridge discuss Pennywise using its ability to go back in time to change things, which makes sense coming from then, cause they’re, like, 12. Andy Muschietti showing up in the featurette to posit the same idea as being interesting is ridiculous.

Pennywise time traveling to prevent its death doesn’t even make sense in the context of the episode. IT fully plans to kill Marge to prevent its own demise. That happens. The monster is stopped, but it planned to eat her, so her son didn’t help kill it. Ya know who else kills the creature? Mike Hanlon. I’d assume Pennywise knows this. And yet, he kidnaps Mike’s dad (Will) and does… nothing to him. Maybe he thought taking him out of town like the pied piper was going to solve his problems, but dammit, he could have just taken the kid out, something I wouldn’t have even thought about had they not introduced that idea.

And it’s not the only nonsensical idea that’s introduced. The show spent the whole season building up the fragments of Pennywise’s ship that had been planted specifically to keep it trapped in Derry. In this episode, we learn that the piece Lily Bainbridge has (that was just… chilling in Pennywise’s lair…) can be used to replace one that was destroyed last episode (as part of General Shaw’s stupid plan). The remaining kids (and the ghost of one who perished) struggle mightily to return the piece to the Earth in a genuinely thrilling sequence. They succeed, and the piece is just… left exposed in a weird-looking tree. Ripe for the picking, one might say, for any of Pennywise’s human servants or even a latchkey kid.

I do want to highlight the sequence again for a moment, though. There’s cool stuff in there. Pennywise looks incredible when he sprouts giant, demonic wings. The tree looks pretty rad. And having Dick Hallorann see the recently deceased Richy help the kids “bury” the macguffin was sweet. It would have been more meaningful if two of the other boys killed came back to help as well (lucky seven), but such is life. The show was full of moments, but they just rarely had any substance to them, unlike the book on which the show is based. But that’s not the biggest difference between them.

Everyone here is just dumb. That’s easily the biggest difference between the book (and even the movies) and this show. The titular IT is stupid. Stupid enough to believe for even a second that it’s a man named Bob Gray. So idiotic that it doesn’t see the easy solution right in front of its face. Will’s parents’ reasoning for staying in the town is moronic and not at all noble, like they pretend it is. General Shaw’s plan to control an other-worldly being who feasts on fear is asinine. Just dumb decision after dumb decision. The Loser’s Club would never.