SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for the IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 finale. If you have not yet watched, take advantage of your HBO subscription and do so immediately!
Over the last two months, IT: Welcome To Derry has provided audiences with not only a constant stream of horrors, but also an unyielding flood of love for Stephen King. Whether it be deep cut ties to the novel on which the series is based, sly connections to the movies that preceded the show, or nods to other stories in the King canon, every single episode has provided fans with a plethora of easter eggs and references to catch. You didn’t really think that the finale would be any different, did you?
Titled “Winter Fire” (which is itself a reference to the poem that Ben Hanscom writes for Bev Marsh in IT), the last episode of IT: Welcome To Derry has aired, and there are a great number of special details to notice. I’ve done my best to catalogue them all as they appear, and I’ll start with one that arrives in the very first scene…
A Mist Of Doom
To begin the episode, a mysterious mist quickly falls over the town of Derry, Maine, and while the icy fog is a result of It being awake outside of its typical hibernation schedule and making a move toward freedom, the look of the weather condition should be reminiscent to any Stephen King fan. I am, of course, referring to the novella “The Mist,” which sees a small Maine town flooded with an eldritch cloud that serves as the atmosphere for an invading army of monsters from another dimension. The connection in IT: Welcome To Derry is purely aesthetic, but one also can’t help but get the impression that the filmmakers knew what they were doing.
Children Locked In A Gym Echoes An Iconic Stephen King Moment
As an absolute horror unfolds on a stage, students gathered in their high school gymnasium rush panickily to the doors, only to find them locked. Am I describing part of a scene from the IT: Welcome To Derry finale or part of an iconic scene from the final act of Carrie? If your answer is, “Both,” you get a prize! When Pennywise successfully traumatizes the lowerclassmen of Derry High School in the episode, the shot of the scared students pounding on the exits feels like it is specifically designed as a nod to the start of Carrie’s revenge rampage at prom – which begins with her telepathically sealing the room so that nobody can escape.
Maturin Root Cures Dick Hallorann
In Episode 5 of IT: Welcome To Derry, the show folded in elements of Doctor Sleep to be a part of Dick Hallorann’s story, as it was introduced that the psychic soldier was taught at a young age to cage the horrible ghosts around him in a mental box. In the finale, he gets a new way to battle back against the horrors, and it’s in the form of a tea made from Maturin root. If that seems somewhat familiar, it’s because it’s the name of the great benevolent turtle who is the nemesis of It. While there is a lot of turtle imagery scattered throughout IT: Welcome To Derry – from the regular presence of Bert The Turtle, to the charm on Lily’s bracelet, to the casing in which one of the pillars was buried – but the finale marks the first time that Maturin is mentioned by name.
Margaret… Tozier!?
There is a line between “Easter Eggs and References” and “Straight Plot Developments” that I do my best not to cross in the writing of these features, and I’ll admit that this entry gets within millimeters of it. That being said, I think it’s still on the side of the former, so I’m going to discuss it anyway! When the action moves to the frozen Penobscot River and Pennywise singles out Marge, he reveals key elements of her future – namely that she will eventually marry a man with the last name “Tozier” and give birth to a son named Richie (who will grow up to kill It). While we knew that the kids were linked to the Losers Club via Will a.k.a. Mike Hanlon’s dad, this adds a whole extra level of connection.
Time Is A Wheel
In IT: Welcome To Derry, the audience really only starts to get a grasp on what It really is. We learn about why it stays beneath the titular town and the origins of its Pennywise form, but there are many bigger things still to learn. The finale offers a fascinating clue into this with the revelation of how It perceives time – which is forward and backward all at once, with its birth and death being indistinguishable. Understanding this, one can’t help but relate it to the oft-repeated phrase in The Dark Tower series that “Ka is a wheel,” which is to say that there is a malleable fate that guides with an invisible hand.
“Beep Beep, Margie!”
If I’m being honest, one of my biggest nitpicks with IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two is the deployment of “Beep beep, Richie.” In Stephen King’s book, members of the Losers Club say this phrase whenever their most ludicrously loquacious friends needs to shut the hell up, but the movies never get it right (Pennywise is the only one to say it in the first movie, and adult Bev says it minus any real context in the second). IT: Welcome To Derry tries a third swing at it, namely as the last words uttered at Marge before It lunges in for the kill… though it still doesn’t really make any sense.
Pennywise Takes An Epic Form
How story developments in IT: Welcome To Derry differ from how things play out in Stephen King’s IT is subject matter for another feature outside of this easter egg and reference collection, but spotlighting one is actually necessary in this case. In Episode 7, It arrives on the scene in Pennywise form to enjoy all of the death and chaos at The Black Spot, but this is a deviation from the source material, which has the evil entity appear as a giant, demonic bird. What’s nice about the finale is that this epic imagery doesn’t go to waste: in its final bid to escape the cage called Derry, the monster desperately tries to fly across the barrier… but it ends up being too late.
Marge’s Eulogy Comes From The Mind Of Eddie Kaspbrak
In discussing the works of Stephen King, fans are quick to point at his brilliant ability to craft complex protagonists and antagonists who find themselves faced with extraordinary circumstances, but rarely does his prose get enough credit: not just a master storyteller, he has a special gift for building intimate worlds and expressing ineffable emotion. One of his great passages in IT, for example, has young Eddie Kaspbrak reflecting on friendship when his pals visit him in the hospital after he breaks his arm:
Maybe there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends—maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.
It’s a remarkable bit of writing, and in IT: Welcome To Derry, it’s the source of Marge’s eulogy at Richie’s funeral.
Dick Starts His Path Towards The Overlook Hotel
If we pin the setting of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to its release year, that means that IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 is set about 18 years prior to Dick Hallorann meeting the Torrance family. That in mind, it would be pretty unbelievable if Dick were to end his story on the show by directly moving on to a gig in Sidewinder, Colorado… but it can be said that events do at the very least point him in that direction. In the final scenes of the finale, Dick mentions that he is going to move to London to take a job as a cook at a hotel, and it will presumably be there that he hones the skills he needs to eventually become the head cook at the Overlook.
The Hanlons Bought The Farm (Literally, Not Figuratively!)
Because IT: Welcome To Derry is a prequel series, it came pre-loaded with some questions about the Hanlons. Audiences first got to meet Leroy Hanlon in IT: Chapter One, where he is introduced as Mike Hanlon’s grandfather living and working on a sheep farm, but how did he end up staying so long in Maine? That answer is delivered in the finale, as while the Hanlons were considering moving far, far away from It’s hunting ground, they instead choose to stay on the outskirts of town and purchase Rose’s land after she decides it’s time to leave Derry. The story ends on what seems like a happy note for Will – though it gets less happy when you think about what ends up happening to him years later.
Mrs. Kersh Meets Bev Marsh
The story of Ingrid Kersh in IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 is included as a way for the story to link back to the character’s small (and haunting) role in IT: Chapter Two, but if you’re like me, you’ve been asking yourself, “Well, where was she in 1988/1989?” Thankfully, the run doesn’t end without answering that question, and it’s terrific: not only do we learn that Mrs. Kersh was locked up in Juniper Hill for decades, but we also learn that she was present on the traumatic day when Bev Marsh’s mother died (making her interaction with Bev all the more sinister in Chapter Two).
With that, we’ve come to the end of cataloguing all of the easter eggs and references in IT: Welcome To Derry… but we can keep our fingers crossed that this is just the beginning of the end and an announcement about Season 2 will be coming soon.
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