IT: Explaining How the Ending Sets up Chapter Two

Let’s look at the finale of the film and what it means for The Losers Club, Pennywise and more in Chapter Two.

By William Bibbiani

Full spoilers follow for the movie version of Stephen King’s IT, the original novel, and the 1990 mini-series.

You screamed, you jumped, and at the end of Andy Muschietti’s IT you probably felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction because The Losers Club had prevailed, and Pennywise the Dancing Clown seemed to have been beaten to death with sticks.

And then, of course, came that title screen, which called the film IT: Chapter One, and you realized - or at least, you suddenly remembered - that this movie only adapted the first half of Stephen King’s sprawling horror saga, and that there’s still a sequel on the way to wrap this story up.

But Muschietti’s IT seemed to wrap everything up already, and in a pretty tidy little package. So what, exactly, is left? Let’s take a look at what happened and what you may have missed in the first film, and what’s to come, in IT: Chapter Two.

The first IT movie ends, again, with The Losers Club finding their courage and defeating Pennywise the Dancing Clown by beating the demon up and dropping it down a pit. But here’s the thing: Pennywise is an immortal evil creature who lives underground, and bludgeoning it before sending it back to its lair is hardly a confirmed kill.

Check out our comparison between the miniseries version of It and the new movie version above.

As you’ll recall from the film, Pennywise comes back about every three decades to feed on the residents of Derry, Maine. He prefers to eat children because they’re more vulnerable and easier to scare (and apparently people taste better when they’re scared) but theoretically he can dine on anybody at any age. And in 30 years there are going to be seven middle-aged adults who he’s really, really mad at.

That’s why IT: Chapter Two is going to introduce a whole new ensemble cast to play The Losers Club 30 years later. We don’t know who’s going to play them yet, but if the first movie is really as big a hit as everyone thinks it’s going to be, Muschietti is going to have his pick of practically any age-appropriate actor in Hollywood.

Don’t worry though, because it sounds like we haven’t seen the last of the adolescent Losers Club. Muschietti has already told Collider that IT: Chapter Two is “very connected to the first one,” and that “in [his] mind there will be that dialogue between the two timelines that we didn’t have in the first one because the first one is all about the kids.”

By a “dialogue between the two timelines,” Muschietti probably means that the second film will cut between The Losers Club in the present day as adults and with The Losers Club decades ago as children and teenagers. This was the approach that director Tommy Lee Wallace took when he adapted IT into the classic TV mini-series back in 1990, and it jibes with Stephen King’s original story.

You see, in the original novel and mini-series, the members of The Losers Club who left Derry wound up forgetting almost everything about Pennywise, and even each other. It’s a supernatural occurrence but it’s also relatively common for people to suppress their childhood traumas, so it makes a lot of sense.

Of course, the members of The Losers Club who leave Derry, and who forget about Pennywise, are also probably going to forget about overcoming their childhood fears. So when we meet Bill, Ben, Bev, Richie, Eddie, Mike and Stan again, there’s a very good chance that many of them are not going to be in a very healthy place, and that all those fears Pennywise feasted upon decades earlier will be ripe for the plucking once again.

And oh yes, we’re forgetting somebody. Remember Henry Bowers, the homicidal teen who Pennywise tricked into doing his homicidal bidding? It seemed like he fell to his death, but then again we didn’t see his body, and he did fall directly into Pennywise’s domain... So don’t be surprised if he, and maybe even a few other characters, show up again in unexpected ways.

But all of this begs the question: If The Losers Club wasn’t able to kill Pennywise in 1989, how the heck are they going to do it in the present day?

Well, in the novel (and to a lesser extent, in the mini-series) we find out a little bit more about the true nature of Pennywise. It’s not really a clown, of course. It’s older than that. Much, much older. And in the original novel, even in the first half, The Losers Club goes on an extradimensional journey to learn more about the creature. There they encounter a godlike being called Maturin, who is a Turtle that barfed up our universe and helps the kids plunge into Pennywise’s brain through something called “The Ritual of Chüd.”

Yeah, Stephen King can be kinda weird sometimes. But while Muschietti probably isn’t going to be COMPLETELY faithful to Uncle Stevie’s more fantastical notions, he does say he plans to get into the stranger elements of IT in the sequel, even though he left all of that that out in the first half for both dramatic and budgetary reasons.

“I really wanted to focus on the emotional journey of the group of kids,” the director told Yahoo Movies. “Getting in to that other dimension - the other side - was something that we could introduce in the second part. In the book the perspective of the writing… is always with the Losers, so everything they know about Pennywise is very speculative and shrouded in absurdity, so I wanted to respect that mystery feeling of not knowing what’s on the other side.

“I also wanted to leave something for the second half, so I didn’t want to get in trouble with that - going into the macroverse or that transdimensional stuff - and keep it grounded, from the point of view of the kids,” Muschietti continues. “There’s another movie to expand into that. Also, there’s a physical truth that it’s a movie that has a budget. And I didn’t want to get into a depiction of a realm that f***s up our budget, the creation of a world that will basically suck up half of our budget, and would have to sacrifice a lot of things.”

There is more to come in IT: Chapter Two, but we don’t to ruin everything. You’ll get more Losers Club, you’ll get more mythology, you’ll get more Pennywise, and you’ll probably get your mind blown when you travel to other dimensions. And you’ll hopefully get them soon, because New Line Cinema has already green lit the follow-up to IT.

For more of our coverage of Stephen King's IT, check out our review, listen to the latest episode of the IGN Movies Podcast for our full spoiler discussion about the film, and find out from the filmmakers about how they delivered a scary Pennywise.

Let's block ads! (Why?)