Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for IT: Welcome to Derry season 1, episode 8!IT: Welcome to Derry co-creator Jason Fuchs has unpacked Richie Tozier’s confirmed connection to the prequel and one big death’s true meaning. During episode 7 of the horror prequel series, Rich Santos sacrifices himself to save Marge Truman during the Black Spot attack. However, IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 ends with his spirit returning to help his friends re-cage Pennywise.
At the same time, however, the show revealed a major twist regarding how he connects to Richie Tozier, a member of the Losers’ Club in the IT movies. Before he attempts to kill Marge, Pennywise reveals he doesn’t see time linearly. He says that she’s Richie’s mother in the future, naming her child after the boy that helped save her life.
In an interview with ScreenRant‘s Grant Hermanns for IT: Welcome to Derry, Fuchs explained how Marge and Rich’s Richie Tozier connection was formed to offer a deeper emotional connection to the Losers’ Club. The co-creator explained how the tragedy of Rich’s death and his helping the group at the end, and how it forms a generational connection:
ScreenRant: Another big thing that came from episode 7 is the heartbreaking death of Rich. I’d love to hear how you honed in on him being the one to send off, so to speak, especially since he gets the full circle heroic moment in the finale of helping them re-establish the cage.
Jason Fuchs: The Rich decision really was generated before I even knew who Rich was. What I knew was that I wanted to find real emotion and heartbreak in the show, and I wanted to find a way to connect that emotion to the stories of our Losers in 1989 in ways that might feel unexpected. Certainly, there are linkages throughout the season to the films and to the later cycles that are right in front of your face and obvious. We understand the linkages between the Hanlon family and Mike, but I thought it would be interesting if we had a character who was the parent of one of our losers, who maybe we didn’t understand to be that at the beginning of the season.
We know a little bit about Rich’s mom from canon, but what if the story of her relationship in this show is the story of why she named her son Rich? What if the only two men she ever truly loved in her life were the boy who saved her as an adolescent and the son she’d later have? Naming him Rich was a reference to that, whether she knows it or not – because she’s been in Derry a long time, so maybe those memories aren’t all still there. There’s something even more tragic about the fact that she’s sitting in that hospital the day she gives birth to Rich Tozier and doesn’t know why Rich feels like the right name; she just knows that it does.
That connective tissue, that emotional beat, was one of the earliest things I pitched Andy. I think I pitched him that back during the development of the pilot in 2021, so we knew that was going to be a part of it. We knew we were going there, but we didn’t know exactly how it would all work. We knew he was going to be a character named Rich who had a puppy love with Marge that turns into something maybe a little bit more profound by the end of the season, in those final waning moments of the newly named Rich’s life.
Fuchs went on to explain how Rich helping the ground at the end balanced out the tragedy of his death, offering hope despite the layers of darkness in the story. He also emphasizes how the movies play on the same ideas of hopefulness and “the power of love to push back the darkness of hate,” something embodied in Rich’s final moments:
We knew this was a show that was going to have a lot of darkness and bleakness, just by virtue of the cycle and what this material is. But we wanted to find something inspiring and hopeful too. Rich’s sacrifice is one of the saddest moments of the season, but I also think it’s one of the most tragically beautiful. To be able to pay it back and have him return in episode 8 and help his friends complete their mission, that all felt like the kind of hope I wanted to imbue the show with.
There’s a lot of death, there’s a lot of violence, and there’s tremendous amount of evil in Welcome to Derry. But fundamentally, I don’t find it to be a hopeless story. I don’t find the movies to be hopeless either. I walk away from those films with a certain amount of hope about the power of the human spirit, about the power of unified belief, and most of all, the power of love to push back the darkness of hate. We couldn’t end this season on a note of hopelessness. There’s enough of that in the world, and there’s enough of that in the season, so saving Rich come back in the way that he does felt right.
The revelation about Marge being Richie’s mother connects nearly all the main children in IT: Welcome to Derry to the children in the Losers’ Club in the future. Will Hanlon is the father of Mike Hanlon, whose place in Derry makes the Club reuniting in IT: Chapter Two possible. This confirms just how connected the series is to the movies.
As Fuchs says, however, Rich’s arrival to help the group makes for a hopeful ending. Despite his death, he still had a hand in using the dagger to cage Pennywise in Derry once more. His name being the inspiration for Richie’s also further connects with the hope the Club has against fighting IT, showcasing the true connections between its cycles.
Given Pennywise seems intent on trying to prevent his demise in the film duology, future seasons of IT: Welcome to Derry will likely have similar connections to the original movie. Should the planned seasons 2 and 3 be greenlit, there’s a strong chance there will be more familiar lineages to come as other feeding cycles get explored.
- Release Date
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October 26, 2025
- Network
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HBO
- Directors
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Andy Muschietti
