This article contains spoilers for It: Welcome to Derry‘s finale.
A closer look at the Pennywise time travel twist in It: Welcome to Derry reveals how it perfectly flips the story from another brilliant Stephen King sci-fi story.
It: Welcome to Derry‘s ending arc has many memorable moments, but the one viewers cannot stop talking about reveals that Pennywise perceives time differently. By telling Marge that he hopes to kill her so that Richie Tozier is never born, Pennywise confirms that he is on a strange mission to rewrite history to survive in the future.
Eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed that this Richie Tozier twist in It: Welcome to Derry’s finale seems reminiscent of the time travel story from another epic Stephen King book.
Pennywise’s Time Travel Reveal In It: Welcome To Derry Brings A Dark Spin To Stephen King’s 11.22.63
The overarching rules and nature of time travel in It: Welcome to Derry and 11.22.63 are significantly different. 11.22.63 has a more mainstream portrayal where a character, Jake Epping, travels back in time using a time portal in the present. In It: Welcome to Derry, in contrast, Pennywise is not exactly traveling through time. Instead, the being just has the ability to see the past, the present, and the future unfold at once.
However, Jake Epping and Pennywise are driven by a very similar motive. Both hope to snip a major event in history to create a ripple effect that changes the future.
The key difference lies in their intention. Jake Epping goes back in time to avert John F. Kennedy’s death. His actions are driven by altruism and a desire to save the world from an awful future. Meanwhile, Pennywise is driven by a selfish desire to wipe people from the past to ensure Rich Tozier is never born and he and his friends never kill him in the future.
While Jake from 11.22.63 makes several sacrifices and even risks wiping himself off from the future, Pennywise only wants to preserve itself.
Stephen King’s IT & 11.22.63 Unfold In The Same Universe
Interestingly, Stephen King’s It and 11.22.63 have a clear narrative connection. In one of 11.22.63‘s arcs, the main character, Jake, travels to the past and ends up in Derry in September 1958. He even encounters Richie Tozier and Beverly Marsh and senses Pennywise’s looming presence in the town. He describes his experience as follows:
“I can tell you one more thing: there was something inside that fallen chimney at the Kitchener Ironworks. I don’t know what and I don’t want to know, but at the mouth of the thing I saw a heap of gnawed bones and a tiny chewed collar with a bell on it. A collar that had surely belonged to some child’s beloved kitten. And from inside the pipe—deep in that oversized bore—something moved and shuffled. Come in and see, that something seemed to whisper in my head. Never mind all the rest of it, Jake—come in and see. Come in and visit. Time doesn’t matter in here; in here, time just floats away. You know you want to, you know you’re curious. Maybe it’s even another rabbit-hole. Another portal. Maybe it was, but I don’t think so. I think it was Derry in there—everything that was wrong with it, everything that was askew, hiding in that pipe. Hibernating. Letting people believe the bad times were over, waiting for them to relax and forget there had ever been bad times at all. I left in a hurry, and to that part of Derry I never went back.”
If It: Welcome to Derry‘s future seasons continue going down the time travel route, they could even introduce Jake Epping as one of the main players. This could complicate the show’s portrayal of timelines, but it would be fun to see how It: Welcome to Derry‘s finale could connect several Stephen King stories and turn them into hard sci-fi.
It: Welcome To Derry’s Time Travel Twist Is A Reminder To Watch 11.22.63’s Overlooked Adaptation
It: Welcome to Derry has earned a lot of appreciation from viewers and critics and has also managed to perform incredibly well from a commercial standpoint. 11.22.63‘s adaptation, in contrast, remains relatively underappreciated. After premiering in 2016, the show earned wide critical acclaim and boasts a Rotten Tomatoes score of 83% even to this day.
Although the show makes significant changes to the original book, it still stands as one of the best Stephen King TV adaptations.
Viewers who particularly liked the Pennywise time travel twist in It: Welcome to Derry‘s final arc should not only read Stephen King‘s 11/22/63 but also check out its overlooked TV adaptation.
