A returning Stephen King show turned out to be incredibly ambitious in its opening season, where it rewrote the lore surrounding an iconic villain in more ways than one. Arguably, this rewrite has potentially made the villain character even more intriguing and paved the way for the series to gradually shift its genre.
For a long time, most small-screen adaptations of Stephen King’s books struggled to leave their mark. Only a handful of Stephen King shows from recent years, like Mr. Mercedes, 11.22.63, and The Outsider, have achieved any semblance of critical acclaim and commercial success. However, both TV adaptations of Stephen King’s works in 2026, The Institute and It: Welcome to Derry, proved to be successful.
It: Welcome to Derry not only performed well enough to be considered for more seasons but also earned wide critical acclaim. In its ending moments, the show also dropped an intriguing Pennywise twist that potentially changes the established lore surrounding the evil clown character. While this could prove to be a risky creative decision, it arguably makes the IT franchise even more fascinating.
It: Welcome To Derry Has Ambitiously Rewritten Pennywise’s Lore
It: Welcome to Derry walks through everything from Pennywise’s origins on Earth to the reason behind his clown persona. The show adds more depth to the existing lore behind the character by revealing how he has been fought and resisted by humans for generations. The show even reveals how he borrowed his persona from a real local clown, Bob Gray, and turned his innocent act into something truly sinister.
Apart from revealing why Pennywise disguises himself as a clown, the HBO show also reinvents Mrs. Kersh’s characterization. It shows how he started looking up to Pennywise after believing that he was a supernatural manifestation of her father, Bob Gray. The most interesting rewrite in the show surrounding Pennywise’s lore, however, has nothing to do with his past.
In its final episode, HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry drops the shocking revelation that, unlike humans, Pennywise does not perceive time linearly. Owing to this, the Stephen King villain already knows how Richie Tozier and his friends from the Losers Club will manage to kill him in the future.
With this knowledge, Pennywise sets out to wipe out the ancestry of the kids from the Losers Club to ensure he never dies in the future. In the Stephen King book, it is established that Pennywise is an interdimensional being, suggesting that he exists outside humanity’s linear perception of time.
However, the original book and the movies never explored the full potential of Pennywise’s interdimensional abilities. By giving a glimpse of what Pennywise is truly capable of, It: Welcome to Derry has subtly evolved his existing lore and made him even scarier.
Pennywise’s Time Travel Twist Gives IT’s Horror Lore A Sci-Fi Twist
While the bigger implications of the Pennywise twist from It: Welcome to Derry season 1’s ending are yet to be explored, the reveal sets the stage for the franchise to incline more towards the sci-fi genre. From a purely conceptual standpoint, the reveal from season 1’s final chapter suggests that Pennywise has the ability to exist across all timelines simultaneously.
Despite his eventual defeat in the movies, he continues to exist in all previous timelines, allowing him to remain immortal and even potentially giving him the power to alter the future. A closer look at this time travel development makes it hard not to notice how it creates many confusing paradoxes and even plot holes in the franchise.
However, it looks like It: Welcome to Derry season 2 will set out to resolve these. Creators of Netflix’s Dark, Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, have reportedly joined It: Welcome to Derry season 2‘s writing team, suggesting that the show’s next chapter will place an even greater emphasis on the time travel storyline and set out to fix the narrative issues that come with it.
Since Dark creators have already given us one flawless time travel show in the past, their involvement with the Stephen King adaptation ensures it will only get better as it explores its sci-fi horror elements in the future.