Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for the IT: Welcome to Derry season finale.

HBO Max’s IT: Welcome to Derry is a wild ride of eight episodes that expands Stephen King‘s world of Derry, Maine, and the alien monster who often takes the form of Pennywise the clown (Bill Skarsgård). Andy Muschietti and company have crafted a series of great characters, plenty of scares, and twists at every turn. Perhaps the biggest twist of all comes during the season finale, where the entity not only reveals that Marge (Matila Lawler) is the future mother of Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard), but that its death was also the moment of its birth. With the reveal that Pennywise can go backwards in time to seek out the family of those who eventually kill it, anything is possible. Could Welcome to Derry Season 2 change the future?

Pennywise Is Killed by the Losers Club in ‘IT Chapter: Two’

Image via Warner Bros.

In Stephen King’s IT, the monster is revealed to be a shapeshifting alien that awakens every 27 years to feed on the fears of its prey. This makes kids an easy target, and is also the reason why the entity so often appears as a clown. In King’s book, as well as the 1990 miniseries and Muschietti’s first film, the Losers Club of Derry’s forgotten kids come together to battle Pennywise in the sewers, defeating it by overcoming their fears. However, IT also deals with the concept of non-linear time as seen at the end of the first movie, when Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis) reveals that when she was trapped in Pennywise’s Deadlights, she had a vision of the Losers as adults battling the killer clown.

In 2019’s IT: Chapter Two, the entity awakens 27 years later, and, as Beverly saw in her visions, the grown-up friends reunite to take down the clown. They use their beliefs and imagination, taking away Pennywise’s power to the point that it shrivels up, allowing them to crush its weakened heart and finally killing the entity that has terrorized Derry for thousands of years.

Death Gives Pennywise New Powers To Travel Through Time

IT: Welcome to Derry‘s premise seemed simple and arguably unnecessary. With an audience already knowing how Pennywise died, a prequel served a limited purpose. Revisiting that world and seeing Bill Skarsgård under the makeup again would be fun, but Muschietti was going back to the well (er, sewer) to flesh out underwritten parts of King’s novel, like the Black Spot fire.

However, what seemingly started as fan service quickly grew into something more substantial. This wasn’t about putting Pennywise back on the screen as much as possible (the clown doesn’t even show up until halfway through the season), but building a complex story that could stand on its own while also interweaving with what was to come. IT: Welcome to Derry spends a lot of time expanding on the entity’s mythology, from the reveal of the dagger that can be used as a weapon to the military’s plan to free the fear-emitting creature and set it loose on America.

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Season 1’s ending has its own limitations. Pennywise can’t die because it will return in 27 years, so how could the creators craft a finale which lived up to everything leading up to it? In “Winter Fire,” after Pennywise tells Marge that she will have a son one day, the clown drops the bombshell: it already knows that Richie Tozier and his friends will kill it one day. But, if Pennywise can kill Marge, perhaps Richie will die with her, rewriting the entity’s afte. Thankfully, Pennywise doesn’t succeed, but as Marge later asks Lilly (Clara Stack): what if it’s capable of going back in time and targeting their parents next?

‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Already Has a Three-Season Plan, Per the Creators

Image via HBO

Before a single episode of IT: Welcome to Derry had even premiered, Andy Muschietti confirmed that his overall plan for the show involved three seasons’ worth of material. In a January interview with Radio TU, Muschietti said:

“So they talk about catastrophic events from the past, like the fire in the Black Spot…. the massacre of the Bradley Gang, a gang of bank robbers in the ’30s… and the explosion of the Kitchener Ironworks. Every time [Pennywise] comes out of hibernation, there is a catastrophic event that happens at the beginning of that cycle.

We are basing the three seasons of this series on each of these catastrophic events. There’s a reason why the story is told backwards. So the first season is 1962, the second season is 1935, and the third season is 1908.”

Exploring the undeveloped interludes of King’s already lengthy novel is a great jumping-off point for a series, but it meant very little if there was no bigger impact. Muschietti could have simply had a group of kids put the clown to sleep in 1962, then done the same in 1935 and 1908, shaking things up slightly with a different time and characters, but that could only be so satisfying. If IT: Welcome to Derry is nothing more than recycling the greatest hits, Pennywise risks becoming a parody of itself, a watered-down threat similar to what happened to Freddy Krueger in later Nightmare on Elm Street sequels.

Instead, IT: Welcome to Derry promises to become bigger in scope and with so much more at stake because of Pennywise’s newly formed powers. Death has allowed the entity to see all timelines simultaneously, but there are also much more personal character stakes heading into a second season. It’s also a way to add more detail to the past that’s already been revealed. When the first season begins, for example, Lilly’s father is dead, having been killed in a pickle factory accident, but what if Season 2 introduces Mr. Bainbridge as a younger man, showing us why his eventual daughter would one day love him so much?

Pennywise has to fail in Season 2 in order for there to be a Season 3, and this is where anything becomes possible. Will the grandparents of the first season’s heroes be forced to battle the clown? What happens if Andy Muschietti is brave enough to kill one of them off? That could throw everything into a Back to the Future-level paradox that impacts any future heroes. While the Season 1 finale boasts a cameo from Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh, don’t be surprised if she’s not the last character revealed from the 2017 film. Season 3 of IT: Welcome to Derry might be bold enough to take down the Losers, which means a resurrection for Pennywise and a franchise that could go on as long as fans keep tuning in.