Warning: Major SPOILERS lie ahead for IT: Welcome to Derry season 1’s ending, “Winter Fire”!

Pennywise’s relationship with time just became a lot more complicated in the IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 finale, and co-creator/executive producer Barbara Muschietti shares the origin behind this lore change. After having seemingly survived his latest string of killings in the small Maine town, Will, Ronnie and the remainder of the young protagonists found the entire town of Derry under attack from Pennywise after the military destroys one of the pillars.

In their efforts to restore the cage, IT: Welcome to Derry episode 8 sees Matilda Lawler’s Marge separated by Pennywise in the midst of the dense fog. Rather than directly attack her, IT instead reveals that he has an odd experience with all things time, being able to see his future death at the hands of her future son, Richie Tozier, and the Losers Club, while also being able to experience his beginning.

Now, in an interview with ScreenRant‘s Tatiana Hullender, Barbara Muschietti has offered some insight into this timeline-shattering reveal in iT: Welcome to Derry. The co-creator/executive producer began by explaining that her brother, fellow co-creator and EP Andy Muschietti, has “always been fascinated by time” and one’s perception of it, which began with their father.

She went on to recall a “sweet little conversation” with The Leftovers and Watchmen creator Damon Lindelof in 2020, in which they shared their early plans for Welcome to Derry, and he called them “brave” for doing so given, “I don’t do prequels, because I know how it ends.” This idea “made it click” for the pair how to add wider stakes for the IT franchise in the series, giving them the goal that “we have to subvert this“:

It makes sense to question things when you are reading the book, because there’s this cosmic being who wakes up every 27 years. Is it 27 years for him, or does he just wink, and it’s the next cycle and the next generation? Every time I say “he,” they correct me, since IT lays eggs. We don’t know, IT’s a they or whatever we want them to be. This being travels through time and through the universe in a way that is not defined in the book. Thank God that it’s up for us to interpret, and we are giving it this interpretation right now.

In the wider Stephen King Macroverse, as it’s since become called, the entity IT has a very unique history that goes beyond even its own eponymous novel. Thanks to their trans-dimensional alien origins, the child-eating villain has both been referred to and made brief appearances in other King books, namely that of The Dark Tower series, which largely takes place in the multiversal dimension known as Mid-World.

Muschietti’s desire to play with the concept of time around Pennywise even rings true for how King himself has described ITs fate in the wake of the book’s ending. The author has confirmed in the past that they’ll live even beyond their death, even if he has no intentions of properly bringing him back in physical form in a new novel.

This confusion of timelines in ITs mind falls in line with the Muschiettis’ desire to subvert expectations from those looking at IT: Welcome to Derry as a gap-filling prequel, given how much impact it could have on the future. Barbara Muschietti also didn’t rule out the possibility of this twist opening the door for IT: Chapter 3, while the three-season plan for Welcome to Derry now seems likely to see the various timelines start to intersect in various ways.

All eight episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 are available to stream on HBO Max.