Another year, another Stephen King adaptation has come to a close.
Season 1 of IT: Welcome to Derry concluded Sunday night with the eighth episode, titled Winter Fire. The finale tied up loose ends, brought pressing storylines to a close and revealed just how high the stakes can go with this iteration of King's classic killer clown. That said, it seems that, like Pennywise himself, co-creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti -- along with showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane -- have a long game mapped out for the prequel horror series.
If their plan comes to light, we'll get a total of three episodes here, with each taking place further in the past. That means a second season would take us back to the year 1935; a third will dial it back to 1908.
Instead of getting too buried in Stephen King Easter Eggs and character references that are littered throughout the show, I'm going to focus on a few key events that happened in this episode and why I think they made this a season finale worth watching. So, there are major story spoilers below, but don't expect a rabbit hole filled with red string connections. That's what Reddit is for.
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Will's class gets caught in the deadlights
Bill Skarsgård stars in IT: Welcome to Derry. Brooke Palmer/HBO
One thing I have truly enjoyed about this series is the disturbing lengths it reaches to deliver a scare. There have been some truly unsettling sequences throughout the season. The finale has a handful of them, but there's one specifically I can't get out of my head: Pennywise's school performance.
One of the pillars keeping the extra-dimensional entity caged up was removed by the military in Episode 7, unleashing Pennywise to do his worst to the townspeople of Derry. Instead of just taking one or two children in a fit of violence, he went and took 'em all in a creepy scene that found the clown doing a Vaudvillian performance that ended with his head cracking open and all hell breaking loose.
Will Hanlon and the rest of the kids were taken by the creature's deadlights, leading to what I can only describe as a Pied Piper-style procession of children to their doom. I'll admit, there were a handful of plot points that felt hackneyed throughout this eight-episode run. But the visuals (even the sloppy CGI ones) delivered a sinister tone. I can only imagine that if the show continues, things will just get more unsettling. I'm here for it.
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