Warning: This article contains spoilers for It: Welcome to Derry.
It: Welcome to Derry showrunners Andy and Barbara Muschietti have teased what to expect should the show be renewed for another two seasons.
The HBO Max series, based on Stephen King's 1986 novel, debuted on October 26 with new episodes dropping weekly.
The supernatural horror serves as a prequel to 2017's It and 2019's It Chapter Two.
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Both starred Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, while Andy directed.
The Swedish actor reprised his role in Welcome to Derry's fifth episode, much to the delight of fans - though he almost didn't return at all.
The TV series wrapped up with its eighth episode on Monday (December 15), and die-hard viewers are desperate to know whether the story will be continued.
And if it does, then the Muschiettis know exactly which time period the second instalment will be set.
While been no word on its fate just yet, that's not stopped the sibling writer duo from breaking down their mind-bending plans for the show's future.
Andy previously told Variety: “Our big story arc involves three seasons, mainly based on the three critical cycles of Pennywise, which are 1962, 1935 and 1908.”
Welcome to Derry's finale revealed that Marge (Matilda Lawler) will eventually give birth to It protagonist Richie Tozier.
This creates a closed loop in which Richie’s existence - and his eventual role in defeating Pennywise - is known decades before he’s even born.
It means if Richie and the Losers can beat him in the future, and Marge’s generation can foil him in the present (1962), then the ancestors of the Losers must be targeted next.
Speaking to Deadline, Andy explained he plucked the idea directly from King's original novel.
The author suggests It experiences time totally differently to us mere mortals - a notion the Muschiettis are eager to expand on in upcoming seasons.
“His experience of time is non-linear. How is that and why, that’s a whole exploration that we intend to flesh out during the next two seasons, but that was pretty much [the idea] from the beginning,” Andy said. “The pitch to Stephen King was we’re going to tell a story backwards, and it has to do with that hint.”
The creators add that they expect the audience to be scratching their heads over how exactly that may work.
“Is he going backwards in a linear way, or is he omnipresent, and how does that affect the story that we already know?” Andy said of the questions that future episodes will answer.
He teases that there's 'much more' to explore about Bob and Ingrid Gray, the original human identity that It uses to become Pennywise, and his daughter respectively.
“There’s so much. We’re going to learn a lot of things about it. We are going to know more about the Bob Gray of things, and we are going to know more about Ingrid, because Ingrid was around in the 30s,” Andy added.
“Our second season happens in 1935, in theory,” he explained. “I think it’s a pretty tragic character. She’s a very specific, very unique character, because she’s a victim, but she’s a perpetrator too.
“She’s tricked into thinking that her dad is still there somewhere in the shadows of that monster, and she wants to liberate him, but the only way to see him and try to liberate him is by creating all these baits [and] all this pain, because she knows that he will show up.”
All eight episodes of It: Welcome to Derry are streaming now on HBO Max.
Topics: Entertainment, Film and TV, Streaming, Stephen King, Horror, HBO
Ellie Kemp