How Does IT Chapter Two End?

Considering IT Chapter Two runs for 2 hours and 50 minutes, it’s astonishing how many lingering questions the movie leaves. Does, uh, Pennywise have a daughter? Was he once a carnival worker? How will the Losers’ Club explain their sudden absence to everyone in their lives? 

What we do know, for sure, is how it ends — both how IT’s life ends and how IT Chapter Two ends. Make no mistake: This movie really is the end. Director Andy Muschietti confirmed there will not be a third IT, despite how much of Stephen King’s sprawling IT mythology didn’t make it into the movies (including trips to the multiverse and talks with a giant turtle named Maturin).  

Here’s how the Losers’ Club fared at the end of IT Chapter Two. 

Certain things are inevitable. I’ll get ravenously hungry at 11:00am, the news will be upsetting, and the Losers’ Club will eventually boomerang back to Derry, Maine to battle IT. 

At least someone has been preparing for the inevitable. For the past 27 years, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) has been studying how to kill Pennywise. He decides a Native American ritual called the Ritual of Chud is the answer. When IT emerges from the sewers for another rampage, Mike summons the Losers’ Club to their hometown to complete their oath, and enact the Ritual of Chud.

Everyone returns but Stanley (Andy Bean). Struck by fear, Stanley takes his own life instead of facing the clown. He sends an apologetic letter to the others explaining how he would have held them back. 

First step: The Losers’ Club separate and collect their most private artifacts to use during the Ritual of Chud. During their scavenger hunt through Derry, the Losers’ Club encounter old villains like IT and Henry Bowers (Teach Grant), the all-too-human bully who tormented them years ago. 

Since killing his father and friends in IT, Henry has been locked up in Juniper Hill Insane Asylum. IT returns his switchblade, releases him, and sends up off to complete his mission of killing the Losers’ Club. He gets as far as stabbing Eddie (James Ransone) in the cheek and almost killing Mike. Then Richie (Bill Hader) kills him with an axe. Ding dong, the bully is dead. 

Once the Henry Problem has been solved, the Losers’ Club heads to the sewers underneath Nieman House to, as Richie says, “kill that fucking clown.” But the Ritual of Chud doesn’t work — and it was never going to. Mike had scrubbed out the final panel of a vase that depicted the Ritual of Chud. When a group of Native Americans had tried to kill IT using the Ritual of Chud, they were all killed. Mike believed the Losers’ Club blind belief would make the ritual work; he was wrong. 

There’s a cost to Mike’s brazen error of judgement: Eddie is killed by one of IT’s spider claws, after IT transforms into its purest spider state. 

 Not being afraid of IT. Simple as that. Knowing that IT must obey the laws of its space, Losers’ Club push IT into a corner so IT shrinks. Then, once IT is back to a manageable size, they verbally berate IT. They call IT a total loser. Essentially, they go full Regina George and taunt IT for trying to make fetch happen. As it happens, this is exactly how they defeated IT as pre-teens. Why Mike didn’t remember that, and instead put faith in the Ritual of Chud, remains unclear. 

The remaining members of the Losers’ Club stand over a shriveled, shrunken IT and then crush its heart. Take another piece of my heart now, baby.

IT Chapter Two keeps going after IT’s death. After all, there’s life to be lived. Here’s what happens to the Losers’ Club. 

After leaving Derry, Richie becomes a famous comedian. Even though his jokes seem personal, they’re not. He can't write his own jokes because he’s always hiding a part of himself. Richie is gay — and still now over his crush on Eddie. After killing IT, Richie returns to a bridge in Derry and finds the “R+E” he had carved as a kid. He re-traces the E. 

Richie comes out to the movie audience. But will he come out to his friends, family, and fans? Maybe he’ll start writing his own jokes.

Bill (James McAvoy) turns his brushes with the supernatural into a novel. What a Stephen in The Haunting of Hill House move. Will his actress-wife approve of the ending? 

All along, Bev had a crush on the wrong guy. IT (2017) concludes with Bev (Jessica Chastain) kissing Bill. She thought that Bill had written her that poem. She was wrong! Ben did. But it’s only until Ben (Jay Ryan) transforms into his strapping, millionaire present-day self that Bev finally notices him. 

Ben and Bev’s meet-cute happens while IT is killing them both slowly. They survive by reciting the poem to each other. After leaving Derry, Bev jets out of her abusive relationship with her husband and runs into Ben’s arms. They’re last seen on his yacht. 

Both Ben and Bev are independently rich, but we imagine they’ll make a fortune writing more Instagram poetry. 

Before dying by suicide, Stanley wrote a letter to his old friends explaining his decision. After getting the call from Mike, Stanley remembers their childhood experiences in 1989, long cloaked in a weird IT-caused amnesia. Stanley says he would have sabotaged the mission because he wouldn't have been “all in.” Defeating IT requires defeating fear, too; Stanley recognizes he couldn’t overcome his. Still — this is tragic.

The rest of the Losers’ Club did very themselves. Bev started a clothing line; Richie became a famous comedians; Bill’s massively popular books were turned into movies. 

Meanwhile, Mike stayed in Derry and created crazy-walls. At last, he’s finally leaving the cold, cursed state of Maine and headed to Florida. Yes, in IT Chapter Two, Florida is the happiest ending of all.