Pennywise's Return

*Originally published on 2/3/09


I love It; I think it's one of the greatest books ever written. With that, it made me quite happy to read about how King has been dropping hints about the possiblity of Pennywise surviving his (or I should say her) confrontation with the Loser's Club.

I had read The Tommyknockers back in high school. After I read It and spent some time surfing Wikipedia, I discovered that two scenes hint at Pennywise surviving. With this in mind, I went back and read through the book again and sure enough, there they were.

In Dreamcatcher, a plaque that the Losers' Club made had been vandalized with graffiti saying "Pennywise Lives". Furthermore, the alien parasite goes to great lengths to try and figure out who (or what) Pennywise is.

As these moments were just winks to fans to build the King continuity, there is a missed opportunity, I kind of like the idea of one paranormal threatening force coming into contact with another and being perplexed and shocked at the discovery of said force. Much like Brainiac reacted with a "what the hell are you?" when he discovered Chloe's "meteor freak" status on an episode of Smallville last season, the Tommyknockers or the alien parasite in Dreamcatcher would be as thrown by the existence of an extra-dimensional shape-shifting monster as we were when we first read the novel.

With King's popularity making its way into the world of comics with the highly successful Dark Tower miniseries as well as the comic adaptation of King's epic The Stand, a comic book sequel to It seems like a logical follow up. As Pennywise hibernates for decades after each attack, the original Losers' Club would be too old, however a "next generation" of kids can discover the monster and try to finish what the original crew started. As long as the writers didn't recycle the exact same elements and tell a good story, I could see a sequel working.

More importantly, teasing readers with the possibility and then not following through is just cruel. If King wanted It to be a self-contained story that acts as a lone entry, than that would be fine. I wouldn't want King to do a sequel just for the sake of doing so, however, if that were the case, why bring up the idea of Pennywise surviving in the first place? King's too smart to do something like that unless he had a plan to bring the character back from the beginning.

The big question is, if Pennywise did survive, how come Ralph Roberts didn't see anything during his aura vision? Wikipedia says he did see something, however I recall the audiobook specifically saying that he didn't see any glowing eyes coming from the storm drains.

One may wonder how Pennywise survived. It seemed like the Losers Club fought him in both physical and spiritual form, taking the fight into the "Deadlights" a dimension that acts as both It's home and part of his being. His defeat was even cemented with the major storm and earthquake that hit Derry right after the Losers' killed It. If the Deadlights still existed in Insomnia, than it would stand to reason that It recovered somehow and may one day return to threaten Derry.

This may be a thread or subplot that ultimately goes nowhere. I don't think King would do that, but we never know how things pan out. There is the chance that King had the idea to bring the character back but scrapped it. Only time will tell us what the case is in regards to the iconic monster.