- After the Flood (1957)
- After the Carnival (1984)
- Six Phone Calls (1985)
- Derry: The First Interlude
- Ben Hanscom Takes a Fall
- Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil (I)
- One of the Missing: A Tale From the Summer of '58
- The Dam In the Barrens
- Georgie's Room and the House On Neibolt Street
- Cleaning Up
- Derry: The Second Interlude
- The Reunion
- Walking Tours
- Three Uninvited Guests
- Derry: The Third Interlude
- The Apocalyptic Rockfight
- The Album
- The Smoke-Hole
- Eddie's Bad Break
- Another One of the Missing: The Death of Patrick Hockstetter
- The Bullseye
- Derry: The Fourth Interlude
- In the Watches of the Night
- The Circle Closes
- Under the City
- The Ritual of Chud
- Out
- Derry: The Final Interlude
- Epilogue: Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil (II)
Out
The adult Bill and Richie chase the Spider in the dark and confront It one final time. Richie is knocked out while Bill attacks the Spider with full force, his fists representing the power of love, desire, memory, and childhood. Having now gone through the the Ritual of Chud twice, the actual kill happens physically, with Bill digging into the Spider and yanking out Its heart, while It pleads for Its life, giving meek offerings of power.
Now the one in control, Bill Denbrough kills It!
This death scene is very gory, but it seems fitting. After all we've been through and suffered, we need to see It be physically destroyed for good and know that this is final. We are told that the exact time of death is 10:02am. The section in which the adults entered Its lair was titled "6:54am." Has Bill's trip through the void combined with this chase taken over three hours?
Downtown Derry is destroyed at the exact same moment, and the destruction continues until the rain stops all at once a half hour later. Even the Aladdin Theatre falls apart, as well as the glass tunnel in the town library that connects the children's section with the adult section. Metaphorically, the path between childhood and adulthood, a path all of us must take, has now been severed for our heroes.
Down in the dark, Bill, Ben, and Beverly regroup, Richie is revived, and Audra, still catatonic, is taken from the web. After some deliberation, they decide to leave Eddie's corpse in the lair, for now that It is gone, the place is a tomb for a king. As they exit, they notice that the mark on the door is gone. They wander in the dark for a brief time before finding an opening due to Main Street being torn apart by the storm (I wonder; would they have had sex again had they gotten lost?). They climb their way back out to applause by onlookers.
Audra is taken to the hospital and our four remaining heroes smile together, feeling liberated from the monster haunting this town. It has been a long 24 hours since they awoke in The Derry Town House to news of their reunion luncheon, and that is where they head back to now (I've always wondered: is Henry's corpse still rotting away in Eddie's room? I like to think that maybe The Derry Town House was destroyed in the storm and Henry's body fell into a fiery abyss!). We are told that in the weeks to come, plans were made to rebuild Derry, but the city was never quite the same. In King's novel Insomnia, we see that Derry more or less recovers as a functioning city, but I personally like to think that without the evil lurking beneath, it fell apart.
This chapter ends with what will be the final scene of the children's storyline and ironically, we already know what it will be. As the seven emerge from the Standpipe, they cut themselves and make a blood oath to come back and destroy It, should It ever return. We've spent over a thousand pages hearing about this scene as each of the adult characters vaguely remembered it, and now we're finally here, at the very middle of the story, where both plotlines intersect. We have worked hard to reach this point and it feels like we have grown so much with these seven; we have seen them become adults, both literally and metaphorically. To see them as innocent children one final time is almost heartbreaking. After making their oath, the seven go their separate ways (what happened to Beverly when she got home that night? Was her father still angry, or did Its hibernation cause him to forget about what happened?). Bill reflects on the fact that the seven of them will never be all together ever again, but as he walks home, he begins to feel happy. They have been to Hell and back again, but the experience has been liberating rather than traumatizing. They are free!
Now the one in control, Bill Denbrough kills It!
This death scene is very gory, but it seems fitting. After all we've been through and suffered, we need to see It be physically destroyed for good and know that this is final. We are told that the exact time of death is 10:02am. The section in which the adults entered Its lair was titled "6:54am." Has Bill's trip through the void combined with this chase taken over three hours?
Downtown Derry is destroyed at the exact same moment, and the destruction continues until the rain stops all at once a half hour later. Even the Aladdin Theatre falls apart, as well as the glass tunnel in the town library that connects the children's section with the adult section. Metaphorically, the path between childhood and adulthood, a path all of us must take, has now been severed for our heroes.
Down in the dark, Bill, Ben, and Beverly regroup, Richie is revived, and Audra, still catatonic, is taken from the web. After some deliberation, they decide to leave Eddie's corpse in the lair, for now that It is gone, the place is a tomb for a king. As they exit, they notice that the mark on the door is gone. They wander in the dark for a brief time before finding an opening due to Main Street being torn apart by the storm (I wonder; would they have had sex again had they gotten lost?). They climb their way back out to applause by onlookers.
Audra is taken to the hospital and our four remaining heroes smile together, feeling liberated from the monster haunting this town. It has been a long 24 hours since they awoke in The Derry Town House to news of their reunion luncheon, and that is where they head back to now (I've always wondered: is Henry's corpse still rotting away in Eddie's room? I like to think that maybe The Derry Town House was destroyed in the storm and Henry's body fell into a fiery abyss!). We are told that in the weeks to come, plans were made to rebuild Derry, but the city was never quite the same. In King's novel Insomnia, we see that Derry more or less recovers as a functioning city, but I personally like to think that without the evil lurking beneath, it fell apart.
This chapter ends with what will be the final scene of the children's storyline and ironically, we already know what it will be. As the seven emerge from the Standpipe, they cut themselves and make a blood oath to come back and destroy It, should It ever return. We've spent over a thousand pages hearing about this scene as each of the adult characters vaguely remembered it, and now we're finally here, at the very middle of the story, where both plotlines intersect. We have worked hard to reach this point and it feels like we have grown so much with these seven; we have seen them become adults, both literally and metaphorically. To see them as innocent children one final time is almost heartbreaking. After making their oath, the seven go their separate ways (what happened to Beverly when she got home that night? Was her father still angry, or did Its hibernation cause him to forget about what happened?). Bill reflects on the fact that the seven of them will never be all together ever again, but as he walks home, he begins to feel happy. They have been to Hell and back again, but the experience has been liberating rather than traumatizing. They are free!