IT Characters: The Losers Club, Pennywise and Who Dies

The IT movies follow eight central characters: seven outcast friends who call themselves the Losers Club, and the shape shifting creature they know as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Several of them die across the two films, so the names, the actors who play them and their fates are spoilers for both.

The two films split the cast by age. It (2017), directed by Andy Muschietti, is set in Derry, Maine, in 1988 and the summer after, with child actors in the lead roles. It Chapter Two (2019) jumps ahead twenty-seven years to 2016 and hands the same roles to adult actors, with the young cast returning in flashbacks credited as "Young" versions of each character. If you are new to the saga, the IT movies in order page explains how to watch them, and the IT hub lists both films. The 1990 miniseries and the HBO series IT: Welcome to Derry (2025) are television, so they sit outside this list.

For the full credits, see the IT cast page.

The Losers Club is the group of seven kids in It (2017) who bond over being bullied and then over being hunted. For a closer look at the group as a unit, the Losers Club page has more.

Bill Denbrough is the leader. His younger brother Georgie is dragged into a storm drain in the opening scene, and Bill refuses to accept that Georgie is dead, which is what sets the friends searching. Beverly Marsh is the one who drives a spike into the creature's head at the Neibolt Street house. In the finale Pennywise snatches her, and the boys go back to rescue her.

Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak are the wisecracking pair who run with Bill from the start, alongside Stan. Ben Hanscom is hurt at Neibolt Street, and in the sewers his kiss is what wakes Beverly from her trance. Mike Hanlon pushes the bully Henry Bowers down a well, and as an adult he is the one who calls the others back to Derry. Stanley Uris is the third of the early friends, and his absence defines the sequel.

Pennywise is the clown a creature called It uses to hunt, and It wakes about every 27 years to feed on Derry's children. In It (2017), Pennywise gives each kid a vision tailored to their own fear, and in It Chapter Two the creature takes a huge spider like form for the final fight in the sewers. Bill Skarsgård plays the clown in both films. How the book and the films differ is covered in IT book vs movie.

Beyond the club and the clown, a handful of supporting characters shape the story. Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) is the brother whose death opens It (2017). Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) is the local bully who torments the Losers, backed by his gang: Belch Huggins (Jake Sim), Victor Criss (Logan Thompson) and Patrick Hockstetter (Owen Teague). In the sequel, Adrian Mellon is the man whose killing signals that Pennywise has returned, and Dean is a boy Bill meets and cannot save.

Several major IT characters die across the two films, and the sequel is the heavier of the two. Georgie is taken by Pennywise in the opening scene of It (2017). Mike pushes Henry Bowers down a well in that film, but Henry returns in the sequel, escapes an asylum and is killed by Richie. In It Chapter Two, Stanley has already died by suicide before the Losers reunite, because he chose not to come back to Derry. Adrian Mellon is killed early in the sequel, and Bill cannot save Dean from the clown. Mike is wounded in a fight at the library, and Eddie is fatally impaled while saving Richie in the sewers. Pennywise itself dies when the Losers crush its heart. Beverly, Bill, Richie and Ben survive, and Mike leaves Derry and passes on Stanley's last letter, which ends by calling them Losers who always will be.

Each adult actor in It Chapter Two carries a childhood the audience has already met, and the billing shows how the studio framed that. In It (2017), Jaeden Martell is billed first and the child ensemble leads. In the sequel, Jessica Chastain is billed first, followed by James McAvoy and Bill Hader, with Bill Skarsgård the only actor who does not change. In my opinion, the story rests on Beverly and Bill in both halves, and Stanley's absence makes him the most felt character with the least screen time. The structure supports that: the survivors are defined by the friend who did not come home.

Beverly Marsh is one of the child Losers in It (2017), played by Sophia Lillis, in the summer after Georgie disappears in October 1988. In the sequel she is an adult in 2016, twenty-seven years later, played by Jessica Chastain.

IT: Welcome to Derry (2025) is an HBO television series, separate from the two movies, so its characters are not part of the film Losers Club. The Losers Club is the group formed in It (2017), and the pages linked above cover all eight film characters.