IT Timeline: Every Event From 1988 to 2016

The childhood half of the story plays out over the summer that follows Georgie's disappearance. Bill, Richie, Eddie and Stan hunt for clues, and after run-ins with the bully Henry Bowers and his gang they join forces with Ben, Beverly and Mike. Every kid is shown a vision built around a private fear, and as a group they become the Losers Club.

The beats of that summer land in this sequence:

1. The kids piece together that a creature they call It wakes roughly every 27 years to feed on Derry's children.
2. Their digging leads to an abandoned house on Neibolt Street, which they treat as the creature's door into the sewers.
3. Inside, Beverly drives a spike into the creature's head and it retreats, though Ben is injured.
4. Strain pulls the group apart, until Pennywise takes Beverly.
5. The boys head back for her. Henry attacks along the way, and Mike pushes him down a well.
6. Underground, they find Beverly in a trance, and Ben's kiss brings her round.
7. Pennywise seizes Bill and says the rest can go free if they abandon him. They refuse, fight as one, hurt the creature, and Beverly stabs it in the face.
8. Weakened, it falls away, and Bill finds Georgie's raincoat.

When summer closes, the friends cut their palms and swear a blood oath to come back if It ever returns, and Beverly gets ready to leave town after a farewell kiss with Bill. A title card labels the film Chapter One. Profiles sit on the it characters page, including Bill Denbrough, Beverly Marsh, Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, Ben Hanscom, Mike Hanlon and Stanley Uris.

The creature wakes about every 27 years and feeds on children, and that cycle is what separates the two films, because the story picks up again 27 years after the Losers Club beat Pennywise as kids.

In the gap, the Losers drift apart. Mike Hanlon is the one who never leaves town, and the rest scatter and, as Chapter Two shows, forget much of what happened. The childhood promise is a half buried memory until Mike phones them in 2016.

It Chapter Two (2019), directed by Andy Muschietti and released in the US on September 6, 2019, takes place in 2016, with Bill Skarsgård back as Pennywise. The story moves through these stages.

1. The clown returns to Derry, and a man named Adrian Mellon dies after an attack by local teenagers.
2. Mike phones the grown Losers and calls them home. Five of them meet for a dinner that turns frightening fast.
3. The group hears that Stanley took his own life rather than return.
4. Beverly shows visions suggesting they will all die if they break their oath, so everyone stays.
5. Mike sends each person off to find a personal object for a ritual he has uncovered. Pennywise haunts every search, and forgotten memories resurface.
6. Bill meets a boy named Dean and cannot save him from the clown.
7. Henry Bowers breaks out of an asylum and hunts the group. Richie kills Henry, but Mike is fatally wounded in the library fight.
8. With their memories restored, the remaining Losers climb down into the sewers under Derry.
9. Pennywise grows into a huge spider-like form and throws their worst fears at them. Eddie is fatally impaled while saving Richie.
10. The Losers taunt the creature until it shrinks and weakens, then crush its heart, so that It dies and the cavern collapses.

After that the scars on their hands fade, everyone goes their own way, and Bill reads a letter Stanley left behind. The story is closed, with no sequel set up.

The film timeline ends in 2016, and there is no dated third IT film. Warner Bros. and Cosm have announced that the existing New Line film IT is coming to Cosm venues, but that announcement gave no dates and mentioned no new film. Any talk of a third theatrical film is unconfirmed, and the status is tracked on the it chapter three page.

The Losers destroy Pennywise at the end of It Chapter Two, and the story is closed with no sequel set up. Nothing official says where a new film would sit, so the timeline stops at 2016.

In my opinion, the 27 year gap is the best structural decision in the IT movies, because it turns a monster cycle into a timeline you can count on your fingers. Children vanish, the Losers Club wins a partial victory in 1989, and the clock runs down to 2016, so Chapter Two plays as a deadline rather than a random reunion. A good creature feature does the same thing when it gives its monster rules, and it is why the two films hold together as one story.

It could be argued that the question people ask most, whether Welcome to Derry is a canon film, aims at the wrong target. The IT movies are two films, It (2017) and It Chapter Two, and Welcome to Derry is a television series outside them. Is it 27 years before It (2017)? The films do not answer that, and I would not guess. What they make clear is the cycle: about every 27 years, with the events of 1988 and 1989 in It (2017) and of 2016 in Chapter Two as the two points on screen.

Release order and story order are identical, which keeps things simple. So, if you are new to this, watch It (2017) first, then It Chapter Two. The it movies in order page has the full viewing guide, and the IT hub links everything else.