Brooke Palmer/HBOIt: Welcome to Derry star Taylour Paige has openly criticized the final episode of the horror TV series, explaining why she’s “not happy” with a major storyline in the ending. Paige plays Charlotte Hanlon in the show, the grandmother of future Losers’ Club member, Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs), in the two IT movies from 2017 and 2019.
Much of the series revolves around a new group of kids who try to stay alive during Pennywise’s 1962 hunting cycle, which culminates in a brutal moment in Episode 7 when a racist mob burn down the Black Spot with men, women, and children inside. They believe that Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) is responsible for killing the kids in the theater, and Charlotte had been trying to help him escape the town.
The end of It: Welcome to Derry revealed that Pennywise experiences different time periods simultaneously, and he’s using his hunting cycle as a way of trying to stop his own death at the hands of the Loser’s Club.
Once the kids manage to keep Pennywise caged in the town (using a meteorite shard) life quietens down, and Charlotte manages to get Hank out of the town. But Paige has since revealed that she actively dislikes how things ended for her character.
Taylour Paige is “not happy with the way this was written”
Brooke Palmer/HBOThe It: Welcome to Derry finale sees Charlotte choose not to leave Derry, and instead stays to help defend Derry and keep Pennywise dormant with her husband Leroy (Jovan Adepo) and Rose (Kimberly Guerrero). But since we know that Pennywise doesn’t return for another 27 years, their choice feels futile, especially when Charlotte starts the show as being heavily invested in the civil rights movement.
“No, I’m not happy with the way this was written, if I’m being honest,” she told Deadline. “I’m like, ‘There’s no f*cking way.’ I mean, I guess the lore is that you forget when you’re in Derry, but I don’t buy it.”
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She added: “Maybe it makes sense for 1962 that you kind of shut up and you get back to business, you get back to being a homemaker, and you’re the nucleus of the family, I guess.”
Paige believes that Charlotte should’ve had a better ending that saw her stay true to herself. “I wanted more for Charlotte and this family, but I think it would have been maybe too radical for Charlotte to leave,” she continued.
“And also too radical for women of 1962 to be like, ‘I’m out.’ That was very rare. It just didn’t really happen then, right? Most people stayed in loveless marriages. Most women, I think, were martyrs who had to deny themselves to keep the family together.”
It’s not often that one of the main cast openly criticizes the show they’ve just appeared in, which is why Paige’s comments are a little surprising. But in the same interview the actor said that while returning to play Charlotte “would be cool,” she doesn’t think it’ll happen.
It’s understandable, since Muschietti already revealed that the show will continue to go back in time to look at Pennywise’s previous hunting cycles in 1935 and 1908 respectively.
Until then, check out the Stephen King show you need to watch after Welcome to Derry, find out why fans complained about the Bob Gray flashback, and discover how the finale was changed during production.