IT Chapter Two is still playing in theaters all over the world, and there’s already a rumor floating around about an alternate ending, but how true is it? IT is one of Stephen King’s greatest works, and was adapted into a miniseries in 1990 with Tim Curry as Pennywise, the Dancing Clown, source of many nightmares back in the 1990s. The novel was recently adapted into a two-part feature film thanks to director Andrés Muschietti, with Bill Skarsgård as the evil, nightmarish clown.
IT Chapter One covered the first half of the story, following the young Losers on their first encounter with IT and their efforts to defeat it. The second part, IT Chapter Two, catches up with the Losers 27 years later as IT reemerges to continue its reign of horror in Derry, Maine. The films took some liberties and changed some details from the book, most of them for the best, but a new rumor suggests that they could have taken it a bit further with an alternate ending that included the death of a beloved character.
James Ransone, who played adult Eddie Kaspbrak in IT Chapter Two, shared a photo on his Instagram account of some props on the set, including a flyer with Richie Tozier’s (Bill Hader) photo and the legend “In Loving Memory Of Richard Tozier”. This has prompted many people to think there is (or was going to be) an alternate ending in which Richie dies instead of or along with Eddie, but that’s not the case. The flyer in the photo comes from the scene where adult Richie comes across with IT: right before Pennywise comes down from the statue of Paul Bunyan, Richie is given a flyer by a zombie Adrian Mellon (Xavier Dolan), inviting him to his own funeral. What comes next is the “dirty little secret” part of the scene, where Pennywise torments Richie with his “big secret” about being gay.
The funeral flyer is reminiscent of a scene in IT Chapter One where Richie finds one at Neibolt House that says he’s missing. Richie was the character who was changed the most from the book, although it was for the better: as mentioned above, Richie was gay, but he never came out to his friends (or at all). It was later revealed that he had always been in love with his best friend, Eddie, and even re-carved his and Eddie’s initials on the kissing bridge at the end of the film. This made the already emotionally charged second part of the story even more dramatic, and there’s no indication that Muschietti and company planned a more emotional alternate ending where Richie died.
As Ransone didn’t add any caption to the photo, rumors about the alternate ending of IT Chapter Two have been spreading quite fast, but fans of Richie Tozier can rest assured knowing that there’s no such thing as an ending where Richie dies – it was all a trick from IT and now Ransone, but all in good spirits (except from IT, that was not nice).