It recap

In 1957 the town of Derry, Maine loses six-year-old Georgie Denbrough to a clown in a storm drain - the first killing in a new cycle of an ancient, shape-shifting evil that wakes every twenty-seven years to feed on the town's children. The following summer, Georgie's brother Bill and six other bullied outcasts form the Losers' Club, face the creature in its many personalised forms, wound it in the sewers, and swear to return if it ever comes back. Twenty-seven years later, in 1985, the killings resume, and Mike Hanlon - the one who stayed - calls the others home. Now prosperous adults who had forgotten almost everything, they reunite; one, Stan, chooses death over returning. Henry Bowers, sprung from an asylum and driven by It, gravely wounds Mike and is killed by Eddie Kaspbrak in self-defence. The rest descend again beneath Derry, where the creature itself mortally wounds Eddie, and they destroy It by crushing its heart and its eggs. The town's old centre collapses as the thing dies. The survivors leave Derry alive but, as before, their memories of the horror and of one another gently fade away for good.

In October 1957, in the small city of Derry, Maine, a sick ten-year-old named Bill Denbrough makes a paper boat for his little brother, Georgie. Georgie chases it through the rain-flooded streets until it slips into a storm drain, where a clown who calls himself Pennywise is waiting. The clown lures him close and kills him. Georgie's death is the first in a new wave of child killings and disappearances, though the adults of Derry seem strangely unwilling to see the pattern. It marks the return, after decades of sleep, of an ancient predatory thing that has fed on the town's children for centuries.

The story moves to 1985. A brutal killing - the murder of a young man named Adrian Mellon, thrown from a bridge - tells Mike Hanlon, now Derry's librarian and the only member of his childhood circle still living in town, that the evil has woken again on its roughly twenty-seven-year cycle. As children in 1958, Mike and six friends had faced the creature, wounded it, and sworn a blood oath to return and finish it if it ever came back. Mike makes six phone calls. One by one the others - Bill Denbrough, Ben Hanscom, Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier and Stan Uris - feel an old, half-buried dread return as they are summoned home. All have prospered, and all have forgotten almost everything. Stanley Uris, unable to face it, takes his own life rather than go back.

The narrative begins moving between the adults' 1985 return and their childhood summer of 1958. In flashback the friends are introduced as lonely, bullied children: Bill grieving Georgie and fighting his stutter; overweight, gentle Ben Hanscom, new in town; anxious Eddie with his inhaler; loudmouthed Richie; brave Beverly, the only girl, growing up under a violent father; and rational Stan. Each has already had a private, terrifying encounter with the thing that wears many faces - Pennywise the clown chief among them - and each has learned that in Derry the monster reaches into your own fears and takes their shape. Drawn together as outcasts, the children begin to form the group that will call itself the Losers' Club.

Through the summer of 1958 the Losers' Club comes fully together, its seventh member the thoughtful Mike Hanlon, one of the few Black children in town and a target of the same bullies. Building a dam in the marshy Barrens becomes the ground of their friendship. Their encounters with It sharpen and multiply, each child menaced by a personalised horror, and a confrontation at the derelict house on Neibolt Street shows them the creature can be hurt and driven off when they stand together. They come to understand they are facing a single ancient being that has preyed on Derry's children for generations while the adults look away. Meanwhile Henry Bowers and his gang hunt the Losers with growing, unnatural viciousness.

In 1985 the surviving friends reconvene in Derry. Gathering for a reunion dinner, their long-blank memories come flooding back, along with fresh manifestations of It that only they can see. Mike lays out for them the town's hidden history: a recurring cycle of massacres, fires and disappearances stretching back centuries, each coinciding with the creature's waking. As the adults commit to finishing what they began as children, It senses the threat and moves against them, engineering the escape of Henry Bowers - now a grey, broken man locked in an asylum - and setting him loose to hunt the Losers once more.

The 1958 storyline reaches high summer. An escalating feud with Henry Bowers' gang culminates in the 'apocalyptic rockfight,' a pitched battle in the Barrens that the Losers win, cementing them as a group. Seeking to understand their enemy, they perform a ritual in a smoke-hole and share a vision reaching back to the deep past: they glimpse It arriving on Earth from the void ages before humanity, and sense a vast opposing presence, a Turtle, that hints they are not entirely without help. The bonds among the children deepen, including the tangled affections between Beverly, Bill and Ben, as they realise they will have to go down into the dark after the thing themselves.

The children resolve to hunt It in its lair beneath the town, reached through the sewers and drains where it moves. They melt down silver to make slugs for Beverly's slingshot, their best weapon of faith and improvisation. Descending into the tunnels, they find and wound the creature, driving it back into deeper hibernation without killing it. Lost and coming apart in the dark afterward, they hold together through an act that binds the group and lets them find their way out. Battered but alive, the seven swear a blood oath: if It ever returns, they will come back to Derry and end it for good. Then they climb back into the daylight and, over the years, begin to forget.

It moves against the reunited Losers through Henry Bowers, now a grey, broken man whom the creature springs from the asylum and drives back to Derry as its weapon. Henry attacks Mike Hanlon at the library by night and wounds him gravely; Mike barely survives and is left in the hospital, out of the fight that follows. Henry then comes for Eddie Kaspbrak at the Derry Town House, and in the struggle Eddie kills him, coming away with a broken arm. Knowing the creature will pick them off one by one if they hesitate, the remaining friends - Bill, Ben, Beverly, Richie and the injured Eddie - descend into the sewers beneath the town to finish It for good.

The Losers reach It in its lair and find that its physical form is closest to an enormous spider, though its true nature lies beyond the physical, in a searing light the survivors call the deadlights. Bill Denbrough confronts the creature mind to mind in the Ritual of Chud, a contest of wills that carries him beyond the edge of the universe, where he senses the vast, benign Turtle and the greater order in which both It and its opponents exist. It is a battle fought as much in thought and courage as in the body, and it brings Bill face to face with the thing that killed his brother.

The Losers destroy It. In the lair the creature, in its monstrous spider form, mortally wounds Eddie Kaspbrak, tearing off his arm as he attacks it to save Bill and Richie; he bleeds to death in the dark among his friends. The others find and crush the creature's heart, and destroy the clutch of eggs it had laid to continue its kind, ending the cycle for good. As It dies, a great storm tears through Derry and its old downtown collapses into the flooding waterways. Bill, Ben, Beverly and Richie climb out alive, and Mike recovers in the hospital from Henry Bowers' attack; of the seven who swore the oath, Eddie and Stan are gone. Bill's wife, Audra, who had followed him to Derry, is left catatonic by an encounter with It; in a last act tied to their childhood, Bill revives her. With the creature gone, the survivors' memories of Derry and of one another once again begin to fade, this time permanently, as they leave the town and return to their separate lives - free at last, and no longer remembering the friends who made them so.

It ends with the ancient creature destroyed for good. In its lair beneath Derry the Losers who made the final descent - Bill, Ben, Beverly and Richie - crush It's heart and destroy the eggs it had laid to perpetuate itself, breaking the centuries-old cycle of killings. The reckoning costs them dearly. Stanley Uris took his own life rather than return. Henry Bowers, broken out of the asylum and driven by It, gravely wounded Mike Hanlon, who survives in the hospital, and was then killed by Eddie Kaspbrak in self-defence. And in the lair itself the creature mortally wounded Eddie, tearing off his arm as he attacked it to save his friends; he died in the tunnels. As the thing dies, a violent storm brings down Derry's old downtown, which sinks into the flooding canals. Bill's wife, Audra, drawn into danger after following him from England, is left catatonic; Bill brings her back to herself in a final echo of the childhood magic they had used. With the evil gone, the deep bond and shared memory that had held the friends together - in 1958 and again in 1985 - begins once more to dissolve. The survivors leave Derry and return to their separate adult lives, and their recollection of the town, of the creature, and of each other fades almost entirely away, closing the story on the same note of forgetting on which the town has always run.