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Stephen King’s controversial sewer scene in IT is not how the children defeat Pennywise. It occurs after the Losers’ Club has confronted It and apparently won. Lost in the sewers, the children use a disturbing sexual ritual—initiated by Beverly Marsh—to restore their connection and find their way out.
King later explained the scene as a symbolic bridge between childhood and adulthood and between the novel’s 1958 and 1985 timelines. That gives the passage a coherent structural purpose, but it does not make its literal depiction of sex between preteen characters unproblematic.
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Spoiler warning: This article discusses a major scene from Stephen King’s IT, including sexual content involving the child characters.
The controversial sewer scene is not about defeating Pennywise. In the 1958 section of Stephen King’s 1986 novel, the Losers’ Club has already confronted It and apparently won their first battle. The children then become lost while trying to leave the sewers. Beverly Marsh proposes having sex with each of the boys in turn. Afterward, the group’s sense of direction returns and the children escape.
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King’s stated purpose was symbolic: the act reconnects the Losers, bridges the novel’s childhood and adult timelines, and represents a passage from childhood toward maturity. But that explanation does not erase the scene’s literal content. It remains a depiction of sex between preteen characters, and its thematic purpose does not resolve the ethical and artistic objections readers have raised.
What happens in the scene?
The episode appears near the end of the children’s 1958 storyline, not at the end of the entire novel. After descending into the sewers and confronting It, the Losers lose their way. Their unity—already strained by the confrontation—seems to be breaking down.
Beverly then proposes a sexual ritual involving herself and the six boys. The novel depicts her having intercourse individually with each member of the group. Once the sequence is over, the children are able to find their way out of the sewer system.
The common description of the episode as an “orgy” is imprecise. More exactly, it is a sequence in which Beverly has sex with each of the boys. That distinction matters because Beverly is the only girl in the group and the scene assigns her a uniquely sexualized role. Contemporary discussion has therefore focused not only on the scene’s symbolism, but also on its gender dynamics and the fact that all of the characters are children. Vulture’s reporting on King’s explanation provides further context about the passage and the later controversy.
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One of the most persistent misunderstandings is that the children have sex in order to defeat Pennywise. That is not the sequence of events.
The Losers have already confronted It before the sexual episode begins. The scene follows that confrontation while the children are trying to escape and have become disoriented. The act is presented as helping them restore their connection and navigate out of the sewers; it is not the weapon or ritual that kills or defeats the monster.
The distinction is important because the scene’s function is transitional rather than climactic. It comes after the battle and before the children return to the surface. In structural terms, it is a passage out of the sewer and out of the first phase of their childhood story. A plot overview of the novel places the episode within that larger sequence, while LitReactor’s discussion examines its immediate narrative role.
King’s explanation: connection between childhood and adulthood
King’s clearest public explanation appeared in a November 2013 post on the official StephenKing.com message board. As reproduced by Vulture, King said he was not primarily thinking about the sexual aspect when he wrote the scene. Instead, he connected it to the architecture of the novel.
IT alternates between two periods: the Losers’ childhood in 1958 and their adulthood in 1985. The adult characters have largely forgotten what happened to them as children, while the novel repeatedly moves between the two versions of their lives. King described the sexual act as a connection between childhood and adulthood—a kind of bridge between the two narrative worlds.
That explanation suggests three related functions:
- Reunification: The Losers’ emotional and quasi-supernatural bond has weakened after the confrontation with It. The ritual brings them back together as a group.
- Transition: The children cross symbolically from one stage of life into another. The act is coded as adult behavior, even though the characters themselves are still children.
- Structural connection: The scene literalizes the novel’s movement between its childhood and adult sections. It becomes a bridge between the two timelines.
King’s explanation directly supports the ideas of connection, maturity, and movement between the novel’s timelines. “Loss of innocence” is a reasonable critical interpretation, but it should not be presented as a direct quotation or exact formulation of King’s stated intention.
The sewer was already a coming-of-age symbol
The sexual scene did not create the novel’s childhood-to-adulthood symbolism. The sewer had been carrying that meaning from the beginning.
On his official page about IT, King describes the sewer as a version of the bridge in “The Three Billy-Goats Gruff.” He also compares the corridor between the children’s and adults’ sections of a library to a bridge that children must cross on their way to becoming adults.
This makes the scene’s location significant. The Losers enter the sewers as a functioning unit. They confront the monster, emerge from the encounter psychologically and supernaturally destabilized, and then use an adult-coded act to recover their connection and find the exit.
Read this way, the episode is a ritualized threshold scene. The children are not simply traveling through an underground tunnel; they are moving through the novel’s recurring boundary between childhood and maturity. The sexual act is King’s most literal and unsettling expression of that boundary.
Why does Beverly initiate it?
Beverly’s role is one of the scene’s most consequential choices. She proposes and organizes the ritual, reversing—at least temporarily—the pattern of sexual threat and control that surrounds her elsewhere in the novel.
Beverly is repeatedly exposed to sexualized violence, fear, and coercion. Her father is abusive, and the novel frequently places her body and sexuality under the control of men and threatening adults. In the sewer, the direction of power changes: Beverly acts, sets the sequence in motion, and determines how it occurs.
That makes it possible to read the passage as an attempt to give Beverly agency over an experience that the rest of the book associates with male threat. Some critics interpret this as a reversal of her victimization or as a kind of control reclaimed by the character.
However, that reading remains criticism, not confirmed authorial intent. King’s public explanation focuses on the Losers’ connection, the transition from childhood to adulthood, memory, and the structure of the novel. He did not specifically say that Beverly’s actions represent recovery from abuse or sexual empowerment. Reactor’s analysis of the novel explores the scene’s relationship to Beverly and the book’s broader treatment of childhood and maturity.
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Does sex literally have supernatural power in the novel?
The novel makes the sequence appear immediately effective: after Beverly has sex with the boys, the group regains its ability to navigate and escapes. But the text does not establish a clear supernatural rule that sex is required to leave the sewers.
Its causal status is deliberately uncertain. The scene can be understood in several ways:
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|---|---|
| Supernatural ritual | The act restores the psychic or quasi-magical bond connecting the Losers. |
| Psychological act | It calms the children, reunites them emotionally, and allows them to function as a group again. |
| Symbolic transition | The narrative treats a passage into adult-coded experience as the act that carries them out of childhood and the sewer. |
| Coincidence or belief | The children associate the act with their escape, but the novel leaves open whether it truly caused their renewed sense of direction. |
The safest conclusion is that the scene functions as a ritual within the story, while the precise mechanism remains interpretive. It is too strong to say that sex is definitively a supernatural key to the sewers. It is equally reductive to treat the event as unrelated to the children’s escape, since the narrative places the recovery immediately afterward.
Why the scene remains controversial
King’s symbolism is identifiable, but the symbolism does not make the scene easy to accept. The novel still depicts sexual activity involving preteen characters, including Beverly’s encounters with each of the boys. The passage is sufficiently extended and explicit that readers cannot discuss it as a purely abstract metaphor without first acknowledging what the book literally shows.
The central objection is therefore not necessarily that the scene has no purpose. Its purpose can be reconstructed from the novel’s structure and from King’s own explanation. The objection is that the chosen metaphor may be disproportionate, exploitative, or artistically unsuccessful—even if the intended subject is unity, maturity, memory, or the transition between childhood and adulthood.
The scene also creates a difficult gender problem. Beverly is the only girl in the Losers’ Club, and the book gives her the responsibility for carrying out the group’s transition. A reader may see this as agency and reversal, but may also see it as placing the burden of a disturbing symbolic act on the novel’s most heavily sexualized child character.
Both judgments can be validly held at once: the passage has a coherent structural meaning, and that meaning does not make the passage ethically or aesthetically unproblematic.
What King later said about the controversy
When Vulture’s reporter asked King’s representative in 2017 to confirm the 2013 explanation, the representative replied that it sounded like King’s statement. The representative also said King found it notable that readers discussed this single sex scene more than the novel’s multiple child murders.
King additionally acknowledged that “times have changed” and that people are now more sensitive to the issues involved. That is a qualification, not a complete retraction. There is no basis in the cited statements for claiming that King disowned the scene, removed it from the novel, or said that it had no meaning.
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The documented position is narrower and more useful: King explained the scene as a structural and symbolic connection between childhood and adulthood, while acknowledging that contemporary readers may find the material especially difficult.
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Why the adaptations leave it out
The sewer sex scene does not appear in the 1990 television miniseries or in Andy Muschietti’s two-part film adaptation. The 2017 film also does not reproduce the novel’s exact sequence in which the children become lost after confronting It. Instead, it takes the children out of the sewers without adapting the sexual ritual. The official StephenKing.com page for the 1990 miniseries, Vulture’s report, and GameSpot’s account of the 2017 film’s changes document the adaptation context.
The omission is unsurprising for practical, legal, tonal, and ethical reasons. A film showing sexual activity involving child actors would create a fundamentally different and unacceptable production problem from a novel describing the same disturbing idea. But the adaptation choice is not merely an erasure of plot. The films find another way to show the Losers’ unity and their movement toward maturity.
In the 2017 movie, the children’s bond is demonstrated through their collective decision to face Pennywise and overcome their individual fears. Their solidarity is shown through courage and mutual commitment rather than through a sexual ritual. This proves that the scene’s narrative functions—group unity, transition, and confrontation with fear—can be dramatized without reproducing its literal content.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Common claims about the scene—and what is accurate
“The children have sex to defeat Pennywise.”
Incorrect. The scene occurs after the first confrontation with It. Its immediate role is to restore the group’s connection and help the children escape the sewers.
“King said the scene was not sexual.”
Misleading. King said he was not primarily thinking about the sexual aspect when writing it. The passage itself nevertheless depicts sexual intercourse between minors. A statement about authorial focus cannot change the literal content of the scene.
“It happens at the very end of the book.”
Incorrect. It occurs near the end of the children’s 1958 storyline. The novel later returns to the adult Losers and their confrontation with It in 1985.
“It is only a metaphor, so the literal content does not matter.”
Unsupported. The symbolism is clearly relevant, but the scene is also a literal depiction of sex between children. Serious analysis has to address both levels.
“The scene proves that King intended to eroticize children.”
Not established by the available evidence. King’s documented explanation identifies a structural and symbolic purpose rather than an erotic one. Readers can still judge the scene as sexually inappropriate, exploitative, or disturbing, but claims about King’s private motive go beyond what the available record proves.
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What the scene ultimately means
The most defensible interpretation combines the novel’s structure with King’s own explanation. The sewer episode represents the Losers’ reconnection after their first confrontation with It. It also acts as a bridge between the children’s world and the adult world, turning the novel’s movement between its two timelines into a literalized ritual.
The setting reinforces that meaning. The children enter the sewer as a group, confront the monster, lose their cohesion, and then pass through a disturbing threshold before reaching the outside world. In the logic of the novel, they are leaving more than an underground tunnel: they are leaving one version of childhood behind.
That does not make the scene successful for every reader, and it does not excuse its depiction. The scene’s meaning and its acceptability are separate questions. IT uses sex between children as its starkest image of transition, unity, memory, and the loss of childhood. The controversy persists because those ambitions collide with the disturbing literal act chosen to express them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do the Losers have sex to defeat Pennywise?
No. In the novel, the scene happens after the children have confronted and apparently defeated It. Beverly’s proposal helps restore the group’s connection and allows the children to find their way out of the sewers.
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King’s stated explanation is that the scene connects childhood and adulthood, reunites the Losers after their bond weakens, and parallels the novel’s movement between its 1958 and 1985 timelines. He did not specifically describe it as Beverly reclaiming power after abuse; that is a critical interpretation.
Is the sewer scene in the IT movies?
No. The 1990 television miniseries and Andy Muschietti’s films omit the scene. The films show the Losers’ unity through their decision to face Pennywise and overcome their fears instead.
Does sex have supernatural power in the novel’s sewer scene?
The novel presents the sequence as immediately followed by the children regaining their sense of direction, but it never clearly establishes that sex is a required supernatural mechanism. It can be read as a ritual, a psychological act, a symbolically effective transition, or an ambiguous coincidence.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: The sewer scene follows the Losers’ first confrontation with It; it does not defeat Pennywise. Its intended function is to reunite the children and symbolically bridge childhood and adulthood, but that coherent symbolism does not remove the scene’s disturbing depiction of sex between minors or settle the ethical debate around it.
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