Will Hanlon dies in a fire while saving his son, Mike.
How Will Hanlon Dies
In the broader IT canon, Will grows up, survives his childhood encounters with Pennywise, and later becomes the father of Mike Hanlon, the future member of the Losers’ Club. Years after the events shown in Welcome to Derry , he and his wife die in a house fire while rescuing Mike, who survives the incident.
Some discussions and companion material describe this as a tragic, almost freak accident, emphasizing that Will escapes supernatural threats only to die in a very human catastrophe. In timelines tied more strictly to the original novel, Will is instead said to have died of cancer in the early 1960s, but current show-focused coverage treats the fire as his canonical fate tied to Mike’s backstory.