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Naturally, I understand what this means: make it possible for someone to do something, or find a way to do something.

But how does it make sense? Can you explain in so that I get my head around it?

A few examples:

  • "Tommy made it so we can watch the lobby from upstairs (he modified a few cameras and now they can watch it from upstairs, without having to stand guard)
  • " she made it so that nobody could see her profile on Facebook. "
  • " Make it so we can choose a side in every game."
  • "Can you make it so we can infuse any kind of gun into any kind of of gun again?"
  • "Can you make it so we can watch our friends' highlights?"
  • " They made it so that the river changed its course and flew over the ruins of the city"
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Your understanding of the idiomatic phrase is correct. However, you also have to realise that ‘make it so that...’ without further context or clarification is a very vague expression in and of itself. All your examples are possible, but it seems they deliberately left out the details and do not convey anything more than ‘do whatever is necessary to ensure something else is possible’. Take your second to last sentence for example,

  • “Can you make it so that we can watch our friends’ highlights.”

‘Make it so that’ could require downloading the highlights, or sharing them, or fixing the broken TV for all we know. The exact means have been deemed unimportant.

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In your examples, make it so that means more or less “arrange matters in such a way that.” Thus the it has no antecedent: there doesn’t exist any thing that is getting made (in the sense of created or produced). But if you wanted to, you wouldn’t go too far wrong by interpreting the it as referring to “the universe.” Thus another paraphrase of make it so that is “cause the universe to behave in a manner that ensures that.”

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  • If we consider "do" instead of "make", then can "it" in "do it so that" be dummy? Thanks.
    – Loviii
    Commented Oct 13 at 5:02
  • Do it so that is not idiomatic.
    – Paul Tanenbaum
    Commented Oct 13 at 10:28
  • { verb + dummy "it" + so + declarative } - I managed to find only two verbs which can be used in this construction: "arrange" and "make". So I drew the conclusion that all other verbs cannot license (permit) "it" as a dummy pronoun here, only as an ordinary one. Am I right? Thanks.
    – Loviii
    Commented Oct 13 at 15:43

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