IT: Welcome to Derry Season 2 Officially Confirmed

It was surely only a matter of time, but now we finally have confirmation: IT: Welcome to Derry is officially returning for a second season.

HBO has renewed its hit Stephen King horror series following the success of Season 1, with the next chapter turning the clock back even further. Rather than continuing forward from the events we have already seen, Season 2 will take place in 1935, allowing the series to explore another of Derry’s notoriously bloody periods and another cycle in the long history of the creature we know best as Pennywise. Deadline broke the news.

That approach is exactly what makes Welcome to Derry such an interesting proposition as an ongoing series. Pennywise doesn’t need another group of kids to stumble across him every season while the writers desperately invent reasons for everyone to keep returning to the same sewer. The history of Derry already gives the filmmakers an enormous playground. Every 27 years, the evil beneath the town awakens, feeds and leaves another trail of death, tragedy and conveniently selective memories behind it.

And after the first season, we’re more than happy to go back for another history lesson. Just don’t expect this one to appear on the school curriculum.

Welcome to Derry Goes Back to 1935

Season 2 will reportedly centre around the Bradley Gang massacre, an event drawn from Stephen King’s original IT novel. The new season takes place during the Great Depression, with the Bradley Gang described as bank robbers who arrive in Derry looking to buy ammunition before finding considerably more trouble than they bargained for.

It is a smart direction because Season 1 established that Welcome to Derry wasn’t simply going to be “the Pennywise show”. Instead, it could explore the mythology of Derry itself: a town in which horrific events repeat across generations while something ancient sits beneath it all, feeding not only on its victims but seemingly poisoning the community around it.

HBO itself describes the series as a prequel that goes back to 1962 to explore the origins of the murderous, shape-shifting entity associated with Pennywise. That first season expanded the world established by director Andy Muschietti’s IT films rather than simply attempting to remake their formula for television.

Set 27 years before the childhood section of 2017’s IT, Season 1 took us to Derry in 1962, introducing a new collection of characters while gradually revealing another period in the town’s horrifying history. The series had the advantage of knowing that its audience understood what Derry was even if its characters didn’t. We knew there was something beneath the surface. We knew that strange disappearances and horrific incidents weren’t simply unfortunate coincidences. Most importantly, we knew that sooner or later a certain smiling clown was going to turn up.

That allowed the series to play with anticipation in a way that would have been impossible before the films. Pennywise didn’t need to be standing in every doorway waving a balloon around. His presence hangs over Derry whether he is physically on screen or not, and Bill Skarsgård’s eventual return to the role connected the television series directly to the two films that made his version of the character a modern horror icon.

The first season also demonstrated why Stephen King’s fictional Maine town is rich enough to sustain this kind of expansion. Derry isn’t simply the place where Pennywise happens to live. Its history is littered with violence, disappearances, disasters and moments when ordinary human cruelty seems to become intertwined with the supernatural influence beneath the town. That idea has always been one of the most disturbing aspects of IT: the monster is terrifying, but Derry itself frequently feels wrong.

From 1962 to 1935

Moving Season 2 backwards to 1935 also confirms the larger structure that Welcome to Derry appears to be embracing. Rather than progressing towards the events of the movies, the series can move deeper into the past, exploring earlier cycles of Pennywise’s activity and dramatising events that previously existed as pieces of Derry history.

The chronology now makes the pattern particularly clear. Season 1 is set in 1962. The childhood portion of Andy Muschietti’s IT takes place in 1989, while IT Chapter Two reunites the Losers’ Club 27 years later in 2016. Season 2 stepping back 27 years from 1962 takes us to 1935.

That means Welcome to Derry has potentially found a format capable of continuing for several seasons without exhausting its central idea. Each new chapter can effectively become its own period horror story, with different characters, different social circumstances and a different incarnation of Derry, while Pennywise and the evil surrounding the town provide the connective tissue.

Brad Caleb Kane will return for Season 2 and will serve as sole showrunner, while Bill Skarsgård is expected to reprise his role as Pennywise.

HBO’s Sarah Aubrey said the network was excited to return to Derry and continue expanding upon Andy and Barbara Muschietti’s adaptation, promising that the second season will go deeper into the terror, mystery and Pennywise mythology that drove the first.

Andy and Barbara Muschietti were equally enthusiastic about returning, describing the opportunity to continue exploring Stephen King’s world as a privilege.

There is no confirmed premiere date yet, so we’re going to have to wait before finding out exactly what HBO, Kane and the Muschiettis have planned for 1935. But the Bradley Gang incident gives Season 2 a fascinating piece of King mythology around which to build another story, while the Great Depression setting should give this version of Derry a very different atmosphere from the 1960s world of Season 1.

More importantly, Welcome to Derry now has the chance to become something bigger than a one-off prequel to two successful films. Stephen King gave Derry a long, horrible history, and the 27-year cycle provides an almost perfect framework for exploring it. The first season showed us 1962. Season 2 is taking us to 1935.