Welcome to Derry Is Drastically Changing Its Formula For Season 2
What’s scarier than Pennywise? Economic recession.
2025 was full of scary surprises on-screen, with It: Welcome to Derry emerging as one of the best. HBO’s series-length prequel to Andy Muschietti’s It films managed to defy the franchise curse in the best way, introducing a time travel twist that keeps audiences on their toes without undermining the endgame. And the plot only seemed to thicken with the set-up for a new season, which will go back in time even further from the story It fans all know and love.
Muschietti hasn’t revealed much about the context of Welcome to Derry Season 2, besides the fact that it will follow the parents and/or grandparents of the families we met in Season 1 — and that it will “deliver something that is greater” than its predecessor. As the writer-director irons out the scripts that will inform the new season, his plans are becoming clearer for those on the outside looking in. Hopefully Muschietti’s claims about a greater season are true, but for now it’s at least clear that Welcome to Derry Season 2 will be very different from Season 1 in other ways.
In a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting, Muschietti has revealed a bit more about his plans for Season 2. The upcoming season will be set in the year 1935, 27 years before the events of Season 1, and over 50 years before Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgård) first terrorized the Losers Club in 1989. We can expect to meet more of their ancestors when Welcome to Derry turns the clock further back, but Season 2 will also focus on another violent chapter in Derry’s history: the Bradley Gang Massacre.
Welcome to Derry Season 2 will be darker and a bit more mature than its predecessor.
“The Bradley Gang was a gang of bank robbers that... stopped in Derry to buy some ammo and something horrible happens,” Muschietti told Bloody Disgusting. Though the gang is meant to be passing through Derry, they make the fatal mistake of robbing a few shops on their way out. Suffice it to say they don’t make it to their final destination, thanks in part to some infernal meddling from Pennywise.
Season 2 sounds a lot grittier than Season 1, focusing on older protagonists. There’s also the little matter of its Depression-era setting, a far cry from the idyllic suburbia we see in Welcome to Derry and It. “We’re facing an era which is the Depression Era that changes dramatically the setup of things,” Muschietti explained. “There’s no suburban comfort — the trope of the kids that live in suburbia and they ride their bikes and suddenly one of them disappears is nothing like this.”
The heroes of Welcome to Derry Season 2 will be “struggling to survive” long before Pennywise begins to haunt the narrative. On paper, that might take some of the tension out of the proceedings — part of the appeal of It is the way it subverts its Normal Rockwell-inspired utopia, and with a clown, of all things. Season 2 could show us Derry at its darkest, taking cues from Season 1’s grimy flashbacks. It’ll certainly be a departure, but given the risks the show has pulled off already, it’s one we can’t wait to see in action.
