Pennywise might have bid farewell to that “lively crowd” before disintegrating into fiery fragments at the end of It: Welcome to Derry season one—but fans knew it wasn’t the end. For one thing, he emerges from the sewer again to terrorize another generation in Andy Muschietti’s It feature films. Plus, Welcome to Derry was a huge hit for HBO; a second season seemed all but guaranteed. So why hasn’t there been an official announcement yet?
An article in the Hollywood Reporter focusing on Muschietti’s in-the-works Batman movie, The Brave and the Bold, made an aside that’s got Welcome to Derry viewers primed for a big update on everyone’s favorite deeply cursed Maine town. Muschietti, THR wrote, “finds himself a hot commodity thanks to the muscular success of Welcome to Derry, HBO’s It series. A second season is now in the works, even if it has not been officially renewed.”
io9 reached out to HBO to see if any official comments on Welcome to Derry‘s renewal status are forthcoming, but the company had no updates to share.
Even before the first season aired, Muschietti, who co-created the show with his It and It Chapter Two cohorts Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs, made it clear he had a three-season plan in mind for Welcome to Derry. Season one takes place in 1962, detailing the Pennywise “cycle” that occurs prior to his return in Muschietti’s movies, which take place in 1989 and 2016, in keeping with the demonic entity’s killing sprees spaced 27 years apart.
A potential season two, Muschietti said in January 2025, would be set in 1935; season three, in 1908. These are both time periods that season one of Welcome to Derry explored in flashbacks, with particular focus on the Bob Gray character—the human man who performed as Pennywise the Dancing Clown before he was overtaken by you-know-who. The show depicted how Bob’s daughter, Ingrid, mourned his sudden loss in 1908—then saw that grief become twisted as she resorted to sinister acts in 1935 and 1962, seeking an impossible reunion with her beloved father.
Even with Ingrid’s story already out there, it seems likely Welcome to Derry would still have plenty of material to dig into in both settings. What about those ’30s gangsters that season one briefly called upon? Or the tragic 1906 Kitchener Ironworks explosion that King wrote about in the It novel and gets referenced in the Welcome to Derry opening credits—but wasn’t part of the show’s narrative itself?
All eight episodes of It: Welcome to Derry‘s first season are now available on HBO and HBO Max, with a cast that includes Jovan Adepo, Taylour Paige, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Blake Cameron James, Arian S. Cartaya, Amanda Christine, Matilda Lawler, Clara Stack, Madeleine Stowe, Rudy Mancuso, and Bill Skarsgård.
Don’t get too attached to any of those folks, though, because aside from Skarsgård—who plays Bob Gray/Pennywise—and maybe Madeleine Stowe (Ingrid), it seems likely an entirely new cast will need to be assembled if season two comes together. Working backward in the story also feels like a delicate writing task, considering all the new material introduced in season one. How will the Native American plotline, which fills in so much of Pennywise’s origin story, be handled in 1935 and 1908, for instance? Or the military’s presence in Derry?
If you prefer physical media, you’re in luck; It: Welcome to Derry: The Complete First Season is coming to 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD May 5. It will include three “extended behind-the-episode featurettes” as well as a new featurette that “explores the societal dynamics of 1962 Derry, Jim Crow, the Red Scare, and the government trespassing on Indigenous lands that wreaks terror in this tiny New England town.”
Update: The original version of this post was updated to include HBO’s response to io9’s comment query.
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