HBO has officially renewed its Stephen King horror prequel series “IT: Welcome to Derry” for a second season, confirming that Pennywise will return to terrorise the fictional Maine town for at least one more chapter.
The announcement, made this week by Warner Bros. Television and executive producers Andy and Barbara Muschietti, ends months of speculation that began building shortly after the show’s first season wrapped in December 2025.
While signs pointing to a renewal had been mounting since Muschietti accepted a Saturn Award for the series in March, HBO had held off on making it official until the creative direction for the next chapter was locked in.
Season 1 was set in Derry in 1962 and followed the town’s residents as they encountered the shape-shifting entity long before the events of Muschietti’s two “IT” feature films.
The series premiered on HBO and HBO Max on October 26, 2025, and quickly established itself as one of the platform’s biggest debuts, pulling in millions of viewers in its opening weekend and building steadily toward a finale that drew the show’s largest audience yet.
Season 2 will shift the timeline back nearly three decades, landing in 1935 during the depths of the Great Depression. According to the show’s creators, the new season centres on the real bloody history behind the Bradley Gang, a group of bank robbers who stop in Derry to restock on ammunition and instead run into something far more sinister than the law.
The period setting marks a deliberate tonal departure from the first season’s suburban unease, trading picket fences for poverty, desperation and quiet menace.
Speaking about the shift, Muschietti described the Derry of 1935 as a town stripped bare, populated by people who are depleted, broke and often without homes to return to.
Many of the season’s central characters are expected to be orphans or runaways rather than the more settled, family-anchored figures of Season 1, giving the new chapter a bleaker backdrop even as the show’s creators promise to hold onto a thread of hope running through the horror.
Behind the Scenes
Behind the scenes, the series is also undergoing a change in creative leadership. Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane shared showrunning duties on the first season, but Kane will take over as sole showrunner heading into Season 2.
Bill Skarsgård, whose performance as Pennywise anchored both the original “IT” films and the first season of “Welcome to Derry,” is confirmed to return, though full casting details for the new season have not yet been released.
The renewal fits into a larger plan the Muschiettis have discussed publicly for some time. Andy Muschietti has previously outlined a three-season arc for “Welcome to Derry,” with an additional chapter expected to draw on the 1908-set interlude from King’s original novel.
If that plan holds, the series is positioning itself as a sprawling, multi-generational excavation of Derry’s history with the entity long before Bill Denbrough and the Losers’ Club ever crossed its path in the 1980s and 1990s timeline of the films.
HBO executives framed the renewal as a vote of confidence in the franchise’s ability to keep expanding King’s fictional universe without losing what made the original films connect with audiences. Sarah Aubrey, head of HBO Max, said the network was eager to return to Derry and build further on the vision the Muschiettis established. Warner Bros.
Television’s Clancy Collins White echoed that sentiment, pointing to the new season’s 1930s setting as fertile ground for a fresh, spine-tingling chapter in the franchise.
For fans, the renewal answers the biggest lingering question since the first season closed on a heavy fog descending over Derry and General Shaw’s plans accelerating toward disaster.
It also confirms that Muschietti’s ambitions for the franchise extend well beyond a single limited series, positioning “Welcome to Derry” as an ongoing anthology-style exploration of the town’s dark history rather than a one-off prequel event.
No premiere date has been set for Season 2, and HBO has not indicated when production is expected to begin. Given the show’s weekly rollout format for Season 1 and its Halloween-adjacent premiere date, a similar release window in late 2027 or 2028 would fit the pattern the network has followed with its biggest horror properties.
Until then, fans will have to content themselves with the knowledge that Pennywise is not done with Derry yet, and neither, it seems, is HBO.
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