‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Officially Renewed as Pennywise Sets His Sights on the Bradley Gang
The world Stephen King built in Derry, Maine has never really let anyone leave, and HBO’s prequel series has spent the past year proving that the town’s evil runs far deeper than one killer clown. The horror series inspired by King’s novel “It” stars Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, exploring how the ancient entity first took the guise of the dancing clown. Fans have been counting down the days for confirmation that the nightmare would continue.
The show originally premiered on HBO Max on Oct. 26, 2025, with its first season mostly set in 1962 and focused on the town’s earlier brushes with the shape shifting evil beneath it. That debut run earned strong notices, landing around an 80 percent critics and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes while performing well in the ratings. That kind of reception made a second chapter feel inevitable, even before anyone said it out loud.
Now it is official. Variety confirmed that ‘It: Welcome to Derry’ will return for Season 2 on HBO, and the network has already revealed exactly where the story is headed next.
Season 2 will take place in 1935 during the Great Depression and center on the bloody massacre of the Bradley Gang, a group of bank robbers who stop in Derry to buy ammo and end up facing unimaginable horror. That storyline pulls directly from one of the Derry interludes woven throughout King’s original novel.
Behind the camera, things are shifting too. Brad Caleb Kane, who co-showran Season 1 alongside Jason Fuchs, will now take over as sole showrunner for Season 2, while Andy and Barbara Muschietti remain on board as executive producers through their Double Dream banner. HBO Max Original Programming Head Sarah Aubrey said the network is excited to return to the chilling world of Derry and further expand on the Muschiettis’ iconic adaptation.
Andy Muschietti has hinted at just how different this next chapter will feel tonally from the suburban dread of Season 1. Speaking with Variety earlier this month, he described a season steeped in “depression era hustling,” with characters doing “crazy things” just to survive the era’s brutal circumstances, adding that the darker social and cultural realities of the 1930s will sit at the very heart of the story. The creative team has reportedly mapped out a three season arc for the series, each installment corresponding to one of the major catastrophic events described in King’s interludes.
Casting for the new season has not yet been revealed, and there is no premiere window attached to the announcement so far. Given how long it took HBO to formalize this renewal after Season 1 wrapped, fans should probably brace for a patient wait before the Bradley Gang’s fate plays out on screen.
With Pennywise trading the suburban unease of the sixties for the desperation of the Great Depression, how do you think the show’s atmosphere will change once the Bradley Gang rolls into Derry?
