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But if the second season of It: Welcome to Derry tells the story that was teased in the Season 1 finale, and does it well? Then the long wait will have been more than worth it. And, thankfully, HBO can take the time needed to get Season 2 in the can and onto the screen, because unlike Netflix’s Stranger Things, there is no ticking clock hanging over the cast.
IT: Welcome to Derry Is Wisely Avoiding the Stranger Things Conundrum
The news that IT: Welcome to Derry Season 2 is happening comes with the caveat that it would likely not release until late 2027, if not 2028. That would put Welcome to Derry in the same company as other high-concept TV series like Stranger Things, Pluribus, and Severance, which all take multiple years in between seasons. It’s not a trend that fans are fond of, and in the case of a show like Stranger Things, the delays were a major hurdle to production.
By the time of Stranger Things Season 5 (the show’s final season), it was hilarious to see the young actors of the series still trying to portray kids in high school, having clearly aged beyond their characters in the show. The issue started between Seasons 2 and 3, where the natural process of adolescent-to-teen aging took its most drastic jumps in the two-year gap; the three-year gap between Season 3 and Season 4 was absolutely wild, as the “kids” who showed up for the post-pandemic seasons (4) were very different than the ones we saw before it.
IT: Welcome to Derry Season 2 Will Tell A Game-Changing Time Travel Story
Welcome to Derry won’t have that problem: Thanks to the twists of the Season 1 finale, the show’s second season will be a flashback to an earlier era in Derry, Maine, when Pennywise terrorized the parents of the kids we met in Season 1. There were already brief flashbacks to Pennywise haunting the Juniper Hill home in 1935, Ingrid Kersh/Periwinkle as his accomplice. That means Welcome to Derry Season 2 will get a whole new cast, with the leads being young actors recast in some of the adult roles from Season 1. The Season 1 cast is free to age away, without it ever affecting the audience’s viewing experience.
However, what’s more interesting is how Welcome to Derry is approaching this jump further back in time. (SPOILERS) The Season 1 finale revealed that the entity that is Pennywise can view his entire lifespan as one full circle of time, where past, present, and future are interwined. Pennywise was all too aware of his own death in IT: Part Two, and revealed that it was that knowledge that had caused him to attack the kids of Derry in the 1960s. After failing in that era, Pennywise promised to try again in the 1930s (Season 2).
No matter what happens, Pennywise playing a chess game across time opens bold new doors in Stephen King’s universe. Even King’s epic Dark Tower series will come closer together with IT‘s lore if Welcome to Derry Season 2 tells its story the right way, thereby tightening the ties between the entire King “Macroverse” of horror stories.
For now, IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1 is streaming on HBO Max. Discuss the show with us on the ComicBook Forum!
