It’s been a fairly nice yr to be a horror fan. Obsession turned one in all 2026’s greatest shock hits, Backrooms turned an web nightmare right into a box-office smash, and even smaller releases like Hokum discovered an viewers. And now, some of the iconic tales from horror legend Stephen King is getting one other chapter. HBO has formally renewed It: Welcome to Derry for a second season, sending Pennywise and the cursed Maine city even additional into the previous.
The renewal isn’t significantly stunning. Since premiering final yr, Welcome to Derry has turn out to be one in all HBO Max’s 4 greatest sequence debuts globally, and creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti have been open about their plans to proceed exploring Derry’s previous.
What’s It: Welcome to Derry about?
It: Welcome to Derry is a prequel to Andy Muschietti’s films It and It: Chapter Two, increasing on the historical past of Stephen King’s famously cursed city.
Season 1 takes place in 1962, 27 years earlier than the occasions of the primary It film, as a brand new group of kids begins investigating the disappearances and horrors plaguing Derry. On the identical time, Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Paige), and Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) turn out to be wrapped up in a army try to know — and doubtlessly weaponize — the supernatural power lurking beneath the city. Finally, in fact, that power reveals one in all its most recognizable faces: Pennywise, as soon as once more performed by Invoice Skarsgård.
The sequence makes use of its for much longer TV runtime to discover each its youthful characters and Derry itself, displaying how Pennywise’s affect extends past particular person victims to contaminate your entire group.
In Polygon’s evaluate of the primary season, we referred to as Welcome to Derry “the most effective, scariest It story but,” praising its expanded take a look at Derry, its ensemble forged, and the best way its episodic format gave the story room the films by no means had. We additionally discovered that the sequence recaptured among the coming-of-age magic that made each 2017’s It and the primary season of Stranger Issues so efficient.
The second season will soar backward one other 27 years, from 1962 to 1935, through the Nice Despair. In keeping with HBO, the brand new season will middle on the bloodbath of the Bradley Gang, a bunch of financial institution robbers who arrive in Derry seeking to purchase ammunition and as a substitute encounter one thing a lot worse.
That incident comes immediately from King’s It, the place the Bradley Gang bloodbath is one in all a number of historic atrocities related to Pennywise’s recurring appearances in Derry. The gang was already teased throughout Welcome to Derry season 1 within the present’s opening credit and thru a classic automotive related to the criminals that Hallorann uncovers.
HBO has not introduced casting for the brand new season, together with whether or not Skarsgård will formally return as Pennywise. Contemplating the present’s premise, although, It itself will inevitably have an essential function to play.
HBO has not introduced a launch date for It: Welcome to Derry season 2.