The world of Andy Muschietti’s It is officially set to continue expanding, with HBO officially confirming that a second season of the hit horror TV series, It: Welcome to Derry, is entering production.
For the uninitiated, It originated as a Stephen King novel back in 1986. It was subsequently adapted into a TV miniseries directed by Tommy Lee Wallace and starring the immortal Tim Curry in the titular role of Pennywise the clown before being remade in the late 2010s by director Andy Muschietti and starring Bill Skarsgård. The latter of these two efforts was done in two feature-length films, 2017’s It: Chapter One and 2019’s It: Chapter Two. However, even with a combined runtime of nearly five hours, these two films still had to leave huge stretches of King’s novel, which is absolutely massive, on the cutting room floor.
Thus, It: Welcome to Derry offered much of the same creative team that had made those films to return to the franchise and cover more of King’s ground while also charting new territory for themselves. The resulting first season ebbed and flowed in terms of quality but ultimately did deliver some moments that outright outdid the movies at their own game, especially the seventh episode, “The Black Spot,” which was flat-out great. But beyond the critical appraisal of the series, it was also simply a massive slam-dunk of a hit for HBO.
People tuned in droves to see more of the It universe, in no small part thanks to explicit interconnectivity with the films. Though he didn’t actually appear in the series until its fifth episode (more than halfway through its run), Skarsgård’s iteration of Pennywise was featured extremely prominently in the marketing materials and was undoubtedly a major part of what brought viewers to the show. While Curry’s take on the character was a cult fixation for many, myself included, Skarsgård’s Pennywise had become a bona fide horror icon to a whole new generation of fans. In a world devoid of A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th sequels, this was a younger generation’s chance to see one of their definitive genre antagonists return, and they weren’t going to miss it.
Notably, the first season of Welcome to Derry was set in 1962, twenty-seven years prior to the events of It: Chapter One. Twenty-seven years is significant due to the fact that, as established by King in the novel, this is how long the titular creature’s hibernation period is between feedings. Thus, the second season is set to trace its roots even further back, to 1935. The finale of the first season did dabble a bit in some time-traveling, portal-looping shenanigans, so it isn’t beyond consideration that the second season could still feature some of the established cast from the first season, though it is ultimately unlikely.
Skarsgård is set to return as Pennywise once more, Muschietti is once again involved, and showrunner Brad Caleb Kane is also returning. All in all, I’m jazzed to see a Great Depression-set It story, and excited to see what kind of possibilities this new era of storytelling can hold for the creatives.
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