It: Welcome to Derry season 2: Everything we know so far about the second chapter of the HBO horror spin-off
Goodbye, losers! That’s it: Welcome to Derry season 1 – or chapter one, as the title card over the end credits calls it, which all but confirms that more episodes are on the way.
The horror-filled finale saw Lilly, Ronnie and Marge team up to save Will from the titular killer clown, while the Hanlons enlisted the help of Rose, Taniel and an increasingly disoriented Hallorann to carry out their own rescue mission. Their efforts saw the two groups collide on the outskirts of Derry, as General Shaw and his men closed in to protect Pennywise (eek!). Given that this is a prequel, we might have predicted that good would have triumphed over evil, sending it back into hibernation to give the people of Derry 27 years of peace and quiet.
It: Welcome to Derry, Season 2 Release Date Speculation
As it stands, it’s almost impossible to predict when It: Welcome to Derry season 2 will premiere if the shows are renewed, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated. Once the cameras start rolling, it will be easier to guess.
Filming for season 1 began in May 2023, with a presumed end date of December. Production was however disrupted due to SAG-AFTRA strikes and filming was stalled between July 2023 and February 2024. With this, it actually ended in August 2024.
On December 11, Stephen King himself took to Threads to suggest that the season 1 finale was going to “blow your mind.” High praise, yes, but it was the fact that he added “(this year)” after “episode” that really caught our attention. Could HBO offer a surprise second season in 2026? It’s unlikely, but we’re nostalgic for the lost days of annual releases. And we don’t hesitate to dream of his return…
This: Welcome to Derry, season 2 trailer
As it stands, there is no trailer yet for It: Welcome to Derry season 2. As soon as it goes live, we’ll be sure to let you know.
It: Welcome to Derry, Season 2 Plot Speculation
Director and executive producer Andy Muschietti revealed before the premiere of It: Welcome to Derry that their plan was to set season 2 in 1935. In fact, he went further by revealing that the second chapter would revolve around the Bradley gang massacre, an important moment in Derry’s dark history that has already been explicitly referenced in the series.
“There’s a bigger intentional arc that’s going to open up,” he previously told Deadline. “My intention was to create a story that feels a bit like an iceberg underwater throughout Seasons 1, 2 and 3. There will be an expansion of the mythology and more answers to the big questions. The second season will be set in 1935. At the end of Season 1, we hint at why we’re going to tell the story in two more seasons – and backwards.”
In the book, Losers Club member Mike Hanlon learns from pharmacist Dr. Keene that the nearby Machen Sporting Goods store was owned by Lal Machen in the early 1930s, who – at the behest of behind the scenes – rallied the people of Derry to ambush the Bradley Gang. After the notorious bank robbers entered his store and placed an obscene order for guns and ammunition, he quickly began encouraging his friends to bring their own firearms to the three-way intersection of Canal, Main and Kansas Street at the precise moment he told Al, George and co. to collect the goods. Things, as you can imagine, got very bloody – and none of the Bradleys made it out alive.
These were their skeletons in the car found by Hallorann and Shaw at the end of Welcome to Derry season 2; with wads of cash and period-appropriate Tommy guns.
If Season 1 is anything to go by, we can expect to meet a bunch of original characters and new subplots, but knowing that The Bradley Gang Massacre will be the focus of the story is a good place to start.
It: Welcome to Derry, season 2 casting speculation
Given that Season 2 will take place nearly 30 years before Season 1, it’s unlikely we’ll see child characters Lilly, Will, Ronnie, and Marge again, meaning Clara Stack, Blake Cameron James, Amanda Christine, and Matilda Lawler’s time in the IT universe might be done and dusted. Lilly’s “I guess it’ll be someone else’s fight” in the finale makes us double down on this theory. Since we saw flashbacks to 1908 in the first chapter, flashforwards are not. entirely out of the question — and executive producers Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti recently hinted at the “possibility” of that on Reddit.
With Chris Chalk’s Dick Hallorann, seeing the spirit, off to London, where he was offered the position of head chef at a remote hotel, it seems safe to assume that Arian S. Cartaya’s Rich won’t appear in season 2; flashforward or not.
While we saw General Shaw as a child in the 1908 flashback, the character spoke openly about leaving Derry and returning only to locate him, so we assume he won’t be around for the second installment either. Ditto for Charlotte (Taylour Paige) and Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), who moved to Derry in episode 1.
Two characters that could realistically appear are Kimberly Norris-Guerrero’s Rose and Madeleine Stowe’s Ingrid Gray/Kersh, who have lived in Derry their entire lives. In flashbacks to 1908, Emma Leigh Cullum played Ingrid, while Tyner rushes portrayed the character in the 1935 sections, so it’s very likely they will both be back.
However, the only returning actor certified dead at this point appears to be Bill Skarsgard. It wouldn’t be a story without that now, would it?
Will there be a season 3 of It: Welcome to Derry?
Given that season 2 has yet to be officially announced, it’s no surprise that a third season isn’t guaranteed either. But for the same reasons we’re pretty sure we’ll get a Season 2, we’re pretty sure HBO will let Andy Muschietti and co finish what they started with It: Welcome to Derry.
Even before the premiere of the first episode, the director detailed his three-season plan for the series. Season 3, he explained, would be set in 1908; a time we’ve already glimpsed in Season 1 flashbacks. It turns out that year was the year he first adopted his Pennywise persona, after witnessing a carnival performer’s clown act in suburban Derry and killing him before “stealing” his face.
Although it was not covered in It: Welcome to Derry season 1, Muschietti previously announced that a third season would revolve around the Kitchener Ironworks explosion, an event briefly touched upon in one of the book’s interludes. In a nutshell, it’s an Easter egg hunt gone wrong, resulting in the deaths of 88 children and 14 adults in the early 1900s. Jeremy Ray Taylor’s Ben Hanscom explores the tragedy in Derry’s public library in It (2017).
In King’s original novel, the explosion occurs in 1906, but since the series follows the same timeline as Muschietti’s films, things had to change to remain canonical.
It: Welcome to Derry is now streaming on HBO Max. For more, check out our picks of the most exciting new TV shows coming our way or our ranking of the best Stephen King adaptations.
