It: Welcome To Derry Confirms Season 2 Is Doubling Down On Big Pennywise Plan

Published Oct 21, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT

Casey Duby is an avid TV writer, watcher, and reviewer. She graduated from Emerson College in 2021 with a focus in Writing for Film and Television, where she wrote several pilots and watched countless more. She's been working in television ever since.

Casey loves thoughtful content that makes her ponder our world and the people in it, and she's learned that any genre can surprise her. With favorites in every genre from horror to politics, family to action, nothing is off limits.

Casey has experience working in TV development and writing scripted shows. Currently working as a Writer/Critic in Los Angeles, with an AMC A-List membership to boot, she is always hunting for the next good story and great theme song.

Stephen King's It created such a rich history for its fictional Derry, Maine, that its main characters' backstories and legacies spanned generations, and the origins of the monstrous Pennywise the Dancing Clown predate humanity itself.

In 2017, Andy Muschietti's adaptation of It became the highest-grossing horror movie of all time, and Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise made the classic monster a contemporary horror icon. Both It and It Chapter Two explored some of the more historical elements of King's story, including Pennywise's role in the Black Spot fire and Kitchener Ironworks explosion.

The movies also leaned into one of It's core themes, which is that of fear itself. A clown seems to be It's natural state, but a crucial element of Pennywise is its ability and desire to take the form of whatever its target fears most. Muschietti's movies saw Pennywise embody a leper, an eerie painting, and even Bill's missing brother Georgie.

With so much ground already covered, there were questions about what elements of Pennywise Muschietti's prequel series, IT: Welcome to Derry, had left to explore. With its first season, the HBO Max hit series proved that there was plenty about the evil clown that hadn't yet been depicted on screen.

Where Pennywise was concerned, the show's impressive first season asked more questions than it answered, and a recent production update on IT: Welcome to Derry season 2 suggests that the show is far from finished experimenting with the character.

It: Welcome To Derry Already Expanded Pennywise's Origin Story

Not only did Welcome to Derry season 1 flesh out Pennywise's involvement in the Black Spot fire, an event that was only hinted at in the It movies, but the series introduced the human version of Pennywise the Dancing Clown and explained how the persona became the shapeshifting monster's preferred form.

In 1908, Bob Gray, a clown with a traveling carnival, passed through Derry, where he performed as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. It saw the way Pennywise attracted children and became interested in the persona as an effective way to lure and frighten its prey. So, It ate Bob Gray and donned the persona of Pennywise for itself.

This was a major addition to the lore of Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise, as the movies only established that he was a shapeshifting clown that had been scaring and stealing children for generations, not where It came from or how It came to look the way It does.

What More Changes To Pennywise Could Mean For It: Welcome To Derry Season 2

Stephen King's novel and the It movies have already laid the groundwork for the stories that will dominate Welcome to Derry as the show works its way backwards through Pennywise's cycles that are all 27 years apart. Welcome to Derry has confirmed that season 2 will take place in the 1930s and follow the massacre of the Bradley Gang.

Further, Andy Muschietti has suggested that season 2's new child characters will be primarily "runaways or orphans," while the showrunner has said that season 2 will make some changes to Pennywise, depicting It in "a way you've never seen that character before." It remains to be seen what exactly that means, but the show has put itself in a position to prepare for some major changes.

Given the struggles of the Great Depression and of orphaned children, Pennywise will likely need to go to greater lengths to evoke fear in its prey in this new era. This will almost certainly involve new, more terrifying forms from the shapeshifting monster and different tactics for luring children into its clutches, especially as the monster has been shown to adapt to each individual person it stalks.

However, Welcome to Derry season 2 will also put the show on the precipice of an even bigger change. Season 2 can utilize Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise in its familiar form, but season 3 and beyond will begin to broach the time before It took on the appearance of Pennywise.

If the show intends to continue moving backwards in time past the moment It assumed the likeness of Bob Gray, IT: Welcome to Derry season 3 will need to begin preparing for an iteration of the character that doesn't involve the iconic clown that Bill Skarsgård has made a core part of this iteration of the franchise.