Anil Krishna 
Jonathan Millar 
James Oconner 
‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Season 2 Will Be Very Different, With Pennywise Entering a Gangster Movie
© HBO
IT: Welcome to Derry is going back in time again, but Season 2 won’t just be another trip into the past with Pennywise waiting around to scare people. The HBO horror series is moving from 1962 to 1935, and according to showrunner Brad Caleb Kane, the new season will have a noticeably different feel. This time, the show is taking inspiration from old American gangster movies, mixing the violence of the crime genre with the supernatural horror that has always been part of Stephen King’s world. It’s a pretty big change from Season 1, though the people of Derry probably aren’t going to have a much easier time of it.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Kane said the new episodes will draw on the crime films Warner Bros. was making during the 1930s. The story takes place during the Great Depression, with the infamous Bradley Gang massacre at the centre of things. The gang’s history was touched on in the first season, but there’s much more to explore here. Kane also offered an update on how the work is coming along. Several scripts are already finished, more than half of the story has been mapped out, and pre-production is underway. Filming is currently planned for 2027, and the showrunner has suggested that Season 2 will be particularly brutal. So, yes, Derry is getting another nightmare, just one with a rather different look this time.
The change in style makes sense for a series built around Pennywise. The creature isn’t tied to one particular decade, and its ability to prey on people’s fears means the horror can look different depending on when the story takes place. The 1930s bring their own set of problems, from poverty and desperation to violent criminals and a town struggling through the Great Depression. Pennywise doesn’t necessarily have to create all that ugliness itself. Sometimes, it only needs to make the worst parts of human nature a little worse.
‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Season 2 Will Explore the Bradley Gang Massacre
Season 2 takes place in 1935, 27 years before the events of the first season. That timeline also fits with Pennywise’s familiar cycle of returning to Derry every 27 years, bringing a fresh wave of fear and bloodshed with it. The series has already shown how the town’s past is full of terrible events, and the new season is set to dig into one of the most notorious incidents mentioned in King’s original novel.
The Bradley Gang, a group of bank robbers, will be central to the story. Their crime spree leads to a bloody confrontation with the people of Derry, turning the massacre into one of the season’s major events. Pennywise’s presence adds another layer to what might otherwise be a straightforward story about criminals and a furious town. The question is how much of the violence comes from the people involved and how much is being encouraged by something far older and nastier lurking in the background. In Derry, those two things have a habit of getting mixed up.
Kane’s decision to borrow from classic gangster films is also an interesting way to make the season feel different without abandoning the show’s horror roots. Movies such as The Public Enemy and Little Caesar helped establish the crime-film style in the 1930s, with ruthless gangsters, rivalries, shootouts and characters who rarely got a happy ending. Bringing some of that into Welcome to Derry gives the series another kind of danger to play with. Pennywise’s supernatural tricks can exist alongside very human violence, and the two don’t need to compete for attention.
There’s also the promise of a different take on Pennywise himself. Kane has hinted that the entity will appear in a new form, which suggests the series won’t simply repeat the scares audiences have already seen. Changing shape is one of the creature’s defining abilities, after all. Bill Skarsgård made the character his own in Andy Muschietti’s IT films and the first season of the HBO series, but the 1935 setting gives the show room to try something else with him.
The shift could help Welcome to Derry move away from another comparison that followed Season 1: Stranger Things. The first season’s young characters, period setting and supernatural mysteries reminded some viewers of Netflix’s hit series. Season 2 seems to be heading in another direction, with gangster violence and the harsher realities of Depression-era America taking up more space in the story. That doesn’t mean the show is abandoning its supernatural side. If anything, it gives Pennywise a different world to prey on.
Brad Caleb Kane is leading the second season as its sole showrunner after sharing the role with Jason Fuchs in Season 1. Andy and Barbara Muschietti, who helped shape the wider IT franchise, are still involved, so the change in tone doesn’t mean the series is starting from scratch.
There’s no official release date for IT: Welcome to Derry Season 2 yet. With scripts in progress and filming expected to begin in 2027, it will be some time before audiences see how this new direction comes together. But a gangster story set during one of Derry’s bloodiest periods, with Pennywise somewhere in the middle of it, sounds like a very different kind of horror season — and probably not a pleasant one for anyone living in that town.
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