"It: Welcome to Derry" will get even darker: what is known about the second season
Pennywise the clown has always been Derry's main nightmare, but the creators of "It: Welcome to Derry" are gradually showing that the real horror lies not only in the guise of a clown. The second season of the series will send viewers even further back in time — to 1935, where the story of ancient evil will be connected with real social conflicts and tragedies of the city. According to director Andy Muschetti, the sequel will be an even darker exploration of how fear, violence, and public indifference create an environment in which Pennywise can exist. What the director said about the new season, what event will form the basis of the plot and why the authors decided to continue their journey into Derry's past is in the Izvestia material.
"This is the heart of the story": what Andy Muschetti said about the second season of "Welcome to Derry"
After the success of the first season of "It: Welcome to Derry," released on the HBO platform, the creators of the series began work on a sequel that will continue to explore the city's past and the history of the emergence of evil. According to Muschetti, the second season will not just be a repetition of the already familiar Pennywise formula — the authors intend to expand the scale of the story and show what events shaped the gloomy atmosphere of Derry.
In an interview with Variety magazine, the director said that the new season will take place in 1935, a period that will allow us to address one of the most difficult pages in the history of the city. Muschetti emphasized that it is impossible to talk about a specific era, ignoring the real social problems of that time.
Andy Muschetti
In the air, in the hearts of our characters, the atmosphere of that bustle of the Great Depression era will hover. Everyone will try to survive and cope with difficulties. They will do crazy things. And, of course, there will be terrible social and cultural phenomena of that era. We are not going to avoid them. They are the very heart of our history.
According to the director, it is human violence, fear, and collective silence that become the elements that make Derry vulnerable to supernatural evil.
At the same time, Muschetti continues to develop the main idea of the franchise: Pennywise does not exist separately from Derry, but is part of its history. The monster returns every 27 years, but each cycle of awakening is associated not only with the disappearance of children, but with the large-scale tragedies that the city was experiencing long before the appearance of familiar characters from Stephen King's novel "It", on which the series is based.
From schoolchildren to the Bradley gang: what the new season will tell you about
The main historical event of the second season will be the so—called Bradley Gang massacre, a tragedy that occurred in Derry in 1935. This particular episode is mentioned in King's novel as one of the bloodiest pages of the city's past. In the book, Derry appears not just as a place of action, but as an almost living organism that has been hiding crimes, disappearances and mass tragedies for decades. The series continues this idea, turning the history of the city into a separate storyline.
Andy Muschetti
At first glance, Derry is almost a cemetery. It's a corpse of something, because people are exhausted, poor, tired, unemployed, homeless. Children don't have a suburban, comfortable life. They are in a completely different situation. Some of them are orphans or runaways, so the situation is pretty grim. But there's always a glimmer of hope that always burns, and that's what keeps our new band going.
The creators of "It: Welcome to Derry" use events from the novel, but are not limited to their direct adaptation. As in the first season, the authors expand individual episodes of the book, adding new details and characters to show not only the next appearance of Pennywise, but also the reasons why Derry becomes the center of terrible events again and again.
The main difference between the new season will be the scale of the conflict: if the first part of the story was built around a group of children who were trying to understand the nature of what was happening, the sequel will focus more on the city itself and its past. According to Muschetti, the creators want to show that the real horror in the world of "It" is not only the existence of a monster. Pennywise becomes stronger where there is already fear, hatred and indifference of people.
That's why the second season may turn out to be even darker: it will tell not only about a supernatural being hiding underground, but also about human actions that allow this evil to exist.
How the history of Derry works: what the first season showed and why the series is moving into the past
The series "It: Welcome to Derry" was originally conceived not as an ordinary prequel to the films "It" (2017) and its second part "It 2" (2019), but as an expansion of King's universe. The main idea of the project is to explore the history of the city and show the previous cycles of Pennywise's appearance. The first season took viewers back to 1962, 27 years before the events of the novel "It", where a group of children led by Bill Denbrough encounter Pennywise the clown. The series showed a different period of Derry's history and told about new characters who were drawn into the next cycle of the awakening of ancient evil.
The main difference between the project and previous film adaptations is that the viewer is invited to look not only at Pennywise himself, but also at the city that exists around him. Derry becomes an independent character, a place where tragedies are repeated from generation to generation. That's why the creators decided to move back in time. Each new period allows us to reveal another part of the city's history and show what events made it the way King's characters know it.
According to Muschetti, the story of "It" has always been about more than just a monster. This is a story about collective memory, fear, and the ability of society to turn a blind eye to what is happening. Pennywise becomes a symbol of these problems — he returns not by accident, but because Derry is once again ready to create a new horror. If the first season showed viewers one of Pennywise's past awakenings, then the sequel will go even deeper — to where the story of Derry becomes even darker.
On July 27, Medialogia presented the Russian Series rating for June and the first half of 2026. The series "Stranger Things" became the leader in the first six months — the project scored 19,601 points. The top 5 projects also included "Magic Battle" (10,839 points), "Lilies of the Valley" (10,486 points), "Boys" (10,024 points) and "First Division" (8,917 points). In addition, the series "Boys" became the leader by the end of June — the story scored 1,971 points. The second place went to the Russian detective series "Sled" (1,834 points), and the third place went to "Euphoria" (1,328 points).
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