IT: Welcome to Derry season 2 might already be happening

To call Stephen King prolific is an understatement. Over the course of six decades, the man has become more than just an author; he is now an internationally recognizable brand unto himself. He has written 65 novels in total, in addition to hundreds more short stories since first debuting in 1974 with his first book, Carrie.

Considering the sheer volume of work that King has created, what is even more surprising is just how lengthy many of his books are. One of the longest books King has ever written was IT, released in 1986. The book housed a massive tale of horror, with a tale spread across multiple generations and dozens of characters.

The book was so long that each on-screen adaptation of it has had to embrace long-form storytelling of one form or another. For the ‘90s adaptation, director Tommy Lee Wallace crafted the iconic television mini-series starring Tim Curry. For the more recent effort, Andy Muschietti opted to split the novel’s dual narrative in half and chronicle one portion of it in the 2017 film, and the other in the 2019 follow-up, IT Chapter Two.

In 2025, audiences will be returning to the world of IT with the brand-new HBO series, IT: Welcome to Derry. And if the latest rumors are to be believed, it looks as though that will be far from the last time audiences encounter Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Recently, scooper Daniel Richtman revealed that he has intel that purports a second season of the upcoming TV series has already been greenlit and is gearing up to go into production in early 2026, shortly after the first season airs.

IT: Welcome to Derry is a ‘60s-set prequel to the Muschietti films. While that duology covered Pennywise’s antics in 1989 and 2016, considering that the creature famously arises to terrorize the town of Derry every 27 years, the new series will divulge what happened during the monstrous foe’s previous cycle.

The series sees Muschietti returning as a creative consultant and producer, and Pennywise performer Bill Skarsgård donning the red and white makeup once again. Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane serve as showrunners.

Given just how far in advance plans for a second season might be in motion, it’s fair to assume that the first season of Welcome to Derry will not end with the new batch of children successfully fending Pennywise off and ending his cycle of consumption, but rather deep in the thick of struggling against it.

You might think, with the unique 27-year window, that there isn’t much room for subsequent seasons to follow up on this story, with all seasons potentially taking place in 1962. And considering that the show has a cast comprised of several child actors, moving swiftly onto filming the next season would be a very wise choice to avoid the Stranger Things cast issue. However, Muschetti has already detailed what additional seasons would look like, and they plan to actually go back in time.

“So they talk about catastrophic events from the past, like the fire in the Black Spot…. the massacre of the Bradley Gang, a gang of bank robbers in the ’30s… and the explosion of the Kitchener Ironworks,” Muschietti shared earlier this year of Derry history. “Every time [Pennywise] comes out of hibernation, there is a catastrophic event that happens at the beginning of that cycle."

"We are basing the three seasons of this series on each of these catastrophic events...There’s a reason why the story is told backwards," he added. "So the first season is 1962, the second season is 1935, and the third season is 1908."

Given the sheer amount of stuff packed into the novel and in supplementary details spread across the interconnected world of King’s writing, there is certainly no shortage of IT-related stories to tell.

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