It: Welcome To Derry Risks Ruining What Made The Stephen King Series Great

Published Oct 28, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. While It: Welcome To Derry season 1 was one of the best Stephen King shows to date, the show’s own setup means that the prequel will struggle with a major twist in an upcoming outing. Prequels are always risky business, but this is never more obvious than in the world of horror. Some of the greatest horror movies ever, such as John Carpenter’s slasher classic Halloween, have been hurt by follow-ups that over-explain the original movie’s mysterious monster. In the sparse 1978 slasher, the faceless Michael Myers is an implacable, unstoppable killer, and viewers have no way of knowing whether he is an ordinary man or a supernatural force of evil. In the movie’s ‘80s sequels, Michael became an outright paranormal monster fueled by a Celtic cult, while in director Rob Zombie’s glum 2007 remake, he became an ordinary kid whose killings were simply the expression of some seriously justified repressed rage. Of course, not every horror prequel is doomed to ruin its original villains by stripping them of their mystery. On the contrary, Peacock’s Friday the 13th prequel Crystal Lake became the franchise’s most critically acclaimed outing ever by quite a stretch when the show offered a more in-depth explanation of the motives behind Pamela Voorhees’s summer camp killing spree in the 1980 original. Similarly, the Stephen King prequel series It: Welcome To Derry managed the admirable feat of making Pennywise even scarier when the show arrived in late 2025. It: Welcome To Derry Season 2's Different Pennywise Is Risky ©HBO / Courtesy Everett Collection Set in the ‘60s, It: Welcome To Derry introduced a younger generation of kids who were scared, scarred, and in some cases, killed by Pennywise long before the Losers Club first encountered him in the 1980s. However, much like Peacock’s later Crystal Lake, It: Welcome To Derry did much more than just rehash the events of the It movies with new victims. The show also explained where Pennywise got its iconic clown appearance. Episode 7, “The Black Spot,” opens with a flashback to 1908. There, a circus entertainer named Bob Gray, who performs onstage as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, is lured into the woods by Derry’s demonic evil entity in the form of a seemingly lost child. Gray is killed offscreen, and viewers learn that this is where Pennywise got its most famous form. To make this twist even more tragic, the entity repeatedly takes the form of Pennywise in front of Bob’s orphaned daughter Ingrid. Thus, as she grows older, It: Welcome To Derry’s Ingrid Kersh becomes a murderous clown herself, thinking that this is what will appease her father’s bloodlust. It’s a disturbing backstory and one that makes Pennywise even scarier as viewers learn that the entity chose Bob specifically because he appealed to children and won their trust with his good-natured clowning. However, this twist could also go on to derail future seasons of the series. Brad Caleb Kane celebrated the announcement of It: Welcome To Derry season 2 by speaking to Entertainment Weekly and telling the magazine that season 2 would bring “a different kind of Pennywise… the way you’ve never seen that character before.” This alone doesn’t sound worrying. Pennywise was always set to change form in season 2, since the monster already repeatedly took on various different nightmarish forms throughout season 1. It: Welcome To Derry Season 3 Can't Bring Back Bill Skarsgård's Version Of Pennywise Brooke Palmer / ©HBO / Courtesy Everett Collection Rather, the issue is that Pennywise’s Bob Gray form, i.e. the instantly recognizable clown that Bill Skarsgard plays, has only been around since 1908. This means that while It: Welcome To Derry season 2 can still bring back Skarsgard’s Pennywise, season 3 takes place before the entity ate, absorbed, or otherwise became Pennywise the Dancing Clown, meaning the show is set to lose its most instantly recognizable star. This might explain why It: Welcome To Derry season 2 is promoting the show’s radically different take on Pennywise, even though Skarsgard’s take on the character will still likely appear in this season. Ideally, It: Welcome To Derry should begin to explore different, memorable new forms for Pennywise that predate the Bob Gray guise, so the show doesn’t suddenly lose its iconic villain overnight in season 3. This issue has the potential to be doubly damaging for It: Welcome To Derry, compared to other horror shows, thanks to its unique structure. It: Welcome To Derry is often compared to shows like Stranger Things, as both series are horror stories centered on teenage characters set in small towns that are hiding secret military experiments. As such, It: Welcome To Derry fits the bill to an extent. It: Welcome To Derry Season 2 Must Move Beyond Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise However, unlike Stranger Things, It: Welcome To Derry needs to change its main cast with every new season. Like the earlier anthology series American Horror Story, every season of It: Welcome To Derry takes place in the same fictional universe, and in the case of the HBO Max prequel, the same titular small town. However, the show’s timeline runs backward, not forwards. Viewers already went into It: Welcome To Derry season 1 knowing that 2017’s It saw the Losers Club encounter Pennywise in the 1980s, while 2019’s sequel It: Chapter Two saw them destroy the entity once and for all in 2019. Thus, Pennywise coud never have been permanently defeated in It: Welcome To Derry season 1. Now, season 2 needs to go back another 27 years to focus on Pennywise’s last feeding frenzy, during 1935’s Great Depression. In some respects, this is a good thing. Pennywise’s disguises in It: Welcome To Derry season 1 were genuinely horrifying, so it is not inconceivable that the show could successfully replace Skarsgard’s version of the entity with new creepy creations. The show has an entire season to pull this off, and its new 1935 setting will give It: Welcome To Derry a radically different tone and aesthetic that will make it easier to introduce new versions of the villain. However, It: Welcome To Derry season 2 also has to simultaneously introduce an entire new cast of characters, many of whom are almost guaranteed to end up dead unless they already appeared in season 1. Thus, it could be tough for It: Welcome To Derry season 2 to both replace its instantly recognizable villain and introduce a whole new set of protagonists in advance of season 3’s big change. Release Date October 26, 2025 Network HBO Directors Andy Muschietti Writers Jason Fuchs, Stephen King, Austin Guzman Franchise(s) IT Creator(s) Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, Jason Fuchs