Welcome To Derry Season 2’s Update Is Great News For Stephen King’s HBO Show

While IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 was one of the best Stephen King adaptations in years, it is surprisingly exciting to hear that the HBO Max series won’t return to screens for a while yet. Even though Stephen King is one of the most iconic horror authors of the last century, the announcement of HBO Max’s It prequel series Welcome to Derry still left some fans of the author’s work feeling uneasy.

After all, King’s 1986 novel IT is a massive, 1000+ page tome, and its two movie adaptations from the late 2010s already needed to make some major elisions just to fit its plot into a two-part, five-hour story. It seemed like the last thing IT needed was a spinoff story focusing on its setting, borrowing from Twin Peaks’ blend of psychological horror and small-town character drama.

If the original book and its movie adaptations were both criticized for dragging out a good story, then a full-length small-screen spinoff sounded like a terrible plan. However, IT: Welcome To Derry proved doubters wrong almost as soon as the series premiered. With one of the boldest pilot episodes in recent TV history, the show called to mind Netflix’s acclaimed Fear Street franchise or a darker, more unapologetically brutal version of Stranger Things.

IT: Welcome To Derry Season 2’s Slow Progress Is Good For the Spinoff

As season 1’s story progressed, IT: Welcome to Derry went from strength to strength, fleshing out its characters while also providing a steady supply of genuinely unsettling, original scares. The show felt less like a carbon copy of the movies and more like an organic extension of King’s fictional universe, and even managed to illustrate Pennywise’s backstory more effectively than the original novel itself.

As such, viewers might be clamoring for the next installment of the prequel series, especially since the end of Stranger Things in January 2026. As such, it might seem counterintuitive to say that HBO CEO Casey Bloys’ recent comments to Variety, in which he said that work was only just beginning on season 2, are good news for fans. Bloys told the entertainment magazine, “They’re working on a take for Season 2, and they’re coming up with a take and scripts.”

Since season 1 aired in late 2025, viewers might have hoped that production would already be underway for season 2 by mid-2026. Instead, it is clear that the series won’t produce a new season annually and is more likely to take multiple-year breaks between seasons like fellow streaming sensations Stranger Things and Wednesday. Fortunately, this is secretly a good thing for the show’s longevity.

IT: Welcome To Derry Season 2’s Time Jump Will Be Tough

Pennywise covered in blood laughing in IT Welcome to Derry

Shot back to back with its predecessor, It: Chapter 2 came out only 2 years after 2017’s blockbuster hit It and was infamously terrible. The second movie in the series failed to recapture the first film’s easy balance between character comedy and intense horror, often feeling both bizarrely light-hearted and jarringly dark thanks to its sudden tonal transitions.

Thus, much like Bloys denying the existence of The Pitt’s potential night shift spinoff for the time being, the CEO’s announcement that IT: Welcome to Derry is still only just being written is great news. Season 1’s ending set up a time jump 27 years into the past, which will mean an all-new cast. However, season 2’s story will also face another tricky storytelling issue thanks to the plots of the movies and the first season.

Viewers already know that Pennywise won’t be meaningfully defeated in season 2, since the events of season 1 and the movies happened after season 2’s ending. Thus, the protagonists of season 2 are largely doomed before the show’s sophomore outing even begins, which will make it harder for viewers to get attached to them. As such, IT: Welcome to Derry’s creators are right to take some time and develop a compelling workaround for this issue.