HBO Finally Renews ‘It: Welcome to Derry’ for Season 2 – Here’s What’s Changing

It took nearly a year, but HBO has made it official: "It: Welcome to Derry," the Stephen King prequel series streaming on HBO Max, is coming back for a second season. The renewal landed in late August 2026, more than eight months after the Season 1 finale aired, and the wait itself became part of the story — fans and press had been watching for a decision since HBO's own boss confirmed back in January that the show was a near-certain yes, just not yet official.

The series premiered on HBO Max on October 26, 2025, expanding the world Andy Muschietti built in his two "It" films into a television prequel set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine. Season 1 took place mostly in 1962, following a new set of kids confronting Pennywise decades before the events of the movies. The response was immediate: the show ranked among the top three original series debuts on HBO Max, trailing only "The Last of Us" and "House of the Dragon," and averaged close to 20 million viewers globally by the time of its December 14 finale, which alone pulled in 6.5 million U.S. viewers across HBO and HBO Max in its first three days. Critically, Season 1 landed around an 80 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from both critics and audiences.

What makes this renewal notable isn't just that it happened, but how deliberately HBO sat on it. Numbers that strong usually get a quick pickup, yet the network waited to see the creative direction for Season 2 before signing off. That direction is now public: the new season jumps back to 1935, during the Great Depression, centering on the real interlude from King's novel involving the massacre of the Bradley Gang, a group of bank robbers who stop in Derry and encounter something far worse than they bargained for. Andy Muschietti has said the show was mapped out as a three-season arc from the start, with each season tied to one of the major catastrophic events described in King's "IT" novel — the 1962 Black Spot fire covered in Season 1, the 1935 Bradley Gang massacre coming in Season 2, and an Easter egg hunt explosion from 1908 reportedly still to come.

Behind the camera, the most concrete shift is in the showrunner's chair. Jason Fuchs, who co-ran Season 1 alongside Brad Caleb Kane, is stepping back, leaving Kane as sole showrunner for Season 2. Andy and Barbara Muschietti remain as executive producers, keeping the creative through-line from the films intact, and HBO's Sarah Aubrey specifically framed the new season as deepening the mythology fans have responded to. Because the story is jumping backward in time to 1935, most of Season 1's cast isn't expected to return in a significant way, though Muschietti has teased that relatives of familiar families may surface in some form.

No release date has been set yet, but the blueprint is already public, which is rare for a show this early in its next chapter. Between the ratings, the built-in three-season plan, and a showrunner change signaling a real creative reset, "Welcome to Derry" heads into its next round with more clarity about where it's going than most renewed shows get this far out.