IT: Welcome to Derry’s Bold 3-Season Prequel Plan: After Racism, Season 2 Could Explore Immigrant Stories

So, Pennywise is not just back. He is dragging us through three different American eras, and the showrunners are doing it on purpose. The IT: Welcome to Derry team isn’t just telling a scary story; they are anchoring each season to a point on the clown’s 27-year clock. It’s a bold, very 'we have a plan' kind of move.

The plan: three cycles, three eras

Co-creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti told Variety they are structuring the series around three key years in Derry’s history. In their words:

"1962, 1935 and 1908... based on the three critical cycles of Pennywise."

They have also been clear about their intent for the tone going forward:

"Our goal is to raise the bar higher in terms of shock value."

Season 1: 1962, and America keeps showing its teeth

Season 1, Episode 1 is already out, and it wastes no time. Major Leroy Hanlon arrives at an army base and runs into an openly racist white soldier. It’s blunt by design, a reminder that the horror in this town isn’t just supernatural. It’s the 1960s, the tension is right there in the room, and Derry is the kind of place where that ugliness festers.

Season 2 setup: 1935, fear of the 'other' meets the Great Depression

If you’re wondering why 1935 matters, it’s not just because Pennywise wakes up every 27 years. The Depression-era backdrop is tailor-made for paranoia and scapegoating. In the mid-1930s, anti-immigrant sentiment surged: mass deportations targeted Mexican immigrants (including families with deep roots in U.S. communities), and those who stayed often ended up in harsh migrant camps. The 1924 Immigration Act was enforced in ways that supercharged xenophobia, and Italian and Irish Catholic immigrants were hit with systemic discrimination, violence, and endless criminal labeling. The Ku Klux Klan helped fuel it. Protests pushed back in places like Los Angeles, but the broader mood was ugly: people blamed job scarcity on 'cheap immigrant labor,' and some states set up literal 'border blockades' to keep migrants out.

Welcome to Derry is clearly aiming to braid that history into the show’s mythology. The Muschiettis say the series draws from the five Interlude chapters in Stephen King’s novel, and that is where one very nasty event lives that could shape Season 2.

The Bradley Gang Massacre: the powder keg

King’s book places the Bradley Gang Massacre in 1929, but the show has room to slide it to 1935 and sync it with the season’s themes. In the lore, the shootout is so soaked in bloodlust it jolts Pennywise out of hibernation. It’s not just bandits vs. bystanders; it’s mob hostility that mirrors the era’s anti-immigrant rage. Multiple eyewitnesses in the novel recall a clown drifting through the chaos, even mimicking weapons — which is exactly the kind of folklore the show loves to literalize.

• Event: Bradley Gang Massacre
• Book timeline: October 9, 1929 (show could re-date to 1935)
• Where in Derry: Downtown near Machen’s Sporting Goods and Canal Street
• Leaders: Al Bradley and George Bradley
• Other players: Cal and Joel Conklin (brothers), Arthur 'Creeping Jesus' Malloy (Irish), Patrick Codi, Marie Hower (the moll), and Kitty Donahue (a gunwoman)
• Pennywise factor: witnesses describe a clown among the shooters, sometimes mirroring each gun
• Why it matters: it’s a cycle-starting atrocity that wakes the thing under Derry
• Real-world echoes: draws on ambush lore like the Bonnie and Clyde takedown and the Al Brady gang massacre

Season 3: 1908, back to where the rot set in

The Muschiettis say the show will keep rolling backward — 1962 to 1935 to 1908 — charting how Derry’s nightmares keep repeating as the town keeps inventing new excuses for cruelty. It’s a pretty granular creative choice for a horror prequel and suggests they are building set-pieces around the exact moments when Pennywise stirs and the town obliges.

Where this is heading

All signs point to Season 2 leaning hard into xenophobia and immigrant-targeted violence — not as background noise, but as the oxygen Pennywise feeds on. If the Bradley Gang Massacre is the pivot (and it fits), expect the show to pit Italian and Irish crews against each other, with the clown nudging every trigger pull.

I’m into the ambition here. If the adaptation really sticks to those Interlude beats, the social horror won’t be window dressing — it’s the engine.

IT: Welcome to Derry is now streaming in the U.S. on HBO Max.

How do you feel about the three-season, three-era plan? Drop your thoughts below.