What the Muschiettis Aren’t Telling You About IT: Welcome to Derry

Turns out Pennywise is not done with us. Andy Muschietti and his sister/producer Barbara are using Welcome to Derry to kick open a much bigger saga than just one spooky detour. If you have been watching the early episodes and trailers, you can already feel it leaning less slasher and more cosmic-horror, even a little sci-fi around the edges. The Argentine siblings clearly have a plan.

The Muschietti plan: three seasons, told backward

Andy and Barbara are not treating this as a one-and-done prequel. They have mapped out a multi-season arc that walks us back through Derry’s history instead of forward. The idea hangs on Pennywise’s 27-year cycle, but in reverse: start in 1962, then jump back to 1935, then 1908. Andy told Variety he found a breadcrumb trail in Stephen King’s book interludes that opened the door to a hidden story they could explore onscreen. And yes, Andy is the same guy who directed Mama and the two recent IT films, so he has lived in this sewer for a while.

"Our big story arc involves three seasons, mainly based on the three critical cycles of Pennywise, which are 1962, 1935, and 1908."

Beyond that rough timeline, the siblings are keeping specifics quiet. Which, fair. But the structure itself is a fun swing: each season hops back another 27 years, sketching in how the town got so rotten and how the thing in the drains kept feeding on it.

What that means in the show

Season 1 is set in 1962, and the lore signals are not subtle. King’s novel ties Pennywise to something that arrived in Derry long before the modern town existed, and the show is clearly not shying away from the weirder, mythic bits. There is talk of a celestial impact site in the area. And if you caught the early release trailer for episode 2, you probably spotted a turtle-shaped nod that will make King readers smile and everyone else go, wait, what? That is deep-lore territory.

Derry’s ugliest monster is the town

King has always framed Pennywise as the mask on top of a lot of human cruelty, and the show is leaning into that. We have already seen bigotry and violence mapped onto the setting in the films (IT: Chapter Two opens with a hate crime against a gay couple), and Welcome to Derry continues the throughline: in episode 1, Major Leroy Hanlon, played by Jovan Adepo, arrives in town and immediately runs into racist hostility. The show is not just asking what the monster does to people, it is asking what people do to each other that keeps feeding the monster.

Andy has said Stephen King is very tuned in to social injustice, and that the real horror in Derry often comes from the townsfolk themselves:

"Most of the horrible things that happen in Derry are man made."

Fans are already spinning theories about how that idea could play into Pennywise’s origin in the show. For what it is worth, the book’s canon points to something ancient and extraterrestrial as the real root, but the series seem interested in how human hatred and fear supercharge the entity. That tension is fertile ground for this backward march through the 20th century.

Episodes and dates

HBO Max is rolling out the eight-episode season weekly, with a little Halloween treat for episode 2:

• Episode 1: Pilot episode — October 26
• Episode 2: The Thing in the Dark — November 2 (early release on October 31)
• Episode 3: Now You See It — November 9
• Episode 4: Title to be announced — November 16
• Episode 5: Title TBA — November 23
• Episode 6: Title TBA — November 30
• Episode 7: Title TBA — December 7
• Episode 8: Title TBA — December 14

Welcome to Derry episode 1 is streaming now on HBO Max, with episode 2 arriving early on Halloween night. If the turtle cameo and the 27-year breadcrumb trail are any indication, we are headed into the deep end of Derry’s past before this thing is over.