IT: Welcome to Derry transports audiences back to 1962, exploring Pennywise the Dancing Clown’s cycle of terror exactly 27 years before the events of the 2017 IT film. The core idea of the prequel series is to finally address the monstrous entity’s origins on screen while unveiling more of Derry’s cursed mythology. For that, Creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti are drawing directly from the interlude chapters of Stephen King’s original novel, which function as historical records of the town’s violent past. The first season of Welcome to Derry builds towards a devastating incident at the Black Spot, a nightclub for Black patrons that becomes the target of a horrific hate crime. This major event from the book, which was largely glanced over in the films, serves as the anchor for the show and sets a precedent for how future seasons will approach Derry’s darkest moments.
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Even before the series premiered, the Muschiettis confirmed their long-term vision for IT: Welcome to Derry. The show was conceived as a three-season arc, with each season focusing on a specific time period and a different catastrophic event that marked Pennywise’s awakening. This structure is designed to move backward in time, creating a reverse chronology that peels back the layers of the town’s history. The second episode of the series has already made this plan explicit by directly referencing past tragedies and presenting a deliberate road map that spoils the exact historical horrors that will undoubtedly become the focus of the next two seasons. Warning: Spoilers below for IT: Welcome to Derry, Episode 2.
IT: Welcome to Derry Nods at a Massacre and an Explosion
The second episode of IT: Welcome to Derry introduced a new opening credits sequence. Set to a cheerful and deceptively innocent tune, the sequence uses colorful animations to depict some of the most violent incidents in Derry’s history. Among the images, viewers can spot gangsters shooting each other in broad daylight and a factory exploding during an Easter celebration, complete with a man in a bunny suit caught in the flames. These scenes are direct visual references to two key tragedies from King’s novel.
The shootout depicts the Bradley Gang massacre, an event from the book where a group of bank robbers was gunned down by Derry’s citizens. In the show’s timeline, this event is placed in 1935 instead of 1929, like in the books, exactly 27 years before the 1962 setting of the current season, making it the perfect focal point for Season 2. The final scene of the second episode reinforces this, ending with the military discovering the gang’s car, filled with skeletal remains.
The credits sequence also visualizes the Kitchener Ironworks explosion, a catastrophe briefly referenced in the 2017 IT film. In the novel, this 1908 disaster occurred when the ironworks mysteriously exploded during a children’s Easter egg hunt, killing 102 people, 88 of whom were children. The timeline is critically important here, as the year 1908 is exactly 27 years before the Bradley Gang massacre in 1935, establishing it as the centerpiece for the planned third season. As a result, by laying out these specific events in chronological reverse, the opening credits have provided viewers with a shockingly clear blueprint for the entire series.
New episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry premiere on HBO every Sunday.
Which Derry historical event are you most excited to see explored in future seasons of IT: Welcome to Derry? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
