Season 2 of Stephen King’s Hit Horror TV Series Needs to Finally Bring in a Major Element From the Books

by

Fans are excited about the upcoming second season of It: Welcome to Derry. Because the show is set in the past, it can now fully explore a storytelling element that was absent from both the original movies and the first season. The HBO series It: Welcome to Derry expands on the world created in Stephen King’s 1986 novel It, introducing new characters and villains. The first season, set in 1962, showed Pennywise’s attacks leading up to the events involving the Losers Club in the late 1980s.

Fans continue to argue about which Stephen King villain is the most iconic—Pennywise or Randall Flagg—but the first season of It: Welcome to Derry suggests Bill Skarsgard’s portrayal of Pennywise is the most memorable when brought to life on screen. Skarsgard appeared as the killer clown frequently, and the creature also took on a variety of terrifying new forms. In fact, Pennywise didn’t appear in its classic clown form until well into the first half of the season, thanks to its ability to shapeshift.

It: Welcome to Derry Season 2 Can Turn Pennywise Into Classic Movie Monsters

This clever decision kept the killer clown frightening even after the first season ended, and it also opened the door for It: Welcome to Derry to show us even more terrifying forms of Pennywise. The first episode featured a scary, vampire-like baby monster, and the second showed Ronnie being pulled toward a horrifying, zombie-like version of her mother. Despite all this creativity, the first season left out one of Pennywise’s classic looks, and the second season should definitely bring it back.

In It: Welcome to Derry season 2, the story is set in 1935 because Pennywise reappears roughly every 27 years to prey on the people of Derry. This creates a great opportunity for Pennywise to appear as some of the classic movie monsters popular at the time – an idea that previous adaptations of Stephen King’s story haven’t fully utilized. While the 1990s miniseries briefly showed Pennywise as a werewolf, there’s a wealth of potential to draw from the memorable monsters of that era.

It: Welcome To Derry’s 1935 Setting Could Not Be Better

In the original novel, Pennywise shapeshifts into classic monsters to frighten his victims. While chasing Bill, he appears as the mummy from the 1932 film The Mummy, and also takes the forms of villains from 1950s monster movies like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. Though he also transforms into Dracula and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, these appearances are rarely shown in the television miniseries and film adaptations.

As a big fan of classic horror, I’ve always loved the Universal monster movies from the early sound era. Between 1925 and 1935, they released iconic films like The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, and Werewolf of London. Knowing that season 2 of It: Welcome to Derry is set in that same period is really exciting to me because it means the Losers’ Club would have grown up with these monsters being recent pop culture sensations. It’s a fantastic bit of timing for the show, and it’ll be so cool to see how those movies influence the new threats Pennywise takes on. It adds a whole layer of depth knowing these weren’t just ancient legends, but things people were actually talking about!

https://comicbook.com/movies/list/5-stephen-king-books-you-need-to-read-more-than-once-to-fully-appreciate/embed/#

Read More

2026-03-31 18:42