‘Son of Pennywise’, and Other Hopes for IT: Welcome to Derry Season 2

IT: Welcome to Derry has set itself up well for at least two more seasons by taking its nature as a prequel and turning it on its head. The second season, the show not yet officially renewed but certainly in the works, would be set during IT’s previous cycle, moving backwards another 27 years to 1935. But while the human characters and world goes backwards, Pennywise moves forward, his story continuing in the past through cosmic timey-wimey shenanigans as he seeks to end the bloodlines of the people who will kill him in the future, Terminator style. The show has tackled the prequel complaints of ‘why should we care about this when we already know what’s going to happen?’ by making the show also kind of a sequel where the future is up for grabs.

It’s a fun idea but I hope the season doesn’t spend too long tied up in the time travel weeds. The show could take inspiration from Fargo, with seasons that are somewhat connected but ultimately stand alone. I want the second season to look and feel different from the first, and the third if they make one. It’s 1935 and I want the show to embrace that fact as much, if not more so, than the first season did its 1962 setting.

We had one scene set in 1935 in season one and it looked fantastic. Shot in black and white, with the occasional flash of red, and static cameras to give a very different feeling. It’d be a bold move but give me an entire season like this. Really make the most of it, double down on the style and embrace the film noir aesthetic. With the Bradley Gang Massacre being this cycle’s version of the fire at the Black Spot, I’d love the season to have a focus on gangsters and embrace some different cinematic influences.

The forms Pennywise, or rather IT, takes should also be specific to the 1935 setting. The first season had race and the early 60’s civil rights movement as a core theme running through it, and the second should embrace the poverty of 1930’s America and the fear of rising fascism. I’m not saying have one of the kids be Jewish and Pennywise wear a Hitler clown costume but also I’m not not saying that. And 1935 is the prime era of the classic Universal monster movie. In the book, IT takes the form of characters like Dracula and the Wolfman and so here would be the perfect opportunity to do that onscreen.

I do hope it’s just one of the kids who ends up being a parent of a character from season 1. I know a key idea is generational trauma but not every character has to be related, just one to act as Pennywise’s main target. Part of what made the show so engaging from the start was introducing a cast of kids we thought were the leads only to massacre all but one in the premiere. I want to keep that feeling of not knowing who will live and who will die. And I hope some of the kids get to play against type. I don’t want yet another Bowers being a villain. Why not make a member of the Bowers family one of the core cast of kids, one of the heroes for once, but is left traumatised at the end, leading to a damaged, traumatised bloodline.

One of the biggest changes the first season made to the lore was to more fully embrace adult characters. Usually the adults forget their childhood experiences and ignore the plight of the younger generation to an almost supernatural degree. Welcome to Derry instead made the adults very aware. My issue with this is if they did know what was happening why they didn’t act on it? The military were hunting for IT and yet ignored the events happening in Derry, like the death of all the children. I was expecting them to be keeping watch on the kids, hoping to be led to Pennywise. The same is true for the Children of Maturin, this group of Native Americans who know the truth about IT, are responsible for its imprisonment, and yet they sit back and let kids be killed.

The one active adult was Ingrid Kersh, luring victims to Pennywise in the hope of reuniting with her clown father. I enjoyed this twist and think there’s much more of her story to mine in a second season, but I’d also like to see the opposite of that, too. Show me why the Children of Maturin didn’t bother to help in the first season. Maybe they did try to help in 1935, attempt to protect the kids, and something went very wrong. Maybe there’s a split in the group, two opposing factions, one of which tries to help and the other is happy to sit back and watch IT do its thing, seeing it as necessary punishment on the white invaders of their land. There’s the potential for some interesting conflict there.

But my biggest hope is that the show takes a bold step and makes the villain of the second season not Pennywise but rather his ‘son’. Or rather, IT’s ‘son’, I should say. In the book IT spawns eggs which are stamped on by the kids. This always struck me as a potential setup for a sequel, a single egg surviving and hatching to begin a new cycle. Stephen King has yet to pen such a sequel but with Welcome to Derry being both prequel and sequel why not do it in the show? The eggs could be laid in 1908 (seen in a potential third season) and born in 1935. The twist of the season could be that for the opening episodes we presume the thing haunting and killing kids is the IT we’re familiar with only to reveal its instead an inexperienced offspring in its first cycle.

This would for a villain that can be truly defeated, killed in the finale. We know Pennywise can’t die in the second season, only in the final season and the second movie as a weird bookend of births/deaths. It would also allow Bill Skarsgard and Pennywise to sit most of the season out. The first season was successful in limiting Pennywise to the back half but with a second, now that we’re all used to seeing the character onscreen, there has to be more reason why he’s not in the show as much. And while I like Pennywise and the performance, the scares can become repetitive. The best horror sequences are the ones without the clown, like the very Evil Dead birthing scene in the second episode. All the monsters in this show eventually become very CG and just scream in characters’ faces. The show needs to mix up the scares and what better way than with an unexpected new villain who’s not as experienced as his parent. A kid who plays with his food.

Having essentially IT’s child as a villain would also perfectly fit the themes and ideas the show is already playing with. IT is now trying to kill the parents and grandparents of the kids who will kill him, and now they in turn will be trying to kill his offspring at the same time. It’ll also be fun to contrast IT’s actual spawn with Bob Gray’s daughter, Ingrid Kersh: the real child of the monster and the child of the monster’s favourite disguise. Plus a ‘Son of Pennywise’ story is perfect for the 1935 setting, with horror cinema of the era full of titles like Son of Frankenstein and Dracula’s Daughter.

But, above all else, if there’s a second season, enough teasing. Give us the primordial giant cosmic god interdimensional space turtle already!