IT: WELCOME TO DERRY Unleashes New Pennywise Lore Setting Up Next Two Seasons
It: Welcome to Derry dropped a major reveal this week and, in the process, set up a whole slate of mysteries that stretch far beyond Season 1. Fans already knew the series would move backward in time each season, but the newest episode does something even cooler.
It cracks open the mythology of Pennywise in a way that gives Seasons 2 and 3 fresh territory to explore, even though the show has already flashed quick glimpses of those eras.
Since It: Welcome to Derry needed enough narrative space between the two feature films, the series planted its first season firmly in 1962. That avoids clashing with the 1989 and 2016 timelines from the movies.
The creative team has already confirmed that Season 2 jumps back to 1935 and Season 3 to 1908. Even with those eras teased in Season 1, it turns out the story is anything but boxed in.
The latest episode brings a decades long fan theory into the spotlight. We finally meet Bob Gray, the man whose identity IT consumes and weaponizes as Pennywise. Bob is a real performer, playing a clown character that children genuinely adore.
The show paints him as a surprisingly tragic figure. During one performance, a boy watches him from the distance with an expression that feels unsettling for reasons that become clearer later.
The episode then delivers one of the most chilling Pennywise origin moments we have ever seen. Bob steps away for a smoke and a drink when an “Urchin Boy” wanders out of the woods and approaches him, delivering the cryptic opener, “The children are drawn to you.”
It is a moment that instantly reframes how IT strategizes and adapts to the growing population of Derry. The scene also hints at the exact moment IT chooses Bob Gray as its new vessel, even though the fatal encounter itself remains unseen. We only know his bloody handkerchief surfaces later and Pennywise emerges for decades to come.
Showrunner Jason Fuchs says that what we see on screen is only the beginning of the mysteries that moment unlocks. Speaking with Screen Rant, he explained
“What did happen to Bob Gray once he went into the woods? We don’t really know. We know that Ingrid Kersh says she never saw her father again. Was his body found? We saw the bloody kerchief.
“There’s a lot of mystery there. And who was that kid that IT was in the form of? I get that IT took the form of that kid to lure Bob Gray into the woods, that tracks. But when we first see that kid, it’s before IT has made the realization that he even wants to do that.
“So, what’s the story behind that manifestation? There are many fresh mysteries, I think, suggested by some of the answers to mysteries we provided in the season. And I hope that those mysteries are as satisfying to the next generation of IT fans as the original mysteries in it were to me.”
That teases what Seasons 2 and 3 can tackle. Season 3’s jump to 1908 lands right in the middle of one of Derry’s darkest historic events, the Kitchener Ironworks explosion.
The series even nods to it in the opening credits with the flaming Easter bunny imagery. That disaster is a key part of the lore, and a season set during that feeding cycle could finally show how IT refined its Pennywise persona, how early hunts unfolded and how much time remained in that cycle when Bob Gray entered the picture.
Season 2 has just as much potential. Season 1 quietly drops the Bradley Gang into the mix with their unearthed car and corpses. Their infamous demise is also depicted in the credits and seems ready to be fully unpacked when the series reaches 1935.
Despite all these clear narrative threads, a renewal has not yet been officially announced. Still, It: Welcome to Derry continues to dominate HBO’s viewership charts, which means the odds of more seasons feel incredibly strong.
If the show keeps expanding the mythology at this pace, Pennywise’s past will have plenty left to reveal and probably a few more surprises hiding in the dark corners of Derry.