HBO releases surprise It prequel

HBO released a surprise episode of It: Welcome to Derry on the streaming platform on October 31. The special, titled A Story of Derry, is 30 minutes long. It is set hundreds of years before the main events of the show. This timeframe precedes the introduction of Pennywise.

The release coincides with the Halloween holiday. HBO renewed the series for a second season in August 2026. The show first premiered on HBO Max on October 26, 2025. It is based on Stephen King's novel It. The series serves as a prequel to the two-part film reboot from 2017 and 2019.

Co-creator Andy Muschietti discussed the upcoming second season in an interview with Variety before the official renewal announcement. He stated that the writers' room had already opened for the new season. Muschietti said, "There's gonna be a lot of that depression-era hustling in the air in our characters. Everybody's trying to get by and survive the circumstances. They are gonna do crazy things."

He added that the show would address the social and cultural issues of that era. "And of course, the social, cultural, horrible things that were happening in the era, too. We're not going to skip those. [They are the] very center and the heart of our story," Muschietti told Variety. He noted that the second season will have a different aesthetic than the first.

Muschietti described the setting for the new season as bleak. "In this case, on the surface, Derry is a graveyard almost. It's a carcass of something because people are depleted, poor, tired, jobless, homeless. The kids don't have a suburban, comforting life," he said. He explained that some characters are orphans or runaways. "But there's always the aspect of hope that is always there, burning, and it's what keeps our new group going," he added.

The first season is set in 1962 in the fictional town of Derry, Maine. It details residents' earlier experiences with the shape-shifting clown. The second season moves the timeline back to 1935 during the Great Depression. The story centers on the bloody massacre of the Bradley Gang. This group of bank robbers stops in Derry to buy ammo and faces horror. The Bradley Gang Massacre is one of the interludes in King's original novel.