Posted in: HBO, Max, Movies, TV | Tagged: it: welcome to derry

It: Welcome to Derry EP Teases Season 2: 1935/Bradley Gang & More

It: Welcome to Derry EP Andy Muschietti offered insights into the 1935-set Season 2, including how it digs deeper into Stephen King's novel.

With EPs Andy Muschietti & Barbara Muschietti and showrunners Jason Fuchs & Brad Caleb Kane's It: Welcome to Derry set to take part in this weekend's Deadline's Contenders TV event, we were keeping our fingers, toes, and various other body parts crossed that an official Season 2 announcement would be coming. Earlier this week, Kane posted an image of the Warner Bros. Studio lot – with a red balloon floating in the sky. The first vibe we got from it was that it reminded us of how The Vatican signals that a new Pope has been selected. Our read on it was that it was a clue that some good news was on the way – but that was pure speculation.

During today's conversation, Andy Muschietti shared some additional insights into how the creative team is digging deeper into Stephen King's original 1986 novel, It, to develop upon some of the subplots that the bestselling author included in the work. "It's 1935 – we're now working on it, and it's so much fun," Muschietti offered. "For the ones of you who read the books, probably the Bradley Gang sounds familiar. The Bradley Gang was a gang of bank robbers that – not accidentally, but they were on their way somewhere, and they stopped in Derry to buy some ammo and something horrible happens."

"The Bradley Gang is based on the Brady Gang, which is a real-life gang of robbers that were executed in the streets of Bangor, Maine. And now we're creating the event that the big paroxysm of violence in this case will be the massacre of a Bradley gang," he added. "There's like three big events in Welcome to Derry Season 1 … and Season 3 would be the explosion of the Kitchener Iron Works, which is a big explosion during an Easter egg hunt where a hundred kids lost their lives. It's always there f**king around, so that much I can tell you."

For Muschietti, the second season's Depression-era period offers a different look at life in America, worlds apart from the suburban style we've seen previously. "It's fascinating because the thing that is so much fun in this stage of development is that we're facing an era, which is the Depression Era, that changes dramatically the setup of things. There's no suburban comfort – the trope of the kids that live in suburbia, and they ride their bikes, and suddenly one of them disappears, is nothing like this. This is in 1935. It's a very dire situation. People are very poor. They're struggling to survive, so the setup will be very different."

It: Welcome to Derry EP Offers More Insights Into Seasons 2 & 3 Plans

The exchange between Pennywise and Marge (Matilda Lawler) when Pennywise revealed a whole lot to Marge about what the future could hold – and a whole lot about how much more of a threat IT could be than we realized. A direct connection to the films was made by confirming fan speculation that Marge is the mother of Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard and Bill Hader in the films). In addition, it added a new threat to Pennywise's arsenal: his ability to experience the past, present, and future at the same time in the moment. Could Pennywise be looking to change his fate in 2016?

Speaking with Variety, Andy Muschietti reaffirmed the plan to revisit the past over the next two seasons, assuming they become a reality, which would align with Pennywise's 27-year cycles. "Yeah, that was always the plan from the beginning. Our first pitch to Stephen King was to tell the story backwards. I can't say too much about the logic behind it, because I don't want to spoil it, but it has to do with how Pennywise experiences time in a non-linear way. We sort of hinted at it at the end of the season," Andy Muschietti shared. "We can only say the stuff that's already known, like it's in 1935, 27 years before Season 1, and it involves the massacre of the Bradley Gang from the books. It takes place during the Depression in Derry, and there are some new characters and some characters from this season as well, but younger versions of them."

Andy Muschietti also discussed the reasoning behind the Marge/Richie Tozier connection and what Pennywise's perspective on time could mean for The Official It: Welcome to Derry Podcast Season 1, with hosts Princess Weekes and Marc Bernardin.

Andy Muschietti on Making That Marge/Richie Tozier Connection: "First, let's talk about Marge being Richie's mom. This was one of the first things I thought of. I wanted to connect our group of Losers from the movies to this new group of kids. It's almost inevitable to do a connection there, but I did want one of the characters to be Richie's mom. And not reveal it until the very last episode. So that's that was a reason, whimsical really, because I can't find more explanations than creating a character in this new group that has the DNA of Rich or at least part of it, because we see her many times, she has verbal diarrhea, neurosis, and anxiety that Richie has that he copes with by being the funny kid. So part of that behavior, part of that personality, it's something that comes from his mom, and from a very early age we see it. And this is very much connected to the idea of telling the story backwards."

Andy Muschietti on How The Way IT Experiences Time "Brings Another Layer of Threat": "You know, this very genesis of this project, when we pitched it to Stephen King, was gonna be a story told backwards, and connects to my curiosity about a very specific mention in the book about IT not being a creature that experiences time in a linear way, like we humans do. I think it's only mentioned once in the book, and it's presented as more like a question, like a speculation. But you know, as many other things in IT, questions and speculations are truths. You know, that's the way that Stephen King has to express these things. He wants to keep things very mysterious and cryptic. So everything that he wants to say, he does it in question marks. So that is something that piqued my curiosity a lot. And given that we were creating a prequel where basically everybody knows that IT will die in 2016. What can we bring to this prequel that actually has people on the edge of their seats, even when they know that the monster is gonna die at the end? And this is the answer. There's another story, there's a hidden story where our monster is revealed to be traveling in a different direction of time. It brings another layer of threat."

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