Published September 1, 2026
The scariest part of the Bradley Gang massacre is easy to miss. Pennywise appears in the crowd with a gun, but the people of Derry are already shooting. They choose to turn a town street into an execution ground. That is the idea season two should hold onto.
HBO has renewed IT: Welcome to Derry and the story is moving back to 1935. The Great Depression and the Bradley Gang massacre will sit at the center of the new season. That setting gives the show a chance to make Derry feel dangerous before Pennywise even enters the scene.
Pennywise Works Better In The Background
The massacre comes from one of the historical interludes in Stephen King’s It. The gang arrives in Derry to buy ammunition. Armed residents gather in the street and ambush them when they return. Pennywise appears among the shooters, dressed like a clown and carrying a gun.
King leaves his role unclear. Maybe he pushed the crowd toward violence. Maybe he saw what they were about to do and joined them. A definite answer would make the scene less disturbing. The uncertainty forces Derry to share the blame.
That approach also fits Pennywise’s origin and powers. He feeds on fear, and Derry gives him plenty to work with. Poverty has worn people down. Anger spreads quickly. The creature can take advantage of the town without controlling every person in it.
Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise often gets his best moments by doing very little. A stare or a small change in his smile can carry a whole scene. Placing him behind a line of armed residents could work the same way. The crowd creates the chaos while the clown watches it happen.
The 1935 Setting Changes The Fear
Andy Muschietti has described this version of Derry as poor and exhausted. Some of the children are expected to be orphans or runaways. Their lives already involve hunger and neglect, so the show cannot fall back on the comfortable suburban world usually associated with It.
Season one showed how easily Derry’s prejudice could become part of Pennywise’s influence. The finale connected that damage to later generations. Season two can take the idea further by showing children who have learned to expect danger from adults long before they meet a supernatural monster.
The period needs more than gloomy streets and empty plates. The writing has to show how desperation changes ordinary decisions. A frightened town can become cruel very quickly when somebody offers it a target. The Bradley Gang story gives the season a direct way to explore that.
Derry Has To Own The Violence
The first episode of season one treated fear like a weapon. In 1935, that weapon can belong to the whole town. Adults may ignore missing children because survival takes all their attention. Neighbors may accept violence because the victims have already been labeled dangerous.
Pennywise will still get the jump scares and grotesque transformations. The Bradley Gang massacre offers a more uncomfortable kind of horror. When the shooting ends, Derry should have blood on its own hands.
Daniel fell in love with movies at the ripe old age of four, thanks to a towering chest of drawers filled with VHS tapes. Which, let’s face it, was the original Netflix binge-watch. Ever since then, this lifelong movie buff has been on a relentless quest for cinematic greatness, particularly obsessed with sci-fi, drama, and action flicks. With heroes like Nolan, Villeneuve, and Fincher guiding the way, and a special soft spot for franchises where aliens, androids, and unstoppable cyborgs duke it out (think Terminator, Predator, Alien, and Blade Runner), Daniel continues to live life one epic movie marathon at a time.