This fall, HBO and Prime unleashed the next wave of Stephen King-inspired entertainment, and it comes with everything fans would expect from this Godfather of Horror.
The long-awaited “Welcome to Derry: The Awakening” series is a prequel expanding King’s IT universe, and King fans are already stirred up. The new season promises a deeper dive into the town’s cursed past and the early manifestations of central character Pennywise before the events of the original series.
According to early production notes, the sequel will focus on Derry in the 1940s, exploring the mysterious disappearances, strange rituals beneath the town, and the first recorded encounters with the entity that would later become Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Show runners teased that this season will be “darker, more psychological, and more connected to the wider King universe” than the last.
Filming began earlier this year in Nova Scotia, with a rumored cast of new faces and a few returning characters. The show expands on the lore the viewers who haven’t previously read the books missed from the movie which came out in 2017. Many viewers mentioned that the first episode was a crazy way to start off the series.
“The very beginning threw me off guard, I had no idea what the creature was,” said OH junior Luis Del Toro, referring to the very beginning of the episode, where the antagonist Pennywise appears in an unusual form.
Viewers who watched the whole thing the night it came out had a lot to say. Del Toro, who’s a big Stephen King fan, said the new season “felt like all the messed-up parts the book teased but never showed.”
He added that one scene in the sewer tunnels “made everybody in my group chat stop typing for like ten minutes.” Del Toro said the ending got him the most, saying it made Derry feel “alive and cursed in a way that actually hit different.”
Not everyone who watched is even into horror, indicating that the pull of the King universe is vast. OH senior Izabella Abbas said she only tuned in because her friends wouldn’t stop talking about it, but she ended up way more scared than she expected.
“The shadow stuff? The old radio sounds? Nope,” she said. “I literally had to pause it and turn on the lights.” She also said she was surprised that the season wasn’t all about Pennywise. “They showed stuff way worse than the clown. Like things that existed before him. That part is gonna stay with me forever!”
OH junior Aidan McMenamin watched the whole season in one night with snacks and blankets, thinking he’d just breeze right through it. Instead, he said the show “got him good.”
According to McMenamin, the season keeps building up these quiet, creepy moments and then hits viewers with something they don’t expect. “There’s one scene where something crawls out of a wall and I was genuinely afraid,” he admitted. He said people should watch it with friends “so you’re not watching alone.”
Fans online are already creating theories about what the next season could focus on. Some think the show might finally reveal the origins of the strange symbols scattered around Derry, while others believe the story line is just getting started. Stephen King fanatics have been going crazy overnight, with people slowing down scenes, analyzing small details, and trying to connect everything to the original IT story.
One popular theory claims that the final shot of the season hints at a new form of Pennywise that hasn’t been seen in any version before.
Even with all the fear and chaos the new season brought, most viewers say they’d watch it again… just maybe not alone. Between the jump scares, the creepy history, and the deeper look into what makes Derry so cursed, the show has already become a must-watch for anyone who loves horror.
And while HBO hasn’t officially confirmed the next season yet, the hype is so big that fans are almost certain it’s coming.
Until then, everyone will just be sitting with the lights on, pretending they’re not still thinking about those scary scenes.
Hi! My name is Eric Arellano, I am a junior at Oswego High School. This is my first year as a 42Fifty staff reporter! I am involved in football and also participate in the Best Buddies program. I enjoy covering sports and working in our publication's Spanish Section. You can contact me by emailing 42Fifty@sd308.org and putting my name in the subject line. We welcome comments on our articles and feedback on our publication!
The article looks fantastic and I like how it captures how IT works and metions the Artifacts that could be in the next season.