Stephen King’s Hit Horror Series: Season 2 Must Finally Deliver the One Book Element Fans Have Been Dying to See

With It: Welcome to Derry season 2 on the way, the show finally has a cheat code it didn’t have before: the year 1935. That specific time stamp doesn’t just look good on a title card — it practically begs Pennywise to lean into the era’s classic movie monsters, something the films and even season 1 mostly danced around.

Season 2’s secret weapon: the 1935 setting

Pennywise rolls through Derry every 27 years to feed. Season 1 was 1962, so roll the clock back and you land in 1935 for season 2. That’s smack in the middle of Hollywood ’s early monster boom — the stretch when Dracula, Frankenstein, and friends were not just spooky legends but fresh pop culture. Which means the townspeople in the show would instantly recognize those shapes. That recognition is half the terror.

Quick rewind: what season 1 did right (and skipped)

Season 1 set the table well. It lived in 1962, pitched as Pennywise’s last big rampage before the Losers Club showdown in the late '80s. The series expanded Stephen King’s world with new protagonists and villains that didn’t feel like leftovers, and it kept Bill Skarsgard front and center. There’s always an argument over whether Pennywise or Randall Flagg is King’s most iconic baddie, but on screen, season 1 made it pretty clear: Skarsgard’s clown is still the face you don’t want peeking out of a storm drain.

Smartly, the show didn’t blow all the clown imagery up front. Thanks to the shape-shifting angle, Pennywise didn’t even show up in his most famous form until around the halfway point. Before that we got a parade of nightmares — a ravenous vampiric baby in the pilot, and later, Ronnie being yanked by an umbilical cord toward a zombified version of her dead mother. Wild. Effective. And yet, for all that invention, season 1 left one very obvious card unplayed: the classic, black-and-white-era monster looks.

The menu of monsters on the table

King’s novel has always treated Pennywise like a greatest-hits machine for cultural fears, and the 1935 timestamp lets the show actually use the ones the screen versions keep sidelining. The '90s miniseries barely dipped a toe with a quick werewolf gag. Season 2 has way more to choose from — both straight from the book and from the era’s movie lineup:

• Universal’s early icons (1925–1935): The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy ( 1932), The Invisible Man (1933), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Werewolf of London (1935)
• Forms specifically name-checked in King’s novel: the 1932 Mummy; the teen-terrors from I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein; Dracula; and the Creature from the Black Lagoon

Why this could actually be scary, not campy

Context matters. In 1935, those creatures weren’t nostalgia; they were recent box-office events. If Pennywise steals those skins, the people of Derry won’t see quaint movie monsters — they’ll see their worst, most current nightmares walking off the poster and into their streets. That immediacy is the trick season 2 can pull that the modern-set movies never could.

The bottom line

It: Welcome to Derry season 1 proved Skarsgard’s Pennywise still owns the screen and showed off how far the entity’s shape-shifting can go. Season 2 is perfectly positioned to push that further by letting Pennywise wear the legends that defined the 1930s. The timing isn’t just convenient — it’s the point. If the show leans into those classic forms, Derry’s next feeding cycle could feel both newly nightmarish and eerily familiar, which is exactly where this series thrives.