Depression-Era Bank Robbers Hit “Derry” Season 2

HBO

Andy Muschietti has offered new details about the second season of “IT: Welcome to Derry” during a recent Deadline TV panel for the HBO series.

As expected, the new season will jump back in time to the 1930s, specifically 1935, and center on the Bradley Gang storyline which is an underexplored subplot within the Stephen King nobel:

“It’s 1935, we’re now working on it, and it’s so much fun. 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.”

He adds the season’s central event will be “the massacre of a Bradley gang” and King himself drew inspiration from a real Maine true-crime incident for the group – the Brady Gang, who were executed in the streets of Bangor.

The shift from the 1960s of the first season to a Depression-era setting means the show’s tone will be quite different as well, saying it “changes, dramatically, the setup of things” and strips away “suburban comfort tropes” as families struggle through dire circumstances across Derry.

As previously indicated, the big event of a potential third season would be the explosion of the Kitchener Iron Works, a massive detonation during an Easter egg hunt in which a “hundred kids lost their lives.”