IT: Welcome to Derry scared up its best audience yet with the Chapter One finale.
The conclusion to the first season drew 6.5M U.S. viewers across HBO and HBO Max within the first three days of availability, says Warner Bros. Discovery. That’s a 12% lift from the viewership for the penultimate episode, which was previously the series’ best.
Per WBD, the freshman season is now averaging nearly 20M viewers globally and 11.5M in the U.S. alone.
Now that its run has ended, HBO can officially declare that it remains among the Top 3 original series debuts since HBO Max launched, behind only The Last of Us and House of the Dragon.
This is a promising end to the first season, which gave some answers about the supernatural monster stalking Derry as well as the creature’s fascination with Pennywise the Clown. However, the final episode also set up plenty more questions to be answered in what executive producer and director Andy Muschietti hopes will be a three-season arc.
Muschietti previously told Deadline he intends for Season 2 to go backward in time to 1935, 27 years before the first season to bring audiences along for yet another of IT’s murderous cycle. The finale also gives a big hint as to why this story is being told backward.
So far, IT: Welcome to Derry has not been renewed for a second season.
The series is executive produced by Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti through their Double Dream production company alongside Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane, who also serve as co-showrunners.
