Horror fans are having the best Halloween treat thanks to IT: Welcome to Derry. HBO quietly dropped a surprise special episode of the much-loved series on October 31, 2026. Titled A Story of Derry, the 30-minute instalment explores the dark history of the place where Stephen King’s fictional horror unfolds.
Spoilers ahead.
What happens in IT: Welcome to Derry’s Halloween special?
Unlike the main series, which is set in 1962, the new IT: Welcome to Derry’s Halloween special episode takes us hundreds of years into the past, long before ‘Pennywise’ even wore his clown face. The special tells the story in full of what Season 1 had already briefly touched upon in Episode 4.
For those unaware, the Shokopiwah tribe once trapped an ancient evil inside the woods using pieces of the falling star it came from. Later, Kiawentiio’s ‘Necani’ defied her tribe and walked into the forbidden Western Wood. She believes that the forbidden forest could save her tribe when the council debated leaving their land as their food was running out. ‘Necani’ sneaked out at night with two of her friends and got attacked by the creature that took different terrifying forms.
Just when it seems that all hope is lost, a mysterious warrior comes to their rescue and scares the creature away with a special dagger. After taking ‘Necani’ and her friends to his camp, he explained to them that the creature feeds on fear and likes its victims in a terrified state before eating them. The warrior revealed that the creature was responsible for wiping out his own village.
He explained to the trio that a cosmic being named ‘Maturin’ had once defeated the creature long before Earth existed and had sealed it inside a prison. However, the prison later broke, and ‘Maturin’ showed the warrior where its pieces lay. The warrior had crafted his dagger from them.
However, the truth was far darker. One of ‘Necani’s’ friends finds out that the meat the warrior had offered them to eat was human. He worships the creature as a god and takes it upon himself to offer it human sacrifices. After the revelation, the trio flees with the warrior’s dagger, leaving him completely defenseless. Soon, the creature finds him and kills him.
Back at the village, the tribe notices the three friends missing. ‘Sesqui,’ the tribe’s leader and ‘Necani’s’ mother, leads a search party into the woods to locate them. The creature takes advantage of this and shows ‘Sesqui’ her late husband. Since it is a painful sight for ‘Sesqui,’ she ends up breaking down. It then turns into a baby and leaves ‘Sesqui’ badly wounded by stabbing her.
The creature only backs away when ‘Necani’ reaches the spot with the dagger made from its prison in hand. At that point, the damage is already done, and ‘Sesqui’ succumbs to her wounds in her daughter’s hands. While the council chooses to leave their home behind following their leader’s death, ‘Necani’ refuses to give up.
‘Necani’ decides to reach out to the cosmic being ‘Maturin’ (the Turtle). This is the first time that viewers get a glimpse of ‘Pennywise’s’ oldest enemy in the series. ‘Maturin’ is known for creation and order, while IT stands for chaos and destruction in the Stephen King universe.
‘Necani’ learns about a cave in the western forest from ‘Maturin,’ where the creature originally crashed into Earth. A number of broken pieces of its prison are still scattered in that place. ‘Necani’ needs to collect them, place them inside turtle shells, and bury them at key points across the forest.
These shells work as pillars and form an invisible barrier once they are buried. ‘Pennywise’ fails to cross this area and gets locked there. However, this is the place that would later become Derry. This tied strongly into IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1, where we learned that the pillars were the only thing keeping IT from leaving the town.
Will you give IT: Welcome to Derry’s Halloween special a watch on HBO Max? Let us know.
Photo Credit: HBO Max
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