HBO Max dropped a surprise It: Welcome to Derry episode for Halloween, set centuries before Pennywise
"A Story of Derry" landed on HBO Max at midnight on 31 October with no warning. Directed by Tazbah Chavez, the half-hour special follows three young people into the Western Wood. Zahn McClarnon plays the warrior who forges the dagger It fears. Season 2 is set in 1935.
HBO Max quietly released a new episode of It: Welcome to Derry overnight, just in time for Halloween. It is called “A Story of Derry”, it runs about 30 minutes, and it leaves the 1960s of the first season far behind. This one is set hundreds of years before Pennywise.
The setup is simple. Three young people walk into the Western Wood, the forest around what will one day be Derry, and run into an ancient, terrifying spirit. A title card at the start frames it as the story “we do not teach”.
The man who made the dagger
Season one viewers will remember the dagger It is afraid of, and the explanation in episode four for why the creature cannot leave Derry. The special goes back to where that dagger came from. Zahn McClarnon, of Reservation Dogs and Dark Winds, plays the Indigenous warrior who forges it.
The cast also includes Kimberly Guerrero, Kiawentiio, Isabel Deroy-Olson, Michael Podemski-Bedard, Morningstar Angeline and Thosh Collins. Tazbah Chavez, another Reservation Dogs alumna, directs from a script by Cherie DiMaline and Jasmyne Flournoy. Bill Skarsgård sits this one out.
Stephen King readers get a treat as well: the episode mentions, and briefly shows, Maturin, the cosmic force of order that has been fighting It for millennia in the books.
What about season two?
The show has already been renewed. Season two moves to 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression, and centres on the massacre of the Bradley Gang, bank robbers who stop in Derry to buy ammunition. Brad Caleb Kane takes over as sole showrunner, with Andy and Barbara Muschietti still executive producing.
Sarah Aubrey, who runs original programming at HBO Max, has promised a season that deepens “the terror, the mystery” and the Pennywise lore. There is no premiere date yet.
If the weekend calls for more screen time, Netflix released the second season of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners a week ago. The special sits alongside the first season on the show’s HBO Max page.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: HBO Max