‘It: Welcome to Derry - A Story of Derry’ Review - The First Encounter

HBO has dropped a surprise Halloween special episode for It: Welcome to Derry titled "A Story of Derry" that takes us back to IT's first encounter. Directed by Tazbah Chavez and written by Cherie Dimaline and Jasmyne Flournoy, it is set centuries before the 1962 main season and tells the true origin of how the ancient entity (called the Kollu/Galloo, the early form of IT/Pennywise) was trapped in the land that became Derry. It expands the legend briefly shown in Season 1 Episode 4 and does not feature Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise or the clown form.

A Story of Derry opens with a title card explaining that generations earlier, when the Kollu first preyed on the people, the truth was hidden inside a gentler children’s tale. This episode is the part that was left out—the real story. The Shokopiwah (Indigenous) people live near the forbidden Western Woods. Food is scarce. English settlers to the south are struggling and want to move into the woods. Clan mothers debate the danger: the tribe has long stayed out of the woods to keep the entity small (“We do not feed it”). Entering or allowing others in risks strengthening it.

Necani (Kiawentiio), a defiant young woman grieving her father (lost to settlers’ disease/pox), ignores the warnings. She goes into the Western Woods with friends Kino and Maneese to hunt. They quickly encounter the shape-shifting Kollu. It manifests as monstrous, possessed settlers (or other fear-based forms) and hunts them. Just as escape seems impossible, a mysterious warrior named Mitig (Zahn McClarnon) appears and drives the creature off with a special dagger that frightens or repels it. At Mitig’s camp, he explains the cosmic history: Maturin (the great cosmic turtle, representing creation/order) battled the monster long before Earth existed. Maturin won and banished it to Earth, locked inside a falling star/meteor. The prison broke on impact; the spirit was released and has roamed the woods for roughly a million years. Mitig found fragments of the broken prison in the crash cavern and forged the dagger from that material—the only thing that truly terrifies the Kollu because it carries the essence of its original bindings. He also reveals he has been feeding the Kollu (using a root to induce sacrificial states) to survive after it wiped out his hunting party (once taking the form of a giant black bull moose). The kids realize he is not fully opposed to it and steal the dagger to escape. Without the weapon, the Kollu turns on Mitig and kills him.

Meanwhile, the tribe searches. The Kollu attacks Necani’s mother, Sesqui/Seski (Morningstar Angeline), a tribal leader. It manipulates her with grief (appearing as her dead husband or in other forms, including via a possessed priest) before striking. Necani arrives with the dagger; the creature retreats in fear, but she is too late—Sesqui dies in her arms. Devastated, Necani recalls Mitig’s stories of Maturin. Using the root, she communes with the cosmic turtle. Maturin answers and directs her to the crash site in the western forest where the 13 fragments of the original prison still lie. She is told to collect them, place them in turtle shells, and bury them at key points around the woods.

Necani rallies her people (with help from Kino, Maneese, and others such as Apto). They gather the thirteen shards from the cavern, form the pillars, and establish the barrier. This creates an invisible boundary that gives the Kollu enough territory to live, sleep, and hunt (including on settlers who enter) but prevents it from escaping the area that will later become Derry. The tribe accepts the permanent responsibility of maintaining the pillars: they cannot keep all outsiders out, but they can keep the entity in. Once caged, it will leave their people relatively alone so long as the shards remain in place. This becomes the origin of the 13 sacred pillars that contain IT and the guardianship tradition of the land.

The episode filled most of the gaps that were present in the first season. The dagger’s power comes from the prison fragments of the fallen star; it is the weapon later used against Pennywise. Maturin appears (or is clearly invoked) on screen for the first time in the franchise adaptation. It also explains why IT cannot freely leave Derry’s boundaries and why disturbing one pillar, as the military does in Season 1, nearly frees it.

The special reframes the containment as a deliberate, sacrificial, Indigenous act of guardianship rather than simple folklore, tying directly into the 1962 events where the kids and adults restore the cage after General Shaw’s interference. In short, A Story of Derry is the full “story that was never taught”: the Shokopiwah people, guided by Maturin and using the entity’s own broken cosmic prison, built the lasting cage that turned the Western Woods into the cursed heart of Derry. As of now, this is the earliest on-screen human encounter with the entity—unless HBO eventually goes further back in time.

Final Score - [9/10]