‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Drops a Surprise Halloween Special, ‘A Story of Derry,’ Set Centuries Before Pennywise
HBO Max did not send out a press release, cut a long trailer campaign or tease a date. It just waited for the clock to hit midnight on Halloween and put a brand-new chapter of It: Welcome to Derry on the service. The 30-minute special, titled "A Story of Derry," is streaming now, and it goes further back than anything the franchise has shown on screen: hundreds of years before Pennywise ever put on the greasepaint.
That matters for more than a holiday treat. The special is directed by Reservation Dogs veteran Tazbah Chavez, adds Zahn McClarnon to the Derry mythology, and fills in the origin story that season one only sketched in a single vision sequence. It also lands while the show sits between a hit first season and a second season heading to the 1930s. Below: what the special is, who made it, how it fits the larger three-era plan, the numbers behind the franchise, and what this surprise drop says about where HBO is taking Stephen King's clown.
Watch the Teaser
HBO Max announced the drop with a short teaser on its official channel, captioned with a line that sums up the whole stunt: "IT's a surprise Halloween treat."
The Details: What "A Story of Derry" Is
- Release: Midnight, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, with no advance announcement.
- Where: HBO Max. It lives as a standalone title, and some viewers have reported it is easier to find through search or the series page's Related tab than in the episode list. An ASL version is also available.
- Runtime: About 30 minutes.
- Director: Tazbah Chavez.
- Writers: Cherie Dimaline and Jasmyne Flournoy.
- Cast: Zahn McClarnon, Kiawentiio, Morningstar Angeline, Kimberly Guerrero, Isabel Deroy-Olson, Michael Podemski-Bedard and Thosh Collins.
- Pennywise? No. Bill Skarsgård does not appear. This story predates the clown.
The official logline sets it centuries before the town existed, as three young Indigenous people head into the Western Wood and run into an ancient spirit. Season one fans will recognize the setup. In episode four, Chris Chalk's Dick Hallorann has a vision showing how the people who lived on this land first fought the entity they called the Kollu, and why it cannot leave the area. "A Story of Derry" expands that fragment into a full tale, built around the making of the blade the creature fears.
The episode opens with a title card framing everything as the part of a warning story that elders deliberately softened for children: the version they did not teach. It is a smart device. It turns the special into the "true" history hiding behind a legend, which is exactly how King's novel treats Derry's past.
McClarnon plays the warrior who forges that weapon, according to several outlets that have watched it. Kiawentiio and Morningstar Angeline return from the season one flashback material, and GeekTyrant reports Kimberly Guerrero is back as well. Multiple reviews also note that Maturin, the cosmic turtle King fans have waited decades to see properly, finally gets a moment on screen. We will leave the rest for you to discover.
Who's Behind It
Tazbah Chavez came up through FX's Reservation Dogs , one of the most acclaimed series of the 2020s, which mixed comedy, grief and the occasional genuinely eerie spirit visit. She has also directed on Fox's anthology Accused. Handing her a story about an Indigenous community's first war with an ancient evil is not a token hire. It is giving the material to someone who has already shown she can make the supernatural feel lived-in instead of exotic.
Cherie Dimaline , a Métis novelist, is best known for The Marrow Thieves and the horror-tinged Empire of Wild , a book built on the rogarou legend. If there is a writer suited to telling a monster story from inside the community that survived it, she is on the short list. Co-writer Jasmyne Flournoy rounds out the script team.
Zahn McClarnon is the casting that should make King fans sit up. He has already lived in this author's universe: he played Crow Daddy, second-in-command of the True Knot, in Mike Flanagan's 2019 Doctor Sleep. Beyond that, he anchors AMC's Dark Winds , delivered one of Westworld 's best episodes as Akecheta, played the terrifying Hanzee Dent in Fargo season two, and was a fan favorite on Reservation Dogs. Going from a villain who feeds on children to a hero forging the weapon against a child-eating monster is a neat bit of King karma.
Photo: Andy Muschietti via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).
Above all of them sit the show's architects. Andy and Barbara Muschietti , who made the two It films, developed Welcome to Derry with Jason Fuchs , who co-ran season one alongside Brad Caleb Kane . Andy Muschietti's genre résumé starts with 2013's Mama and runs straight through the highest-grossing Stephen King adaptation ever made.
The Backstory: How Derry Got Here
King published It in 1986, and one of the novel's quiet strengths is a set of "Derry Interludes," written by the town librarian Mike Hanlon, that dig up the town's bloody history in roughly 27-year cycles. Those interludes are the DNA of this series. Andy Muschietti has said the show tells its story backward on purpose, era by era, toward the creature's origin, with a three-season shape in mind.
- Oct. 26, 2025: Season one premieres on HBO, set in 1962.
- Dec. 14, 2025: The eighth and final episode, "Winter Fire," airs.
- March 2026: Barbara Muschietti confirms a second season is happening.
- August 2026: HBO officially renews the show. Season two jumps to 1935 and the Great Depression, centered on the Bradley Gang, bank robbers who stop in Derry for ammunition. Kane becomes sole showrunner.
- Oct. 31, 2026: "A Story of Derry" drops, jumping centuries past both seasons.
Kane has pitched the next season in vivid terms, describing it to Entertainment Weekly as "a Warner Bros. gangster picture through the lens of Pennywise and Stephen King." Readers of the book know the Bradley Gang shootout as one of its nastiest interludes, a moment where the town's ordinary citizens prove as monstrous as anything in the sewers.
By the Numbers
The reason HBO is investing in bonus material is simple: this franchise performs.
- It (2017): about $704.1 million worldwide on a $35 million production budget, per The Numbers.
- It Chapter Two (2019): about $473.1 million worldwide on a $70 million budget.
- Season one debut: 5.7 million viewers in its first three days, the third-biggest debut in HBO Max history behind House of the Dragon and The Last of Us.
- Finale: 6.5 million viewers, the series high, up from 5.8 million for the penultimate episode.
- Reviews: 80% on Rotten Tomatoes from 166 reviews and 61 on Metacritic.
Put those together and you get a property that grew week to week, a rare thing for streaming, where audiences usually leak away after the premiere. A show whose finale is its biggest night is a show with an audience waiting for more, and a 30-minute special is a cheap way to feed them during the long gap before season two.
Analysis: Why This Surprise Drop Is Smarter Than It Looks
It keeps the brand alive with no Pennywise at all. The obvious move for a Halloween stunt would be a Skarsgård cameo. HBO did the opposite. By building a special with no clown, the studio is testing whether Derry itself, its curse, its history and its people, can carry the brand. That is exactly the question a three-era anthology has to answer. Season two will be a period gangster story, and a final chapter reaching toward the creature's origin may not look much like a killer-clown show either. "A Story of Derry" is a low-risk rehearsal for that future.
It gives the origin story room to breathe. In season one, the Indigenous history behind the curse arrived mostly through one vision and a handful of scenes, which left it feeling more like backstory than story. Giving that history its own episode, written and directed by Indigenous creators, turns a thin spot into a selling point. Whether it fully works is up to viewers, but the intent is clear and overdue.
It follows a playbook that has worked before. The closest comparison is Marvel's Werewolf by Night , a roughly hour-long Halloween special that Disney+ released in October 2022. It was a standalone, stylistically bold side story that earned strong reviews and became a seasonal rewatch, precisely because it was not homework for a bigger saga. A year later Marvel brought it back as Werewolf by Night in Color , proof that a holiday special can become a tradition. HBO now has the same opportunity: a half-hour Derry story every October could become the show's version of a Treehouse of Horror.
The risk is the hunt. A surprise drop only works if people can find it, and early reports that the special is hidden off the main episode list are a real problem. Streaming services bury things constantly. If HBO does not surface it in the app this weekend, the stunt becomes a story about bad menus instead of good horror.
What to watch: whether HBO publishes viewing numbers for the special, whether McClarnon's warrior or the blade become plot threads in season two, and whether the network turns this into an annual October tradition.
Photo: Bill Skarsgård via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).
_(cropped).jpg){kind=link}
What We Still Don't Know
- A premiere date for season two. HBO has not announced one.
- Season two casting beyond the setting and the Bradley Gang premise.
- How much Bill Skarsgård will appear in the 1935 story, and in what form. Kane has teased a different flavor of Pennywise next time.
- Whether "A Story of Derry" counts as canon groundwork for the planned final era or a one-off side story.
Bottom Line
"A Story of Derry" is a confident move: a clown-free, half-hour folk horror tale from a team that understands the people at its center, dropped on the one night of the year when horror fans are guaranteed to be looking for something new. It gives Zahn McClarnon a second home in King country, finally puts Maturin on screen, and proves Derry is bigger than one monster. Now HBO just has to make sure people can find it.
Have you watched it yet? Should Welcome to Derry make a Halloween special an every-October tradition? Tell us in the comments.
Related on The Horror Feed
Header photo: Zahn McClarnon by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), cropped with text added.
Recent STories
