HBO Max gave “IT: Welcome to Derry” fans a bit of a treat — but it’s definitely a treat.
To celebrate the spookiest day of the year, the streamer kicked off Halloween with a surprise new episode “Welcome to Derry,” now available on the platform.
The 30-minute episode, titled “A Derry Story,” marks the show’s second annual spooky season surprise for viewers. Last year, episode 2 of the show’s first season was released on Halloween, two days before its usual broadcast date.
While we won’t go into spoiler detail here, “A Story of Derry” takes place hundreds of years before “Welcome to Derry,” expanding on the previous story the series gave us about the origins of the entity called It, and the Native Americans who have long battled the entity roaming their woods. In the episode, three Native American teenage girls encounter him on their own journey into the woods, and their experience with the entity ultimately leads to the formation of the 13 sacred pillars that surround Derry and keep him caged forever. (As you may recall, in Season 1 of “Welcome to Derry,” one of these sacred pillars was dislodged, giving Pennywise the opportunity to leave the confines of Derry – but the heroic Losers’ Club managed to restore the cage to its full strength.)
Welcome to Derry has been renewed for season 2
“IT: Welcome to Derry” (which made our list of the best TV shows of 2025) takes place in the same universe as Andy Muschietti’s “It” films, with Season 1 taking place 27 years before the events of the first film. In August – more than eight months after Season 1 ended – “Welcome to Derry” was finally renewed for a second season, which will adapt the 1935 “Derry Interlude” chapter from Stephen King’s novel. According to the official newspaper, season 2 is set during the Great Depression and “centers on the bloody massacre of the Bradley Gang, a group of bank robbers who stop in Derry to buy ammunition and end up facing unimaginable horror.”
“From the genesis of this project, we had the idea of making it three seasons, aligning with the three most important catastrophic events described in the interludes (of the book),” Muschietti told TVLine. “It’s about the Black Spot fire in 1962 (which was depicted in Season 1), but then the Bradley Gang massacre in 1935 and the Easter egg hunt explosion in 1908. That’s always been that model for us.”
If you’ve already watched “A Story of Derry”, let us know how you liked it in the comments. Happy Halloween!
Gn entert
