When the Kollu takes the form of Sesqui’s dead husband, it borrows a face she has reason to want to see. A monstrous shape can clear a stretch of forest in seconds. This one makes staying put a temptation. Morningstar Angeline’s Sesqui is one of the Shokopiwah leaders responsible for keeping people away from the creature, which makes the choice of disguise particularly cruel. She knows what lives in the Western Woods. Now that knowledge has to contend with the sight of a person she has already had to lose.
Tazbah Chavez lets a different kind of visual evidence mislead us when Mitig drives the creature off with a dagger. We can see that he saves three young hunters. It takes longer to learn what that act says about him. Zahn McClarnon makes good use of the interval.
The same man who looks reassuringly capable during the attack becomes difficult to read once the immediate danger has passed. By the time he starts telling the hunters what he knows about the Kollu, we have already seen proof that he knows how to handle it. A dagger is a persuasive credential in the woods. Its authority ought to expire at the campfire.
That rescue carries particular weight in A Story of Derry, a half-hour IT: Welcome to Derry special set centuries before the series’ 1962 story. The opening title card tells us that a gentler version of these events survived as a children’s tale. What the special restores is the pressure under which the warning had to work. Food is scarce.
English settlers are pressing toward the same woods that the clan mothers have kept off limits. Necani (Kiawentiio), Kino, and Maneese go there to hunt. Their decision has the recklessness the ensuing pursuit calls for, but there is a practical reason to risk disobedience. A rule against entering the woods is easier to keep when there is something to eat outside them.
The move from pursuit to campfire story could have let the tension drain out of the episode. Instead, Chavez gives the explanation to a man whose company becomes less comforting the longer the hunters keep it. Mitig’s account of a shattered prison makes sense of the dagger we have seen him use.
When Maneese discovers what his host has been doing to survive, the clan mothers’ rule gains a sharper meaning. They deny the Kollu prey to limit its power. Mitig’s arrangement depends on keeping it fed. McClarnon’s performance holds up after the discovery because the earlier rescue remains credible. He can pull three people out of danger and still make a life for himself at someone else’s expense.
Chavez has less room for the passage from Sesqui’s encounter to Necani’s vision of Maturin. There is a sharp difference in what the two images ask of their witnesses. The Kollu uses an ordinary human face to draw Sesqui toward something she wants to believe. Maturin appears as a turtle made up of the cosmos, a sight that would seem harder to credit if Mitig’s dagger had yet to do anything useful.
The vision gives Necani a way to apply what she has learned about the fragments of the original prison. As an answer to the question of what she can do next, it arrives with admirable economy. The cost is felt in the preceding scene. Necani has barely had time to absorb what happened to her mother before grief has to give way to a set of instructions.
Those instructions lead to thirteen pillars and a harder decision than the brisk passage from vision to action suggests. Mitig used a piece of the broken prison to secure his own survival. Necani and her people use what remains of it to confine the Kollu, taking on the work of keeping it there. The old rule depended on people staying out of the woods, a condition the Shokopiwah have less power to enforce as English settlers approach. The pillars can hold the creature on one side of a line. Anyone approaching the Western Woods can still cross it.
A Story of Derry premiered as a surprise Halloween special on HBO Max on October 31, 2026. Serving as an expansion of the It universe, the special follows three youngsters who venture into the Western Wood centuries before Pennywise’s awakening, where they encounter a terrifying ancient spirit.
Where to Watch A Story of Derry (2026) Online
Full Credits
Title: A Story of Derry (also known as It: Welcome to Derry – A Story of Derry)
Distributor: HBO / HBO Max
Release date: October 31, 2026
Rating: TV-MA
Running time: 60 minutes
Director: Tazbah Chavez
Writers: Cherie Dimaline, Jasmyne Flournoy
Producers and Executive Producers: Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, Jason Fuchs, Brad Caleb Kane, David Coatsworth, Bill Skarsgård, Dan Lin, Cherie Dimaline, Lyn Lucibello
Cast: Kiawentiio, Isabel DeRoy-Olson, Michael Podemski, Zahn McClarnon, Brandon Oakes, Jennifer Podemski, Brenda Odjick, Eric Trask
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Tami Reiker
Editors: Matthew V. Colonna
Composer: Sturdivant Adams
The Review
A Story of Derry
A Story of Derry earns its half hour by making us reconsider what we’ve seen. Mitig’s rescue buys him the hunters’ trust, and Zahn McClarnon makes that trust feel reasonable long enough for it to become dangerous. The Kollu needs even less to get close to Sesqui. It has her husband’s face. Tazbah Chavez keeps the campfire explanation tense by leaving us in Mitig’s company, though the turn to Maturin gives Necani too little time with her grief. The thirteen pillars answer the practical question of how to contain the creature. People can still walk into the woods.
PROS
- McClarnon keeps Mitig’s motives hard to read.
- The Kollu’s disguise makes Sesqui’s grief part of the horror.
- The campfire explanation sustains the tension of the pursuit.
- The pillars give the Shokopiwah a consequential choice.
CONS
- Necani’s grief gives way to cosmic instruction too quickly.
- The rush from vision to action gives the decision to build the cage too little room.
