HBO Max Drops Surprise IT: Welcome To Derry Episode For Halloween

HBO Max has pulled a little trick on "IT: Welcome to Derry" fans — but it's really quite a treat.

In celebration of the spookiest day of the year, the streamer has kicked off Halloween with a surprise new "Welcome to Derry" episode, now available to watch on the platform.

The 30-minute installment, titled "A Story of Derry," marks the show's second annual spooky-season surprise for viewers. Last year, Episode 2 of the show's freshman season was released on Halloween, two days before its regularly scheduled airdate.

Though we won't dive into spoiler-y specifics here, "A Story of Derry" is set hundreds of years before "Welcome to Derry," expanding on previous backstory the show gave us about the origins of the entity called It, and the Native Americans who have long contended with the entity roaming their woods. In the episode, three teenaged Native American girls encounter It on their own trip into the woods, and their experience with the entity ultimately leads to the formation of the 13 sacred pillars that surround Derry and keep It forever caged. (As you'll recall, in "Welcome to Derry" Season 1, one of those sacred pillars got dislodged, giving Pennywise an opportunity to leave the boundaries of Derry — but the heroic Losers' Club managed to restore the cage to its full strength.)

"IT: Welcome to Derry" (which landed on our list of the best TV shows of 2025) is set in the same universe as Andy Muschietti's "It" movies, 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 at last renewed for a second season, which will adapt the 1935-set "Derry Interlude" chapter from Stephen King's novel. Per the official logline, Season 2 occurs 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 ammo and end up facing unimaginable horror."

"From the genesis of this project, we had the idea to make it three seasons, aligning with the three more important catastrophic events that are described in the interludes [of the book]," Muschietti previously told TVLine. "Those are the burning of the Black Spot in '62 [which was portrayed in Season 1], but then the massacre of the Bradley Gang in '35, and the explosion at the Easter egg hunt in 1908. It was always that blueprint for us."

If you've already screened "A Story of Derry," let us know how you liked it in the comments. Happy Halloween!