IT: Welcome to Derry Quietly Drops an Essential Stephen King Lore Episode About the Galloo

A Story Before Derry

The first season of IT: Welcome to Derry is set in the 1960s, while Season 2 is expected to move back to the 1930s during the Great Depression. The surprise Halloween installment, “A Story of Derry,” reaches further into the past, to a time before Derry was founded.

The episode introduces the Galloo, a spirit confined to the land that would become Derry. It also follows Necani (Kiawentiio), Maneese (Michael Podemski-Bedard) and Kino (Isabel Deroy-Olson), Shokopiwah warriors who set out to hunt the creature.

The Galloo’s History

The Galloo and the Shokopiwah were mentioned earlier in “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function.” In that episode, Dick Halloran (Chris Chalk), acting on Lieutenant General Shaw’s (James Remar) orders, interrogates Taniel (Joshua Odjick), a Native American teenager, about his aunt’s account of the Galloo’s arrival on Earth and imprisonment. The earlier story links that confinement to a fragment from a star. “A Story of Derry” revisits the origin from the young warriors’ perspective, showing how their account would be passed down through oral traditions rather than extracted through military interrogation.

A Mentor Under Threat

Zahn McClarnon plays Mativ, a warrior who first tells Necani and the others about the Galloo. The episode later reveals that the spirit has corrupted him and that he massacred his own tribe.

Mativ begins as a caring mentor, but the influence within him gradually emerges. His struggle to resist it adds to the story’s depiction of a land marked by violence and few survivors.

Maturin Appears

The episode’s most striking reveal is the first on-screen appearance of Maturin, a cosmic turtle with the power to defeat the Galloo. The character is an important part of Stephen King’s fiction, including the Dark Tower universe.

Maturin is one of 12 ancient guardians responsible for holding up the pillars of reality. His appearance connects the episode’s tale of Derry to a wider body of King’s lore.