It: A Story of Derry review: does Maturin change the cage?

It: A Story of Derry, a surprise special from the It franchise and a prequel to It: Welcome to Derry (2025), finally shows Maturin, the turtle, in live action and brings Zahn McClarnon back to a Stephen King adaptation. I think it's a nice addition to Andy Muschietti's world of It, and it makes a significantly big change to one line about It's cage. That change reframes the tribe's efforts as self-serving: they let It feed on Derry's people while refusing to help those who stole their land. It also fills a big plot hole for me. I always wondered why they didn't put the shards in a tiny square.

Reviews have been mixed. Maybe people had big expectations and wanted to see Pennywise, which I understand. With multiple years between seasons, it was nice getting this one-off to keep fans like me happy. Invincible did it with Atom Eve, and I hope this becomes the norm, because I think it would be a great way to keep people invested.

The special doesn't disrupt the plans for season 2, which will still build up to the Bradley Gang massacre, the way the Black Spot fire was the basis of season 1. Instead, it expands the four-minute flashback from season 1: the true tale that was left out when the kids were told about their sacred role as the guardians of Derry. It retreads some of that story and reuses some of its scenes.

How A Story of Derry expands the Welcome to Derry episode 4 flashback

Episode 4 of Welcome to Derry ended with the history of the tribe and how they must ensure the pieces of It's cage are never moved apart. That built on the story Mike Hanlon told Bill in the second movie, where we saw It land in Derry and break free from its cage. The tribe's first ancestors broke off a piece of that cage and used it to ward off the demon, and that's how It was contained in the area.

The tribe's warnings, the forbidden forest and why Pennywise first appeared as animals

The special opens with text explaining how the tribe left warnings for the people who came after them, as It first preyed on them. The tribe's name for the creature here is slightly different from the name it uses in the second movie and Welcome to Derry, and I think that's a nice touch: as these were oral stories, I expect the name shifted as the tales were passed down, which shows how long It has been around.

The text explains that the story told to warn children was a lighter tale, something we see in real life too. Hansel and Gretel and other horrifying European tales were usually sanitized to teach kids not to go into strangers' houses. This designates the western woods as off-limits, the stereotypical forbidden forest. Back then you'd warn kids off going in so they didn't get lost, or to keep them away from wild animals like bears.

That's also why Pennywise initially appears as animals: that's what people would have feared at the time. It's only once the fear becomes colonization that It starts to take on a more human form. The problem is that some kids don't believe it's real. The story also leaves out the part about the masked hunter being corrupted.

Amber Midthunder, Prey and the 13 shards in the turtle shell

The special opens with a girl running through the woods and shooting an arrow, and we initially think It might be chasing her. In fact she's out hunting for the tribe. I found this very similar to the movie Prey, where Naru desperately wants to be a hunter and not the healer she was expected to be. Amber Midthunder, who plays the young hunter here, also starred in Prey as Naru.

The girl is a very competent killer, while her friend wants to be a medicine woman. Back at the settlement, her grandfather teaches her to use plants for healing, which comes up later when she smokes the root to commune with Maturin. The idea of the root builds off the hallucination in It Chapter Two, where the same tribe give it to Mike so he can learn about Pennywise's origins.

The grandfather hands his granddaughter a turtle shell, and she notes it has 13 parts. He says nature's design has power, and this is no doubt what inspires the barrier made of 13 shards. It also reminds me of the saying from the book and movie that all living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit. Pennywise must stick to the rules of whatever he looks like, so if he's human he has to walk like a human until he transforms.

Maturin's role in It and why I think he'll matter more in later seasons

Maturin himself wasn't in the show until this special, though there were turtle models in the first two films and turtle references were layered through a few episodes. I read this as the show's version of the kids randomly thinking of the turtle out of nowhere in the book. I'm guessing that as the series goes further back in time, Maturin's presence will become more prominent, and we'll likely see him in something like the season 3 finale.

The show and the two movies give a very abridged version of Maturin's story. In the book, he's an ancient being who existed long before our universe. One day he had a stomach ache and puked up our universe, and all life on Earth was born from that moment. In the legends, It is his brother and the opposite of the good-natured, friendly turtle. The turtle guides people to safety or to stopping It.

A new Losers Club and children who want to be treated as adults

The girl comes back with only two rabbits, and I expect that's because the settlers have overhunted. Her friend isn't sure she can be a great medicine woman, despite the girl believing in her. I like how this group forms similar to the Losers Club, and I do think each season will have one: the leader, the brains, and a lad who's a bit immature. We don't get enough time with them to see their personalities the way we do with the other groups, but it keeps up the framework.

The girl's mother won't let her take on adult responsibilities, which leads the girl to go out on her own, much like the character who recounts the tribe's history in episode 4 went rogue and got captured in season 1. I like that this theme runs through the kids. The boy is excited he's growing facial hair, showing he's desperate to grow up. They all want to be respected as adults, but they're only kids, and it's only kids who can defeat It, as the adults get corrupted.

Floods, smallpox and why the settlers went into the western woods

At a clan meeting, we learn the English settlers have been afflicted by disease and their settlements destroyed by flood water. Derry is known to flood heavily, and the book and movie open with Georgie finding Pennywise in a drain during a storm, so it's a cool deep cut. Pennywise's arrival often brings a flood, and it comes from the sewers.

This fills in context missing from episode 4, where we heard that the settlers arrived, were warned of the danger in the woods, and chose to ignore the warning. We thought the settlers were bullheaded. Instead, they went to the western woods because they'd lost everything and it was the only place they thought they could rebuild, which turned out to be It's hunting ground. Before this, It was too weak to leave the woods. Feeding on the settlers, It grows and can hunt in wider areas. The settler story also echoes It Chapter One's tale of a colony vanishing, including Derry's 91 founders, which was based on Roanoke.

The girl's mother wants to physically stop the settlers entering the woods, but the girl doesn't believe the danger is real. No one has seen It; it's all old wives' tales. I do feel people may have seen it and didn't live to tell the tale. The girl's father died of the pox, which the priest is later afflicted with. In real life, settlers used blankets infected with this disease, presented as gifts, against the natives. I think as Pennywise becomes more human he takes on our tactics, which is why he offers Georgie gifts to come into the sewers. Her mother's protectiveness only makes the girl reckless, and the mother's talk of the settlers' vengeful god foreshadows how It later appears as the thing she fears most.

The dead settlers and Zahn McClarnon's masked hunter

The girl sneaks out, joined by her friend and a third kid who threatens to tell on them. She carves a spiral into a tree that I believe looks like the tree from the frozen lake where the barrier was held in episode 9. The journey mimics trips into the Barrens in the movie. The kids are then attacked by dead settlers, like the creepy encounters near the pump house in the book, and one of them is covered in pox.

Even after the girl hits it in the head with an arrow, the dead settler survives, and more dead appear. The blood floats up as in the movie, much like when Bill used the bolt gun on Pennywise in It Chapter One. The kids run, like the kids at the graveyard in season 1, and are saved by a masked hunter who carries a shard of the crash site. His scary mask uses Pennywise's tactics against Pennywise, he later smiles like him, and he enjoys the taste of human flesh. He's Pennywise's puppet, a nice thematic mirror. In episode 4 he was presented as a hero, and we weren't told he saved the kids or told them about the secret weapon.

He unmasks to reveal Zahn McClarnon, who you may recognize from his role in Doctor Sleep. In episode 4 the character never took the mask off, and I expect they saved the reveal for this. He's superb.

The ritual of Chüd, the dagger and the crash site

We still haven't seen the failed ritual of Chüd, and I wonder if another episode might expand on it. In It Chapter Two, Mike explained the tribe tried the ritual and failed, and the Losers had to defeat It in different ways, like shouting nasty things at it. In the book the ritual works, but I think it's too out there for film. This may be why the tribe avoided the western woods: an attempt could have failed long ago, with the danger passed down orally.

The hunter communes with Maturin by smoking the root, similar to the Losers' smoke hole in the book, where Bill speaks to Maturin and learns of the ritual of Chüd. The kids gather that the hunter has smoked a fair bit and lost his mind, though it might be his constant exposure to the dagger, which also affected a character in season 1. As Rose said in episode 5, "the further you take it from where it belongs, the more damage it does to your mind." He recounts the asteroid crashing down, at a place I'm guessing was shot at the same location as Mike's vision. He found the crash site and hacked off a piece as his dagger.

His hunting party was killed by It using antlers, as in episode 4. In the book, Mike's dad saw It as a giant bird at the Black Spot fire, and It also appeared as wolves, spiders and any animal people found frightening. The hunter warns the kids not to go far, probably due to the dagger's limited range. Then one of the kids spots bodies and realizes the hunter has killed and eaten people.

The masked hunter as a Mrs. Kersh figure who has been feeding It

The hunter is this story's version of Mrs. Kersh, who brought people to Pennywise. During a cycle, Pennywise often uses someone like this, choosing Henry Bowers against the Losers. He calls Pennywise a god who demands sacrifice, echoing Pennywise calling himself an eater of worlds. He has been feeding bodies to It, which explains why It is more powerful and why settlers were found dead outside the woods. The kids knock him out and steal the dagger, and without it he's killed by the same antlers. I did wonder if this was a hallucination, as he's later found skewered on branches.

The pox-covered priest and the scary baby Jesus

Without the dagger's protection, the adults searching for the kids are exposed, and fear salts the meat. It takes the form of a pox-covered priest. The settlers are like Pennywise too, stripping resources and causing fear. The priest says the settlers came to a wide open world with freedom to worship the one true god, which I expect refers to the pilgrims who left England after being persecuted for wanting to split from the Church of England. The priest says they devour those with weak faith. This is probably It playing on past interactions, and I suspect the settlers did try to push their faith on the tribes. The Losers had to truly believe, which is why Bill could fire the unloaded bolt gun.

The girl's mother leads It to a cave as It taunts her about her husband. She shoots what looks like a wild mushroom, dispersing spores, and appears to teleport. I love seeing someone use It's tricks for their own gain. Her arrows fail because she doesn't have faith. It recites John 1:14, and a tiny Jesus baby covered in pox and wearing a crown of thorns emerges from the priest's chest. It stands to reason that if a religious group killed your people and took your land, you'd fear their god too. The mother is stabbed with a spear that might be the Holy Lance and held in a crucifixion pose. Her daughter arrives too late and says she isn't brave enough to stop It, and her mother assures her she's braver than she knows.

Maturin's vision and the changed line about It's cage

After the extended burial from episode 4, the girl takes her mother's role. Her friend smokes the root, giving fans something wanted since the 80s miniseries: a very 80s-style vision of Maturin floating through the consciousness, like space dust and a constellation rather than a turtle in space. The show didn't let Maturin talk, but I expect we might see more of that later, as each season goes back in time. The book is ripe for specials like this, with lots of intermissions and flashbacks about Derry's history. Maturin tells them where to find the cage. The hunter was told too, but adults fall prey to It, just as Derry's adults turn a blind eye and some, like Bev's dad, are downright evil.

Below what would become Neibolt Street, they trap It with shards of its cage. The symbols on the shards reminded me of the tiny door. Keeping the shards in place became the plot of Welcome to Derry, as the military wanted to locate Pennywise for its own gain. The girl names the tribe the children of Maturin, who have tracked every 27-year cycle since.

One line, though, is significantly different. In episode 4, the shards were about keeping their people safe again. Here: "we give it enough room to live to sleep and hunt. It will take the colonists and more will come to replace them. We cannot keep the settlers out but we can keep it in."

That answers my question about the tiny square. This way It has room, a constant food supply and a home, so it won't want to leave, but Derry becomes its hunting ground and the land is cursed.