It’s more than terrifying enough to hold fans over until the next season releases.

After the success of HBO’s horror TV show It: Welcome to Derry, released one year ago this month, it was no surprise that the network would renew the show for a second season, but nobody predicted that it would launch with a surprise special episode, released right on time for Halloween.

“A Story of Derry” is a 30-minute bonus episode that simultaneously points fans to the season ahead and takes them back in time to the very origins of the entity that would become Pennywise the Clown. 

Two YouTube/TikTok shorts were used to announce the special episode, the first more of a tease than the second, but both give us insight into the likely timeline of the series: sometime in the distant past, before the American founding. 

The episode itself follows three children venturing alone into the Western Wood, where they encounter not only a malevolent, terrifying spirit but also something cosmic and beautiful, a counterweight to the horror and violence of Pennywise.

Fans of the series will love this mini-episode, but they will also surely be disappointed because the second season of It: Welcome to Derry isn’t in production yet and therefore has no release window, let alone a release date. In a recent interview with the New York Post, showrunner Brad Caleb Kane promised that the new season would exceed the terror and suspense of the last, and indicated that they’re actively writing it now, so a late-2027 or early-2028 release date is still a possibility.

In the meantime, horror fans should definitely check out “A Story of Derry,” not only for its own merits but for the additional backstory it brings to the Pennywise lore.