Welcome to Derry Creator Teases Deep-Cut Stephen King Easter Eggs

If you were hoping Welcome to Derry would play nice with the rest of the Stephen King-verse, good news: Andy Muschietti is absolutely stuffing it with deep-cut lore. Turtles, towers, Shawshank, and a very familiar chef are all in play.

Quick refresher on the show

It: Welcome to Derry is an HBO prequel to Muschietti's movie duo It (2017) and It: Chapter Two (2019), which were based on King’s 1986 novel and featured Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise. The series is set in 1962 in Derry, Maine, right after a local boy goes missing, and it digs into what is rotting that town from the inside.

It premieres on HBO Max on October 26, with new episodes every Sunday.

What Muschietti said at NYCC

At New York Comic Con, the cast and creatives hit the stage, and Muschietti spelled out how far the show will go with the big mythology. The key is that it stays grounded in the POV of the kids who eventually become the Losers, but the cosmic stuff is not off-limits.

"It is a very mundane perspective because it’s all from the perspectives of our Losers. They talk about the Turtle, they talk about Maturin, they talk about the Macroverse—all of these are concepts of the other side. So we’ll open a little window over the course of the three seasons; we’re gonna show more of the mythology that supports the story of It."

He also flat-out tied the show to King’s big cross-series backbone:

"It’s the same universe as The Dark Tower. The Turtle is one of the guardians of The Dark Tower… there will be a little more clarity about the mythology, reveals, and a lot of easter eggs people will pick up."

If you’re not neck-deep in King lore: Maturin is the turtle, the Macroverse is the beyond-our-reality space in his mythology, and The Dark Tower is the spine that connects a lot of his stories. So yeah, this is real lore-nerd territory, but the show is keeping it filtered through the kids’ ground-level experience.

The King connections to watch for

• Expect mentions of the Turtle/Maturin and the Macroverse, with the series cracking open a little more of It’s cosmic backstory over what Muschietti describes as three seasons.
• The Dark Tower links are explicit: the Turtle is one of the Tower’s guardians, and the series will plant more connective tissue and easter eggs.
• A quick visual nod already popped up: a prison bus marked "Shawshank State Prison," a wink to The Shawshank Redemption.
• Dick Hallorann shows up. You know him from The Shining and Doctor Sleep, and in King’s It novel he’s tied to Derry via The Black Spot, a bar for African-American soldiers that was burned down by white supremacists. The show is acknowledging that history.

Bottom line: Welcome to Derry isn’t just retreading clown scares. It’s opening the door to the bigger, weirder King mythology while keeping the camera on the kids who have to survive it. See you October 26.