The HBO series It: Welcome to Derry has finally pulled back the curtain on the cosmic beginnings of one of fiction’s most feared monsters. The show’s fourth episode, “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function,” delivers the most explicit look yet at how the entity known as Pennywise came to our world, a story the previous films and miniseries only hinted at.
The episode provides a clear origin for the creature, showing that it is not a earthly being but an ancient evil that arrived from the stars. This new information comes directly from the history of the Shokopiwah tribe, the original inhabitants of the land that would become Derry.
The Ancient Crash Landing
The series reveals that the entity fell to Earth millions of years ago, long before humans walked the land. It arrived inside a meteor that shattered upon impact in the location now known as the Western Wood. The evil spirit, which the Shokopiwah tribe calls “the Galloo,” wandered the area for centuries.
When humans eventually appeared, the entity discovered it could hunt them to regain its strength. This established the creature’s long and terrible history of preying on humanity, a cycle that would continue for generations. The series connects this ancient past directly to the modern-day town of Derry, Maine.
The Shokopiwah Tribe’s Discovery and Weapon
The Shokopiwah tribe, who have lived on the land since the dawn of human existence, suffered numerous attacks and deaths from the Galloo. To protect themselves, they studied the creature and discovered a crucial weakness. They found a shard from the original meteor that had imprisoned the entity.
This material, buried deep within a cave, acted as a kind of Kryptonite to the creature. The tribe kept it close and learned to coexist with the evil by simply avoiding the Western Wood for many years. This shard became their primary weapon against the ancient threat.
The First Ritual of Chüd
The delicate balance was threatened when settlers arrived in the area. These new people began traveling and hunting in the Western Wood, unknowingly allowing the Galloo to feed and grow stronger. Fearing the entity would become too powerful and break out of its confined area, the Shokopiwah tribe took action.
Three young members of the tribe embarked on a mission to collect more of the meteor shards. Their goal was to use these shards to build a cage and trap the entity for good. This attempt was an early version of the Ritual of Chüd, a ritual that would later be passed down and attempted again by the Losers’ Club.
However, this first ritual ended in tragedy. The entity slaughtered the Shokopiwah search party. Despite this failure, the children of those who were killed continued the fight. They carried out a new plan that involved burying thirteen shards around the Western Wood to create a barrier and trap the entity inside.
The Government’s Interest and a New Threat
The series introduces Dick Hallorann, a character familiar to Stephen King fans from The Shining. Here, he is an Army private with psychic abilities, tasked with using his “shining” gift to locate the entity. The government wants to use It as a weapon to end the Cold War.
In this episode, Hallorann interrogates Taniel, the nephew of a key character named Rose. He uses his abilities to enter Taniel’s mind and learns the full story of Pennywise’s origin and the failed ritual. This knowledge puts Hallorann on a direct path to confront the creature, setting the stage for a major showdown.
The tribe’s vow to protect the locations of the thirteen pillars is the information the government and Hallorann are desperately seeking. This new context adds a modern threat to the ancient evil, suggesting that human exploitation of the creature could be even more dangerous than the creature itself.
How This Changes the Pennywise Story
This new origin story from Welcome to Derry makes significant changes to the mythology established in the book and previous films. In the novel, the Ritual of Chüd was a cosmic, psychic battle rooted in a Himalayan tradition. The 2019 film It: Chapter Two updated it to originate from the Shokopiwah tribe but kept it as a ritual involving physical tokens.
The series goes further by introducing a tangible, physical weapon—the meteor shards—that the entity genuinely fears. This provides a clear reason why the creature was initially contained to a specific area and explains the deeper history of the conflict between the people of Derry and the evil they live with.
While the iconic clown form of Pennywise, played by Bill Skarsgård, has not yet appeared in the series, the foundation for his future reign of terror is now firmly laid. The series shows that the clown is merely a favorite disguise the entity would later adopt, and that its true nature is far older and more alien.
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