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Contains spoilers for “A Story of Derry”
If you’ve watched the “IT: Welcome to Derry” special Halloween episode “A Story of Derry,” you probably have some questions about that giant turtle in the sky. This cosmic deity, named Maturin, is actually an important part of the wider Stephen King lore as one of the guardians of the Beams that helps the Dark Tower. In “Welcome to Derry,” we learn that Maturin first battled with the Kollu (the Native American name for the being that came to be known as Pennywise) in space before sending it crashing to Earth.
When the Kollu escaped its cage on Earth, it began haunting the Western Woods near the Shokopiwah tribe settlement. The Halloween episode, titled “A Story of Derry,” shows how Maturin sent instructions to the Shokopiwah girl Kino (Isabel Deroy-Olson) on how to find the cave where the Kollu fell and use the materials left there to trap it. She is able to contact Maturin by smoking a special root she stole from a man named Mitig (Zahn McClarnon), who tried to offer Kino and her friends to the Kollu as sacrifices.
This mechanic of using psychedelics and spiritual elements to contact Maturin also shows up in the original “IT” novel via the character of Bill Denbrough, the de facto leader of the Losers Club. Bill is guided by Maturin in order to defeat Pennywise in The Ritual of Chüd. During astral projection, however, Bill is told by Pennywise that Maturin died after choking on a galaxy. He’s even shown the giant turtle deity’s corpse, though whether or not this was just a trick played by Pennywise is debatable.
Maturin is one of the 12 guardians of the Beams
In Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series (which is being adapted by Mike Flanagan for Amazon Prime Video), Maturin is revealed to be one of 12 guardians that watch over the Beams holding up the Dark Tower, which keeps the multiverse stable. Maturin’s role is especially important because he carries the entire multiverse created by Gan, the supreme deity, on his back. It’s thought that Maturin cannot actually be killed, even by the Crimson King, so it’s possible the aforementioned death from the “IT” novel was either a trick by Pennywise or perhaps even Maturin switching forms.
It’s also possible that the version of Maturin in the “Dark Tower” book series is not actually the same Maturin featured in the original “IT” novel — this is still a hotly debated topic among Stephen King enthusiasts. The veteran horror author has seemingly never confirmed nor denied this, and there’s a good chance that he never will: In his nonfiction book “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” King states that once a story has been written and released, it is the reader’s job to form their own interpretation.