Although one of Stephen King’s best TV shows toyed with one of the strangest elements of his fictional universe, season 2 of the hit HBO series must actually address this lore head-on. From Pennywise to Randall Flagg, Stephen King’s novels are full of memorable monsters. Although he has written plenty of fantasy, sci-fi, and, in recent years, crime thriller novels, there is a reason that the author is best known for his many contributions to the horror genre. Many of King’s most re-readable books, like It, are iconic thanks to their antagonists.
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That said, King’s imaginative fictional universe doesn’t begin and end with these villains. Although season 1 of HBO’s It prequel largely sidestepped this piece of lore, the original novel provides a backstory for Pennywise that features a colossal cosmic turtle that vomits up the universe. IT: Welcome to Derry season 2 might struggle to realise this surreal, Lovecraftian tale on-screen, but the show should still take a stab at explaining King’s infamous Maturin the Turtle and how it relates to Pennywise and the titular town.
IT: Welcome to Derry Must Actually Address Maturin The Turtle
In the novel It, Maturin the Turtle is a vast, cosmic entity that predates the known universe. The turtle is technically responsible for the reality that the Losers Club lives in, as it was already an ancient, tired, elderly entity when it vomited up the entire universe eons ago. Maturin rarely speaks to humans and takes little interest in their doings, but it does aid the Losers Club by appearing to a young Bill Denbrough during 1958’s original Ritual of Chud.
Maturin and Pennywise refer to each other as “Brothers,” and both display a pretty obvious disdain for each other. By the time the Ritual of Chud is repeated by the Losers Club decades later, Pennywise gleefully mentions that the turtle died some years earlier, choking to death on a galaxy. Of course, it would be tough for IT: Welcome to Derry’s 1935-set story to directly depict any of this, but this doesn’t mean the storyline can’t be mentioned at all.
IT: Welcome to Derry’s Most Ambitious Swings Proves A Maturin The Turtle Story Could Work
On the contrary, some of IT: Welcome to Derry’s weirdest and most ambitious season 1 swings were highly successful, and proved that the show doesn’t need to avoid the story of Maturin the turtle. In one memorably creepy sequence, the town’s indigenous elders shared the story of Pennywise’s earliest attacks on white settlers, while a later sequence in the finale featured Pennywise referencing the events of the later IT movies decades before they happen in-universe.
This idea, that Pennywise doesn’t conceptualise time in the same way humans do, hinted at the cosmic scope of King’s ambitious horror story, and proved that the prequel’s longer runtime gives the show more room to explore the novel’s trippier ideas than the earlier, shorter movies. Often, some of King’s hardest books to adapt can also sometimes prove to be his most rewarding adaptations, as evidenced by Gerald’s Game and The Long Walk. As such, IT: Welcome to Derry season 2 shouldn’t shy away from finally addressing the cosmic turtle in the room by bringing in Pennywise’s benevolent brother.
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