Kiawentiio, best known to many as Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender, brings her Mohawk heritage right into the heart of IT: Welcome to Derry. She’s from the Wolf Clan and grew up in Akwesasne, a Mohawk territory that stretches across the U.S.–Canada border. And in the HBO series, she slips into the role of Necani. This character’s story takes viewers straight into one of the show’s wildest lore drops yet.
Necani belongs to the fictional Sqoteawapskot tribe, and her appearance doesn’t happen in the present day. Instead, she appears in a memory that essentially transports the audience millions of years back, to the moment the monster they call the Galloo, the creature eventually known as Pennywise, crashed to Earth.
Does Kiawentiio’s Necani Appear Through a Flashback in IT: Welcome to Derry?
Kiawentiio did such an amazing job in this episode. With the small amount of screen time she had she absolutely crushed it👏🏽🙌🏽 #WelcomeToDerry #ITWelcomeToDerry pic.twitter.com/F0u6sG6RkT
Yes, and not just any flashback. Episode 4 throws viewers into a prehistoric fever dream, and it all begins when Taniel, Rose’s nephew, is being painfully probed for answers by Dick Hallorann. While Taniel suffers through Hallorann’s rough “detective work,” he retells a story his aunt once asked him to recite, stepping back into his childhood and further back into tribal memory. It was before the time of people, something terrible came screaming out of the night sky. It was a falling star that wasn’t just a rock but a prison.
When that star smashed into the Earth, the evil inside broke free. Taniel describes how this spirit wandered the Western Wood for ages, waiting, watching. That star-cage? Still powerful. And the tribe’s wisest carved a dagger out of a shard of it. Their rule was simple: keep the weapon close and stay the hell away from the monster’s territory. For generations, the tribe lived in a careful balance… until the settlers came crashing through the story like they always do.
Ignoring every warning, the Europeans tromped into the Western Wood, became juicy prey, and unknowingly helped the Galloo grow stronger. Once that happened, the tribe understood what was coming — the Galloo would eventually wander out of the woods and everything would unravel. So they prepared to leave their home entirely, except for one stubborn, brave kid: Necani, daughter of war chief Sesqui. She believed the dagger could kill the Galloo, and like every proto–Losers Club kid in history, she grabbed her friends and made a dangerous plan.
Her mother and a rescue party followed, only to be mauled by the Galloo in the form of a rotting moose and a few decomposing colonists. Sesqui was attacked by a priest whose chest literally opened to reveal a clawing baby wrapped in something that resembled a crown of thorns. Because apparently the Galloo subscribes to chaos-themed performance art. Necani tried to save her but arrived seconds too late.
Still, she didn’t run. In a rare heroic moment that predates Derry’s endless nightmares, she went to the cave where the star had fallen and broke off enough shards to craft thirteen talismans. Those pieces became her final plan to contain the creature, even if she couldn’t kill it.
Kiawentiio’s Necani Reveals Why Pennywise Can Never Leave Derry
And here’s the big takeaway from Necani’s story — the reason Pennywise never packs a cosmic suitcase and vacations outside Derry is because he’s literally fenced in. Thanks to the Sqoteawapskot’s last effort to protect themselves, the tribe buried thirteen star-shards in a wide circle around the Western Wood. Each shard marked with fire, each one a kind of spiritual pillar. Together, they created an invisible boundary that locked the Galloo inside its hunting grounds.
One of the shards, Taniel points out, was even tucked inside a turtle shell. It was a nod to Pennywise’s eternal nemesis, the cosmic turtle. Once the circle was sealed, the tribe vowed to guard the pillars. So, the simple explanation? Pennywise can’t leave Derry because Necani put him in an ancient, cosmic timeout — and the town is basically the playpen he can’t climb out of.
What are your thoughts on Episode 4? Let us know in the comments.
IT: Welcome to Derry is currently streaming on HBO Max.
