🔗 Share this article

The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is jam-packed with fresh details, offering the clearest look yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. However, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a understated disclosure might have been overlooked completely, and it's a point that needs to be discussed.

After Leroy Hanlon discovers that Derry is essentially a supernatural containment for an eldritch monster, he promptly gets his family out of town to the military installation on the outskirts. We also learn that Hank Grogan's bus to Shawshank State Prison was attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. At first, it looks like he's seized control as a means of escaping Derry. However, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.

Hank asserts the bus was assaulted (presumably by Pennywise), allowing him to break free. He then asks Ingrid to find someone who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the murders at the movie theater.

At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already intrigued in Hank’s case. It is here that Ingrid addresses the audience and reveals her full name.

“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Kersh, Ingrid. You don’t know me, but we have a shared acquaintance,” she says.

If that surname is recognizable, it’s because a character named the elderly Mrs. Kersh appears in the It novel, as well as both the It miniseries and It: Chapter 2 film. She’s the old woman that one of the Losers' Club mistakenly visits, who eventually turns out to be one of Pennywise’s many forms. However, Welcome to Derry implies that the character was a actual individual, not just a manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the offspring of this character or the same person is not yet verified, but it's entirely possible that the two are one and the same.

In It: Chapter 2, which shares the same continuity as Welcome to Derry, the character portrayed by Joan Gregson has a couple of clues: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “no one truly perishes in Derry,” both of which Ingrid has uttered, respectively, throughout the season, in a comparable rhythm to the film.

If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an real human and not just a disguise of the entity, it will not bode well for Ingrid, especially as she seeks to untangle the conspiracy behind the theater murders. Of course, we are aware that the entity is to blame for the killings. That means the likelihood is high that she — along with Hank and Charlotte — will probably encounter with the supernatural force.

In a previous interview, Stephen Rider noted how pleased he feels about the recent plot twists and that his character is receiving richer layers. "I play Black characters on screen, and a lot of times you don’t get all the meat, you just tell exposition," he says. "For him to have that hidden truth --- as actors, we have to develop those nuances independently. [...] But he has that."

With only a trio of installments remaining, expect more storylines to collide as the season barrels toward its finale. After the revelations in episode 5, the real identity of Ingrid is likely imminent. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of doomed characters destined to become linked to the clown for years into the future.