🔗 Share this article

The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with new information, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Pennywise portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. However, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a subtle reveal might have been overlooked completely, and it's a point that needs to be discussed.

After Leroy Hanlon uncovers that Derry is essentially a mystical prison for an ancient evil, he swiftly relocates his family to the air force base on the outskirts. We also learn that Stephen Rider's character bus to the state penitentiary was attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. Initially, it appears he's taken her hostage as a means of escaping Derry. Yet, once in the woods, the two share an intimate kiss.

Hank asserts the bus was attacked (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to break free. He then requests Ingrid to find someone who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the cinema killings.

At the end of the episode, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, who is already interested in Hank’s case. It is at this moment that Ingrid addresses the audience and discloses her identity.

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

If that surname is familiar, it’s because a character named 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 Beverly Marsh mistakenly visits, who eventually turns out to be one of the clown's numerous disguises. However, Welcome to Derry suggests that the character was a real person, not just a illusion created by It. Whether Ingrid is the offspring of this character or the character itself is unconfirmed, but it's quite plausible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh 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 tells: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “nobody in Derry ever really dies,” both of which Ingrid has said, in turn, throughout the season, in a similar cadence to the film.

If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an actual person and not just a disguise of the entity, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she seeks to untangle the conspiracy behind the theater murders. Of course, we are aware that It is responsible for the killings. That means the chances are pretty good that she — along with Hank and Charlotte — will likely cross paths with the supernatural force.

In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how pleased he feels about the latest story developments and that Hank is being given more depth. "I play roles as a Black actor on screen, and a lot of times you don’t get all the meat, you just deliver background information," he says. "For him to have that hidden truth --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] But Hank has that."

With only three episodes left, expect more narrative threads to intersect as the season races to its conclusion. After the disclosures from the latest episode, the truth about who Ingrid is is likely imminent. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of fated individuals destined to become linked to the clown for generations to come.