Welcome to Derry Just Revealed a Figure from It That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight the Whole Time
The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is jam-packed with new information, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Still, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a subtle reveal might have been overlooked completely, and it's a aspect that needs to be discussed.
After Leroy Hanlon uncovers that Derry is more or less a supernatural containment for an ancient evil, he swiftly relocates his family to the military installation on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Stephen Rider's character bus to Shawshank State Prison was attacked. Later, viewers find him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. At first, it appears he's seized control as a means of getting out of town. However, once in the woods, the two share an intimate kiss.
Hank claims the bus was attacked (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to escape. He then requests Ingrid to find someone who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the cinema killings.
At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid reaches out to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already intrigued in Hank’s case. It is at this moment that Ingrid addresses the audience and discloses her identity.
“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Ingrid Kersh. You don’t know me, but we have a mutual friend,” 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 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 real person, not just a manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the offspring of this character or the character itself is unconfirmed, but it's entirely possible that the two are identical.
In It: Chapter 2, which exists in the same timeline 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 comparable rhythm to the film.
If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an actual person and not just a form of It, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she seeks to untangle the conspiracy behind the theater murders. Of course, we already know that the entity is to blame for the killings. That means the chances are pretty good that she — along with her companions — will probably encounter with the otherworldly being.
In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how glad he is about the recent plot twists and that Hank is being given more depth. "I play Black characters on screen, and a lot of times you aren't provided with substantial material, you just tell exposition," he says. "For him to have that hidden truth --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] But he has that."
With only three episodes left, expect more storylines to collide as the season barrels toward its finale. After the revelations in episode 5, the truth about who Ingrid is shouldn’t be far off. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the long list of fated individuals fated to become linked to the clown for years into the future.