🔗 Share this article

The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is jam-packed with fresh details, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Pennywise portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. Still, with so much baked into one episode, a understated disclosure might have been overlooked completely, and it's a aspect that deserves attention.

After Jovan Adepo's character discovers 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. Initially, it appears he's taken her hostage as a means of escaping Derry. 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 makes contact to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already interested in Hank’s case. It is at this moment that Ingrid looks directly into the camera and discloses her identity.

“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Kersh, Ingrid. You aren't familiar with me, but we have a shared acquaintance,” she says.

If that last name 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 elderly lady that one of the Losers' Club mistakenly visits, who is later revealed as 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 daughter of this character or the character itself is not yet verified, but it's entirely possible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh one and the same.

In It: Chapter 2, which shares the same continuity as Welcome to Derry, Mrs. Kersh 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 uttered, 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 attempts to unravel the conspiracy behind the cinema slayings. Of course, we already know that It is responsible for the killings. That means the chances are pretty good that she — along with her companions — will likely cross paths with the otherworldly being.

In a previous interview, Stephen Rider noted how glad he is about the latest story developments 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 deliver background information," he says. "For him to have that internal secret --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] But Hank has that."

With only a trio of installments remaining, expect more narrative threads to intersect as the season barrels toward its finale. After the disclosures from the latest episode, the truth about who Ingrid is shouldn’t be far off. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of doomed characters fated to become entwined with Pennywise for generations to come.