🔗 Share this article

The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with fresh details, offering the most vivid glimpse 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 aspect that deserves attention.

After Leroy Hanlon discovers that Derry is essentially a mystical prison for an ancient evil, he promptly gets his family out of town to the military installation on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Stephen Rider's character bus to the state penitentiary was attacked. Later, viewers find him in the back of Ingrid’s car. At first, it looks like 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 break free. He then requests Ingrid to find someone who can help him prove he was framed for the cinema killings.

At the end of the episode, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already intrigued 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 Ingrid Kersh. You aren't familiar with me, but we have a mutual friend,” 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 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 not yet verified, but it's quite plausible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh identical.

In It: Chapter 2, which exists in the same timeline as Welcome to Derry, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of clues: 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 this pivotal character 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 mystery behind the cinema slayings. Of course, we already know that It is responsible for the killings. That means the likelihood is high that she — along with Hank and Charlotte — will likely cross paths with the supernatural force.

In a previous interview, the actor noted how pleased he feels about the recent plot twists and that Hank is being given more depth. "I play roles as a Black actor 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 develop those nuances independently. [...] But Hank has that."

With only three episodes left, 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 is likely imminent. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of fated individuals fated to become entwined with Pennywise for years into the future.