🔗 Share this article

The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with new information, offering the clearest look yet at Pennywise portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. However, 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 mystical prison 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 the state penitentiary was attacked. Later, viewers find him in the back of Ingrid’s car. At first, it looks like he's seized control 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 asks Ingrid to find someone who can help him prove he was framed for the cinema killings.

At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid reaches out to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already interested in Hank's situation. 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 elderly lady that Beverly Marsh mistakenly visits, who is later revealed as one of the clown's numerous disguises. However, Welcome to Derry suggests that the character was a actual individual, not just a illusion created by It. Whether Ingrid is the daughter of this character or the character itself is unconfirmed, 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 tells: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “nobody in Derry ever really dies,” both of which Ingrid has uttered, respectively, throughout the season, in a similar cadence to the film.

If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an real human and not just a form of It, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she attempts to unravel the mystery behind the theater murders. Of course, we are aware that It is responsible for the killings. That means the likelihood is high that she — along with her companions — will probably encounter with the supernatural force.

In a earlier discussion, the actor noted how glad he is 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 deliver background information," he says. "For him to have that internal secret --- 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 truth about who Ingrid is shouldn’t be far off. And if she is indeed the same person, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of fated individuals destined to become linked to the clown for years into the future.