🔗 Share this article

The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with fresh details, offering the clearest look 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 point that needs to be discussed.

After Leroy Hanlon discovers that Derry is more or less a mystical prison for an eldritch monster, 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. Yet, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.

Hank claims the bus was attacked (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to escape. He then requests Ingrid to locate a person 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 Kersh, Ingrid. You don’t know me, but we have a shared acquaintance,” she says.

If that last name 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 actual individual, not just a manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the daughter of this character or the character itself is unconfirmed, but it's entirely possible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh identical.

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 comparable rhythm to the film.

If this pivotal character is indeed an real human and not just a disguise of the entity, it will not bode well 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 Hank and Charlotte — will probably encounter with the otherworldly being.

In a earlier discussion, the actor noted how glad he is about the latest story developments and that his character is receiving richer layers. "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 internal secret --- as actors, we have to develop those nuances independently. [...] But he has that."

With only a trio of installments remaining, expect more narrative threads to intersect as the season races to its conclusion. After the revelations in episode 5, the real identity of Ingrid is likely imminent. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the long list of doomed characters destined to become linked to the clown for years into the future.