🔗 Share this article

The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with fresh details, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Pennywise portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. 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 Jovan Adepo's character uncovers that Derry is more or less a mystical prison 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 the state penitentiary was attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. At first, it looks like he's taken her hostage as a means of getting out of town. However, 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 asks Ingrid to find someone who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the murders at the movie theater.

At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already intrigued in Hank’s case. It is here that Ingrid addresses the audience and reveals her full name.

“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Kersh, Ingrid. You aren't familiar with 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 elderly lady that one of the Losers' Club mistakenly visits, who eventually turns out to be one of the clown's numerous disguises. 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 same person 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, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of clues: the way she pronounces 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 real human and not just a disguise of the entity, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she seeks to untangle the conspiracy behind the cinema slayings. Of course, we are aware 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 otherworldly being.

In a previous interview, the actor noted how glad he is about the latest story developments and that his character is receiving richer layers. "I play roles as a Black actor 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 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 shouldn’t be far off. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of doomed characters destined to become linked to the clown for generations to come.