🔗 Share this article

The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry is jam-packed with new information, 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 point that deserves attention.

After Jovan Adepo's character discovers that Derry is essentially a mystical prison for an eldritch monster, he swiftly relocates his family to the air force base on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Hank Grogan's bus to the state penitentiary was ambushed. 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. Yet, once in the woods, the two share an intimate kiss.

Hank asserts 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 demonstrate his innocence for the murders at the movie theater.

At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, 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 mutual friend,” she says.

If that surname is recognizable, 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 is later revealed as one of Pennywise’s many forms. 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 same person 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, the character portrayed by Joan Gregson has a couple of tells: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “no one truly perishes in Derry,” both of which Ingrid has said, respectively, throughout the season, in a comparable rhythm to the film.

If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an real human and not just a form of It, it will not bode well for Ingrid, especially as she seeks to untangle the mystery behind the cinema slayings. 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, Stephen Rider 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 deliver background information," he says. "For him to have that hidden truth --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] 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 extensive roster of doomed characters destined to become entwined with Pennywise for generations to come.