Welcome to Derry Just Uncovered a Figure from It That's Been Under Our Nose the Whole Time
The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with fresh details, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Still, with so much baked into one episode, a subtle reveal might have been overlooked completely, and it's a point that deserves attention.
After Leroy Hanlon uncovers that Derry is essentially a mystical prison for an eldritch monster, he swiftly relocates his family to the air force base on the outskirts. We also learn 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 seized control as a means of escaping Derry. Yet, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.
Hank asserts the bus was assaulted (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to break free. He then asks 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 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 aren't familiar with me, but we have a shared acquaintance,” 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 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 manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the daughter of this character or the same person 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, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of tells: the way she pronounces the word “father” and the line “no one truly perishes in Derry,” both of which Ingrid has uttered, in turn, throughout the season, in a comparable rhythm to the film.
If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an actual person 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 cinema slayings. Of course, we are aware that the entity is to blame for the killings. That means the chances are pretty good that she — along with her companions — will likely cross paths with the otherworldly being.
In a previous interview, Stephen Rider noted how glad he is about the recent plot twists and that Hank is being given more depth. "I play Black characters on screen, and a lot of times you don’t get all the meat, 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 barrels toward its finale. After the revelations in episode 5, the real identity of Ingrid shouldn’t be far off. And if she is indeed the same person, Ingrid will join the long list of doomed characters fated to become linked to the clown for years into the future.