🔗 Share this article

The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry is jam-packed with fresh details, offering the clearest look yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Still, with so much baked into one episode, a understated disclosure might have been overlooked completely, and it's a aspect that deserves attention.

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. We also learn that Stephen Rider's character bus to Shawshank State Prison was ambushed. Later, we see him in the back of Ingrid’s car. Initially, it appears he's taken her hostage as a means of getting out of town. 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 find someone who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the murders at the movie theater.

At the end of the episode, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already interested in Hank's situation. It is at this moment that Ingrid looks directly into the camera 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 old woman 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 suggests that the character was a actual individual, not just a manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the offspring of this character or the character itself is unconfirmed, 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, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of clues: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “no one truly perishes in Derry,” both of which Ingrid has said, in turn, throughout the season, in a similar cadence to the film.

If this pivotal character 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 theater murders. 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 Hank and Charlotte — will likely cross paths with the supernatural force.

In a previous interview, the actor noted how pleased he feels 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 aren't provided with substantial material, you just tell exposition," he says. "For him to have that hidden truth --- 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 destined to become entwined with Pennywise for generations to come.