The Derry Prequel Has Revealed a Figure from It That's Been Under Our Nose the Entire Duration
The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded 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 Jovan Adepo's character discovers that Derry is more or less a supernatural containment for an ancient evil, he promptly gets his family out of town to the air force base on the outskirts. We also learn that Stephen Rider's character 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 getting out of town. However, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.
Hank asserts the bus was attacked (presumably by Pennywise), 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 end of the episode, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, who is already interested in Hank’s case. It is at this moment that Ingrid addresses the audience and reveals her full name.
“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Ingrid Kersh. You don’t know me, but we have a mutual friend,” she says.
If that last name is recognizable, it’s because a character named the elderly 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 real person, not just a illusion created by It. Whether Ingrid is the offspring of this character or the character itself is not yet verified, 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 “no one truly perishes in Derry,” both of which Ingrid has said, 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 spell trouble 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 likely cross paths with the otherworldly being.
In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how glad he is about the recent plot twists and that his character is receiving richer layers. "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 hidden truth --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] But he has that."
With only three episodes left, expect more storylines to collide as the season barrels toward its finale. After the revelations in episode 5, the truth about who Ingrid is shouldn’t be far off. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the long list of fated individuals fated to become entwined with Pennywise for years into the future.