The Derry Prequel Has Revealed a Character from Stephen King's It That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight the Entire Duration
The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with new information, offering the clearest look yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Still, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a understated disclosure might have been missed entirely, and it's a aspect that needs to be discussed.
After Jovan Adepo's character uncovers that Derry is more or less a supernatural containment for an ancient evil, he promptly gets his family out of town to the military installation on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Hank Grogan's bus to Shawshank State Prison was attacked. Later, viewers find him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. At first, it appears he's taken her hostage as a means of escaping Derry. Yet, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.
Hank claims the bus was attacked (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to break free. He then asks Ingrid to find someone who can help him prove he was framed for the cinema killings.
At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, who is already intrigued in Hank’s case. It is here that Ingrid looks directly into the camera and reveals her full name.
“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 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 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 character itself is not yet verified, but it's entirely possible that the two are 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 clues: 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 real human and not just a form of It, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she attempts to unravel 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 probably encounter with the supernatural force.
In a previous interview, Stephen Rider noted how pleased he feels about the latest story developments 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 races to its conclusion. After the disclosures from the latest episode, the real identity of Ingrid shouldn’t be far off. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the long list of doomed characters fated to become linked to the clown for years into the future.