🔗 Share this article

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 so much baked into one episode, a understated disclosure might have been missed entirely, and it's a aspect that needs to be discussed.

After Jovan Adepo's character discovers that Derry is more or less a supernatural containment 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 ambushed. Later, we see him in the back of Ingrid’s car. Initially, it appears he's seized control as a means of getting out of town. However, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.

Hank claims the bus was attacked (presumably by Pennywise), allowing him to break free. He then requests Ingrid to find someone who can help him prove he was framed for the cinema killings.

At the end of the episode, Ingrid reaches out to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, who is already interested 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 last name 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 Beverly Marsh mistakenly visits, who eventually turns out to be one of Pennywise’s many forms. However, Welcome to Derry suggests that the character was a real person, not just a manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the daughter of this character or the same person is unconfirmed, but it's quite plausible that the two are one and the same.

In It: Chapter 2, which exists in the same timeline as Welcome to Derry, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of tells: the way she pronounces the word “father” and the line “nobody in Derry ever really dies,” both of which Ingrid has said, respectively, throughout the season, in a similar cadence to the film.

If this pivotal character is indeed an actual person and not just a form of It, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she seeks to untangle the mystery behind the theater murders. Of course, we are aware that the entity is to blame for the killings. That means the likelihood is high that she — along with Hank and Charlotte — will likely cross paths with the otherworldly being.

In a earlier discussion, the actor 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 aren't provided with substantial material, you just tell exposition," he says. "For him to have that internal secret --- 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 races to its conclusion. After the disclosures from the latest episode, 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 linked to the clown for generations to come.