🔗 Share this article

The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is jam-packed with new information, offering the clearest look yet at Pennywise portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. However, with so much baked into one episode, a understated disclosure might have been missed entirely, and it's a point that deserves attention.

After Leroy Hanlon uncovers that Derry is essentially a supernatural containment for an eldritch monster, 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 the state penitentiary was ambushed. 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 getting out of town. However, once in the woods, the two share an intimate kiss.

Hank asserts 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 demonstrate his innocence for the cinema killings.

At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid reaches out to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already intrigued 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 don’t know me, but we have a shared acquaintance,” 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 elderly lady that one of the Losers' Club mistakenly visits, who eventually turns out to be one of Pennywise’s many forms. However, Welcome to Derry implies that the character was a actual individual, not just a manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the daughter of this character or the character itself is not yet verified, but it's quite plausible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh identical.

In It: Chapter 2, which exists in the same timeline as Welcome to Derry, the character portrayed by Joan Gregson 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, respectively, 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 attempts to unravel the conspiracy behind the cinema slayings. Of course, we already know that It is responsible for the killings. That means the likelihood is high that she — along with her companions — will likely cross paths with the supernatural force.

In a previous interview, the actor 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 internal secret --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] 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 revelations in episode 5, the truth about who Ingrid is shouldn’t be far off. And if she is indeed the same person, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of fated individuals destined to become linked to the clown for years into the future.