🔗 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. However, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a understated disclosure might have been overlooked completely, and it's a point that needs to be discussed.

After Jovan Adepo's character discovers that Derry is more or less a mystical prison for an ancient evil, he promptly gets his family out of town to the air force base on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Stephen Rider's character bus to Shawshank State Prison was attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. At first, it appears he's seized control 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 Pennywise), allowing him to escape. He then requests Ingrid to find someone who can help him prove he was framed for the murders at the movie theater.

At the end of the episode, Ingrid reaches out to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, who is already interested in Hank's situation. It is here that Ingrid addresses the audience and discloses her identity.

“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Kersh, Ingrid. You don’t know me, but we have a shared acquaintance,” 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 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 quite plausible that the two are identical.

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

If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an real human 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 likelihood is high that she — along with Hank and Charlotte — will probably encounter with the otherworldly being.

In a previous interview, Stephen Rider noted how glad he is about the recent plot twists and that his character is receiving richer layers. "I play roles as a Black actor 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 internal secret --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] But Hank has that."

With only a trio of installments remaining, 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 is likely imminent. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the long list of fated individuals fated to become linked to the clown for years into the future.