Welcome to Derry Has Uncovered 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 jam-packed with fresh details, offering the clearest look yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. However, with so much baked into one episode, a understated disclosure might have been overlooked completely, and it's a point that deserves attention.
After Leroy Hanlon discovers that Derry is more or less a mystical prison for an ancient evil, he swiftly relocates his family to the air force base on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Hank Grogan's bus to the state penitentiary was attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. At first, it looks like 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 assaulted (presumably by Pennywise), allowing him to escape. He then requests Ingrid to locate a person 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 intrigued in Hank's situation. It is here that Ingrid addresses the audience and discloses her identity.
“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Ingrid Kersh. 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 elderly lady that Beverly Marsh mistakenly visits, who is later revealed as 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 offspring of this character or the character itself is unconfirmed, but it's entirely possible that the two are one and the same.
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 “nobody in Derry ever really dies,” both of which Ingrid has uttered, respectively, 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 likelihood is high 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 recent plot twists and that Hank is being given more depth. "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 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 narrative threads to intersect as the season races to its conclusion. After the revelations in episode 5, the real identity of Ingrid is likely imminent. 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.