Welcome to Derry Just Revealed a Figure from Stephen King's It That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight the Entire Duration
The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with fresh details, offering the clearest look yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. However, with so much baked into one episode, a subtle reveal might have been overlooked completely, and it's a point 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 Stephen Rider's character bus to Shawshank State Prison was attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Ingrid’s 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 embrace with a kiss.
Hank claims the bus was attacked (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to escape. He then requests Ingrid to find someone who can help him prove he was framed 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 Ingrid Kersh. You aren't familiar with me, but we have a shared acquaintance,” she says.
If that surname is recognizable, 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 elderly lady that one of the Losers' Club mistakenly visits, who is later revealed as one of Pennywise’s many forms. However, Welcome to Derry implies 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 quite plausible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh 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 pronounces the word “father” and the line “nobody in Derry ever really dies,” both of which Ingrid has said, in turn, throughout the season, in a comparable rhythm 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 conspiracy behind the cinema slayings. Of course, we already know that the entity is to blame for the killings. That means the chances are pretty good that she — along with Hank and Charlotte — will likely cross paths with the supernatural force.
In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how pleased he feels about the latest story developments 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 deliver background information," 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 fated individuals destined to become linked to the clown for years into the future.