Welcome to Derry Has Revealed a Character from 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 most vivid glimpse yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Still, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a understated disclosure might have been missed entirely, and it's a aspect that needs to be discussed.

After Jovan Adepo's character uncovers that Derry is essentially a supernatural containment for an ancient evil, he swiftly relocates his family to the air force base on the outskirts. We also learn 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 claims the bus was attacked (presumably by Pennywise), allowing him to break free. He then requests Ingrid to find someone who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the murders at the movie theater.

At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, who is already intrigued in Hank’s case. It is at this moment 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 mutual friend,” she says.

If that last name 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 the clown's numerous disguises. However, Welcome to Derry implies 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 not yet verified, but it's entirely possible that the two are one and the same.

In It: Chapter 2, which shares the same continuity 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 said, respectively, throughout the season, in a comparable rhythm to the film.

If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an real human and not just a form of It, it will not bode well for Ingrid, especially as she attempts to unravel the mystery behind the cinema slayings. 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 probably encounter with the otherworldly being.

In a previous interview, the actor 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 aren't provided with substantial material, you just deliver background information," he says. "For him to have that hidden truth --- 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 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 long list of doomed characters destined to become linked to the clown for years into the future.

Lori Reynolds
Lori Reynolds

A network engineer with over a decade of experience in designing scalable infrastructure solutions for enterprise clients.