Welcome to Derry Has Revealed a Character from Stephen King's It That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight the Whole Time
The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is jam-packed with new information, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Still, 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 essentially a supernatural containment for an ancient evil, he swiftly relocates his family to the military installation on the outskirts. We also learn that Stephen Rider's character bus to Shawshank State Prison was ambushed. Later, we see him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. Initially, it appears he's seized control as a means of getting out of town. However, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.
Hank asserts the bus was attacked (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to escape. He then asks Ingrid to find someone who can help him prove he was framed for the cinema killings.
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 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 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 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 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 entirely possible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh one and the same.
In It: Chapter 2, which shares the same continuity as Welcome to Derry, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of tells: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “no one truly perishes in Derry,” both of which Ingrid has uttered, in turn, 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 seeks to untangle the conspiracy behind the theater murders. Of course, we are aware that the entity is to blame for the killings. That means the chances are pretty good that she — along with her companions — will probably encounter with the otherworldly being.
In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how glad he is 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 Hank has that."
With only three episodes left, expect more narrative threads to intersect as the season barrels toward its finale. After the disclosures from the latest episode, 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 fated to become entwined with Pennywise for years into the future.