🔗 Share this article

The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with new information, 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 overlooked completely, and it's a point that deserves attention.

After Jovan Adepo's character discovers that Derry is essentially a mystical prison for an eldritch monster, 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, we see him in the back of Ingrid’s 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 the sinister clown), allowing him to break free. He then asks Ingrid to find someone who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the cinema killings.

At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid reaches out to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already interested in Hank's situation. It is at this moment that Ingrid looks directly into the camera 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 the elderly 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 Beverly Marsh mistakenly visits, who is later revealed as one of Pennywise’s many forms. However, Welcome to Derry implies that the character was a real person, not just a manifestation of Pennywise. 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 one and the same.

In It: Chapter 2, which exists in the same timeline as Welcome to Derry, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of tells: the way she pronounces 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 spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she attempts to unravel the conspiracy 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 her companions — will probably encounter with the otherworldly being.

In a earlier discussion, the actor noted how pleased he feels about the latest story developments and that his character is receiving richer layers. "I play Black characters 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 internal secret --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] But he has that."

With only three episodes left, expect more storylines to collide 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 is indeed the same person, Ingrid will join the long list of doomed characters destined to become entwined with Pennywise for years into the future.