Welcome to Derry Just Uncovered a Character from It That's Been Under Our Nose the Entire Duration
The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with new information, offering the most vivid glimpse 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 Leroy Hanlon uncovers that Derry is essentially a mystical prison for an eldritch monster, he promptly gets his family out of town to the military installation on the outskirts. We also learn that Stephen Rider's character bus to the state penitentiary 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 escaping Derry. Yet, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.
Hank claims the bus was attacked (presumably by Pennywise), allowing him to escape. He then asks Ingrid to find someone who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the cinema killings.
At the end of the episode, Ingrid makes contact 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 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 old woman that one of the Losers' Club mistakenly visits, who eventually turns out to be one of the clown's numerous disguises. However, Welcome to Derry suggests that the character was a real person, not just a illusion created by It. Whether Ingrid is the daughter of this character or the same person is unconfirmed, 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, the character portrayed by Joan Gregson has a couple of clues: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “nobody in Derry ever really dies,” both of which Ingrid has uttered, in turn, throughout the season, in a comparable rhythm to the film.
If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an real human and not just a disguise of the entity, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she attempts to unravel the mystery behind the theater murders. Of course, we are aware that It is responsible 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 earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how pleased he feels 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 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 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 is likely imminent. And if she is indeed the same person, Ingrid will join the long list of doomed characters fated to become linked to the clown for years into the future.