🔗 Share this article

The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with fresh details, offering the clearest look yet at Pennywise portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. However, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a understated disclosure might have been overlooked completely, and it's a aspect that deserves attention.

After Leroy Hanlon uncovers that Derry is more or less a supernatural containment for an ancient evil, he swiftly relocates his family to the air force base on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Hank Grogan's bus to the state penitentiary 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. Yet, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.

Hank asserts the bus was assaulted (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to break free. He then requests Ingrid to locate a person who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the murders at the movie theater.

At the end of the episode, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, who is already interested in Hank’s case. 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 mutual friend,” she says.

If that last name 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 eventually turns out to be one of Pennywise’s many forms. 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 same person is not yet verified, but it's quite plausible that the two are 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 pronounces the word “father” and the line “no one truly perishes in Derry,” both of which Ingrid has said, respectively, throughout the season, in a similar cadence to the film.

If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an real human and not just a form of It, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she attempts to unravel the conspiracy behind the theater murders. Of course, we already know that It is responsible for the killings. That means the chances are pretty good 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 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 deliver background information," 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 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 extensive roster of doomed characters destined to become entwined with Pennywise for years into the future.