The Derry Prequel Has Uncovered a Character from It That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight the Whole Time
The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with fresh details, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. However, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a subtle reveal might have been missed entirely, and it's a aspect that needs to be discussed.
After Jovan Adepo's character uncovers that Derry is more or less a mystical prison for an ancient evil, he promptly gets his family out of town to the air force base on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Stephen Rider's character bus to the state penitentiary was attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. At first, it appears he's seized control as a means of escaping Derry. Yet, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.
Hank asserts the bus was assaulted (presumably by Pennywise), 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 intrigued in Hank's situation. It is at this moment that Ingrid looks directly into the camera and discloses her identity.
“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Ingrid Kersh. You don’t know me, but we have a mutual friend,” she says.
If that surname 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 old woman 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 real person, not just a manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the daughter 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 exists in the same timeline 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 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 seeks to untangle the mystery 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 her companions — 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 his character is receiving richer layers. "I play roles as a Black actor 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 internal secret --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] But Hank has that."
With only a trio of installments remaining, 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 fated individuals destined to become linked to the clown for years into the future.