Welcome to Derry Has 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 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 understated disclosure might have been missed entirely, and it's a point that needs to be discussed.
After Leroy Hanlon discovers that Derry is more or less a supernatural containment for an ancient evil, 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 attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Ingrid’s car. Initially, it appears he's taken her hostage as a means of getting out of town. However, 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 murders at the movie theater.
At the end of the episode, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already intrigued in Hank’s case. It is here that Ingrid addresses the audience and discloses her identity.
“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Kersh, Ingrid. 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 elderly lady that Beverly Marsh mistakenly visits, who is later revealed as 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 character itself is unconfirmed, but it's entirely possible 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 clues: 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 Mrs. Kersh is indeed an real human and not just a disguise of the entity, it will not bode well 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 chances are pretty good that she — along with Hank and Charlotte — will probably encounter with the supernatural force.
In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how glad he is about the recent plot twists 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 hidden truth --- as actors, we have to develop those nuances independently. [...] But Hank has that."
With only three episodes left, expect more narrative threads to intersect 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 really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the long list of doomed characters fated to become entwined with Pennywise for years into the future.