The Derry Prequel Has Uncovered a Figure from Stephen King's It That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight the Whole Time
The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is jam-packed with fresh details, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. However, with so much baked into one episode, a understated disclosure might have been missed entirely, and it's a aspect that deserves attention.
After Leroy Hanlon discovers that Derry is more or less a mystical prison for an eldritch monster, he promptly gets his family out of town to the military installation on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Stephen Rider's character bus to Shawshank State Prison was ambushed. Later, viewers find him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. At first, it appears he's taken her hostage as a means of getting out of town. However, once in the woods, the two share an intimate kiss.
Hank claims the bus was assaulted (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to break free. He then asks Ingrid to locate a person who can help him prove he was framed for the cinema killings.
At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid reaches out to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already intrigued in Hank’s case. It is at this moment that Ingrid addresses the audience and discloses her identity.
“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Ingrid Kersh. You aren't familiar with me, but we have a shared acquaintance,” she says.
If that last name 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 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 entirely possible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh identical.
In It: Chapter 2, which exists in the same timeline as Welcome to Derry, the character portrayed by Joan Gregson 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 actual person and not just a disguise of the entity, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she seeks to untangle the mystery behind the theater murders. 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 her companions — will probably encounter with the otherworldly being.
In a previous interview, 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 deliver background information," he says. "For him to have that internal secret --- as actors, we have to develop those nuances independently. [...] But he has that."
With only three episodes left, expect more storylines to collide 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 really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of fated individuals destined to become entwined with Pennywise for years into the future.