Welcome to Derry Just Uncovered a Figure from Stephen King's 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 Pennywise portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. However, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a understated disclosure might have been missed entirely, and it's a aspect that needs to be discussed.

After Jovan Adepo's character uncovers that Derry is essentially a mystical prison for an ancient evil, he swiftly relocates his family to the military installation on the outskirts. We also learn 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. Initially, it looks like he's taken her hostage as a means of escaping Derry. However, once in the woods, the two share an intimate kiss.

Hank asserts the bus was assaulted (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to escape. He then asks Ingrid to locate a person who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the cinema killings.

At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid reaches out to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, who is already interested in Hank's situation. It is at this moment that Ingrid addresses the audience and reveals her full name.

“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Ingrid Kersh. You don’t know me, but we have a shared acquaintance,” 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 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 manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the daughter of this character or the character itself is not yet verified, but it's quite plausible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh identical.

In It: Chapter 2, which shares the same continuity as Welcome to Derry, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of tells: 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 this pivotal character is indeed an real human and not just a disguise of the entity, it will not bode well for Ingrid, especially as she seeks to untangle the mystery behind the cinema slayings. Of course, we already know that the entity is to blame for the killings. That means the likelihood is high that she — along with her companions — will likely cross paths 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 don’t get all the meat, you just deliver background information," he says. "For him to have that hidden truth --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] But Hank has that."

With only three episodes left, expect more storylines to collide as the season barrels toward its finale. 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 doomed characters destined to become entwined with Pennywise for years into the future.

Evelyn Wheeler
Evelyn Wheeler

A financial analyst with over a decade of experience in precious metals markets, specializing in investment strategies and economic forecasting.