Welcome to Derry Just Revealed 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 new information, 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 Jovan Adepo's character discovers that Derry is more or less a mystical prison for an ancient evil, he promptly gets his family out of town to the military installation on the outskirts. We also learn that Hank Grogan's bus to Shawshank State Prison was ambushed. Later, viewers find him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. Initially, 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 claims the bus was attacked (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 Leroy's mother, who is already intrigued in Hank's situation. 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 surname is familiar, 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 actual individual, 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 entirely possible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh one and the same.
In It: Chapter 2, which shares the same continuity as Welcome to Derry, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of clues: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “nobody in Derry ever really dies,” both of which Ingrid has said, respectively, throughout the season, in a comparable rhythm to the film.
If this pivotal character 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 conspiracy behind the cinema slayings. Of course, we are aware 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 supernatural force.
In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how glad he is about the recent plot twists and that his character is receiving richer layers. "I play Black characters 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 hidden truth --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] But he 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 truth about who Ingrid is is likely imminent. And if she is indeed the same person, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of doomed characters fated to become linked to the clown for generations to come.