The Derry Prequel Has Uncovered a Character from Stephen King's It That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight the Entire Duration
The fifth episode 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 overlooked completely, 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 eldritch monster, 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 Shawshank State Prison was attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Ingrid’s car. At first, it appears he's seized control 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 the sinister clown), allowing him to escape. He then asks Ingrid to locate a person who can help him prove he was framed for the murders at the movie theater.
At the conclusion of the installment, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, who is already interested in Hank's situation. It is here that Ingrid looks directly into the camera 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 last name is familiar, 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 old woman that one of the Losers' Club mistakenly visits, who is later revealed as one of the clown's numerous disguises. However, Welcome to Derry implies 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 the two are one and the same.
In It: Chapter 2, which shares the same continuity as Welcome to Derry, the character portrayed by Joan Gregson has a couple of clues: the way she pronounces 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 similar cadence to the film.
If this pivotal character is indeed an actual person and not just a disguise of the entity, it will spell trouble 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 likelihood is high that she — along with her companions — will likely cross paths with the otherworldly being.
In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how glad he is about the latest story developments and that his character is receiving richer layers. "I play roles as a Black actor 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 a trio of installments remaining, 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 shouldn’t be far off. And if she is indeed the same person, Ingrid will join the extensive roster of doomed characters destined to become linked to the clown for years into the future.