The Derry Prequel Has Revealed a Character 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 new information, offering the clearest look yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Still, with such a dense narrative packed into a single episode, a understated disclosure might have been overlooked completely, and it's a point that deserves attention.
After Jovan Adepo's character uncovers that Derry is more or less a mystical prison for an ancient evil, he promptly gets his family out of town to the air force base on the outskirts. It is also revealed that Hank Grogan's bus to the state penitentiary was ambushed. Later, we see him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. Initially, it appears he's taken her hostage as a means of escaping Derry. Yet, once in the woods, the two share an intimate kiss.
Hank asserts the bus was attacked (presumably by Pennywise), allowing him to escape. He then requests 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 reaches out to meet with Leroy's mother, 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 Kersh, Ingrid. You aren't familiar with 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 offspring of this character or the character itself is unconfirmed, 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, the character portrayed by Joan Gregson has a couple of clues: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “no one truly perishes in Derry,” both of which Ingrid has said, in turn, 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 attempts to unravel the conspiracy behind the cinema slayings. Of course, we are aware that the entity is to blame for the killings. That means the chances are pretty good that she — along with her companions — will likely cross paths with the supernatural force.
In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how pleased he feels 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 deliver background information," he says. "For him to have that internal secret --- as actors, we have to create those secrets for ourselves. [...] 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 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 fated to become linked to the clown for generations to come.