Welcome to Derry Just Uncovered a Figure from Stephen King's It That's Been Under Our Nose the Whole Time

The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is jam-packed with fresh details, offering the clearest look yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. However, with so much baked into one episode, a understated disclosure might have been overlooked completely, and it's a point that deserves attention.

After Jovan Adepo's character discovers that Derry is more or less a mystical prison for an eldritch monster, he swiftly relocates his family to the air force base on the outskirts. We also learn that Hank Grogan's bus to Shawshank State Prison was ambushed. Later, we see him in the back of Ingrid’s car. Initially, it appears he's taken her hostage as a means of escaping Derry. Yet, once in the woods, the two embrace with a 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 demonstrate his innocence for the murders at the movie theater.

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 here 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 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 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 implies that the character was a real person, not just a illusion created by It. Whether Ingrid is the daughter of this character or the character itself is unconfirmed, but it's quite plausible that the two are 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 said, in turn, throughout the season, in a comparable rhythm to the film.

If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an real human and not just a disguise of the entity, it will spell trouble for Ingrid, especially as she seeks to untangle the conspiracy behind the theater murders. Of course, we are aware 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 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 don’t get all the meat, you just tell exposition," 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 a trio of installments remaining, expect more narrative threads to intersect 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 long list of doomed characters fated to become linked to the clown for years into the future.

Henry Martinez
Henry Martinez

A seasoned gambling analyst with over a decade of experience in casino gaming and strategy development.

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