The Derry Prequel Has Revealed a Figure from It That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight the Whole Time

The latest installment of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with new information, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Pennywise portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. However, with so much baked into one episode, a understated disclosure might have been overlooked completely, and it's a aspect that needs to be discussed.

After Leroy Hanlon uncovers that Derry is essentially a supernatural containment for an eldritch monster, he promptly gets his family out of town to the air force base on the outskirts. We also learn that Stephen Rider's character bus to the state penitentiary was ambushed. 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. 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 prove he was framed for the cinema killings.

At the end of the episode, Ingrid makes contact to meet with Leroy's mother, who is already interested in Hank’s case. It is at this moment that Ingrid looks directly into the camera and reveals her full name.

“Mrs. Hanlon, my name is Ingrid Kersh. 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 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 actual individual, not just a illusion created by It. Whether Ingrid is the daughter of this character or the same person is not yet verified, but it's quite plausible that the two are identical.

In It: Chapter 2, which shares the same continuity as Welcome to Derry, the character portrayed by Joan Gregson has a couple of tells: the way she pronounces the word “father” and the line “nobody in Derry ever really dies,” both of which Ingrid has uttered, respectively, throughout the season, in a comparable rhythm 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 seeks to untangle the conspiracy behind the theater murders. Of course, we already know that the entity is to blame for the killings. That means the likelihood is high that she — along with Hank and Charlotte — will likely cross paths with the supernatural force.

In a earlier discussion, the actor 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 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 revelations in episode 5, 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 generations to come.