The Derry Prequel Has Uncovered a Character from Stephen King's It That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight the Entire Duration

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. 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 military installation on the outskirts. We also learn that Hank Grogan's bus to the state penitentiary was attacked. Later, we see him in the back of Madeleine Stowe's character car. At first, it appears he's seized control as a means of escaping Derry. However, once in the woods, the two share an intimate kiss.

Hank claims the bus was assaulted (presumably by the sinister clown), allowing him to escape. He then requests Ingrid to locate a person 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 case. It is here 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 surname is recognizable, 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 Beverly Marsh mistakenly visits, who eventually turns out to be one of the clown's numerous disguises. However, Welcome to Derry implies that the character was a actual individual, not just a manifestation of Pennywise. Whether Ingrid is the offspring of this character or the same person is unconfirmed, but it's quite plausible that the two are identical.

In It: Chapter 2, which exists in the same timeline as Welcome to Derry, the character portrayed by Joan Gregson has a couple of tells: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “no one truly perishes in Derry,” both of which Ingrid has uttered, respectively, throughout the season, in a similar cadence to the film.

If this pivotal character is indeed an real human and not just a disguise of the entity, it will not bode well 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 Hank and Charlotte — 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 his character is receiving richer layers. "I play roles as a Black actor 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 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 long list of fated individuals fated to become linked to the clown for years into the future.

Alexander Pierce
Alexander Pierce

Mira Thorne is a tech journalist and AI researcher with over a decade of experience covering digital innovations and their impact on society.