Note: This story contains spoilers from “It: Welcome to Derry” Episode 5.
“It: Welcome to Derry” ratcheted up the tension as almost every character found their way into the sewers under the Neibolt St. House. But it was revelations about Madeleine Stowe’s Ingrid Kersh that were the most surprising.
The show’s fifth episode kicked off the second half of the season with both the kids and the military heading beneath the city to look for Pennywise’s lair. They got more than they bargained for when they came face-to-face with the monster’s clown form, as Bill Skarsgård finally made his debut on the prequel series. The kids were too drugged on Mommy’s Little Helper pills to be afraid, but the same couldn’t be said for Leroy (Jovan Adepo) and Pauly (Rudy Mancusco). As the monster played with Leroy’s mind, Pauly ended up sacrificing himself to protect Will (Blake Cameron James), who the soldiers found roaming the sewers.
Elsewhere, Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) was shipped off to Shawshank Prison after being wrongfully accused of killing the kids back in the premiere episode. Luckily (or unluckily) something attacked the bus on the way there and Hank survived. He sought refuge in the home of Ingrid Kersh — the woman who befriended Lily (Clara Stack) while the girl was in Juniper Hill Asylum. Hank didn’t just pick this home out of the blue — Ingrid is the woman Hank has been sleeping with and would be his alibi for the night of the killings if it wouldn’t also endanger her for him to tell.
But Hank might have bigger problems if this Mrs. Kersh is connected to the same Mrs. Kersh who appears in “It: Chapter Two.”
How does Ingrid Kersh connect to the creepiest scene in “It: Chapter Two”
Toward the end of the episode, Ingrid found Charlotte (Taylour Paige) to tell her she had Hank hidden in the woods as a manhunt for him kicked off. She introduced herself as Mrs. Kersh. For fans of the film series, this should send a wave a dread washing over them.
In “It: Chapter Two,” when the Losers Club return to Derry to face Pennywise once again, Beverly (Jessica Chastain) returns to the old apartment she lived in with her dad. She goes to the door and there is a woman named Mrs. Kersh who answers and invites her in for tea. Beverly explains why she is there as Mrs. Kersh prepares the drinks, but something is clearly off as the old woman scurries around behind Beverly as she looks around her old home.
Eventually, she stumbles on a photo of likely Mrs. Kersh as a young girl with Bob Gray at a carnival. Bob Gray being one of the many personas of Pennywise, and apparently also Mrs. Kersh’s father. Shortly after, the apartment is revealed to be another mind game from the monster as Kersh morphs into a gangly monster and the apartment returns to its destitute state as Beverly escapes.
These implications mean a few possible things. One being that Ingrid has really been Pennywise all along and has been sleeping with Hank knowing it would sew chaos in the future. Another is that Ingrid might be working with the clown in some way since the monster latched on to the Bob Gray persona at some point in the past that might be explored in a later season of the show. There is also a chance that the Mrs. Kersh is just a created memory of Ingrid that Pennywise conjured up from one of his past killing cycles in a pinch.
Whatever the case is, probably best for less people to be trusting Ingrid Kersh as the rest of the season plays out.
What is happening with Dick Hallorann and his lock boxes?
Episode 5 was so jam-packed it even included a deeper flashback into Dick Hallorann’s abusive upbringing by his grandparents and connections to skillsets he previously explained to Danny Torrance in “Doctor Sleep.” After making contact with Pennywise again in the sewers, the monster gets in the soldier’s head via memories of his grandfather and ends up using him to break open Hallorann’s lock boxes.
These boxes are a way to keep the various ghosts that The Shining helps Dick see and interact with safely at bay. He explains this to Danny in “Doctor Sleep” after the incident at the Overlook Hotel and Danny uses lock boxes of his own to trap the hotel’s ghosts that continue to haunt him even after the fact. Opening the boxes can be dangerous, Danny uses them to fight Rose the Hat at the end of “Doctor Sleep” and they tear the woman apart so Dick’s boxes being open here is just the latest bad omen to hit Derry.
“It: Welcome to Derry” releases new episodes Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
