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The fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry is loaded with fresh details, offering the most vivid glimpse yet at Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. However, with so much baked into one episode, a subtle reveal might have been overlooked completely, and it's a aspect that deserves attention.

After Jovan Adepo's character uncovers that Derry is more or less a supernatural containment 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 Shawshank State Prison was attacked. 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. However, once in the woods, the two embrace with a kiss.

Hank claims the bus was attacked (presumably by Pennywise), allowing him to break free. He then asks Ingrid to locate a person who can help him demonstrate his innocence for the cinema killings.

At the end of the episode, Ingrid reaches out to meet with Mrs. Hanlon, 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 Kersh, Ingrid. You don’t know me, but we have a mutual friend,” she says.

If that surname is familiar, 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 one of the Losers' Club mistakenly visits, who eventually turns out to be one of Pennywise’s many forms. 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 entirely possible that Ingrid and Mrs. Kersh identical.

In It: Chapter 2, which shares the same continuity as Welcome to Derry, Mrs. Kersh has a couple of clues: the way she enunciates the word “father” and the line “nobody in Derry ever really dies,” both of which Ingrid has said, respectively, throughout the season, in a similar cadence to the film.

If Mrs. Kersh is indeed an actual person and not just a form of It, 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 probably encounter with the otherworldly being.

In a earlier discussion, Stephen Rider noted how pleased he feels about the latest story developments 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 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 real identity of Ingrid is likely imminent. And if she really is Mrs. Kersh, Ingrid will join the long list of fated individuals fated to become entwined with Pennywise for years into the future.