Last week on It: Welcome to Derry, we learned some important new details about Madeleine Stowe’s character Ingrid, the head housekeeper at Juniper Hill Asylum who befriends the troubled Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack).
Even when Lilly’s no longer a patient, she seeks out the kindly older woman for comfort and advice—and why not, considering Derry is a hellscape and positive role models are hard to come by? However, every Stephen King fan watching was startled to learn last week that Ingrid’s last name is “Kersh.” As in Mrs. Kersh, the manifestation of Pennywise that torments the original It character Beverly Marsh. What’s the connection exactly? This week’s sixth episode lifted the lid on who Ingrid Kersh is and what her motivations are for being such a good friend to Lilly.
First, though, let’s look back at what else we know about Mrs. Kersh from Welcome to Derry so far. We know she’s the alibi for accused killer Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider); he was with her when the movie-theater massacre took place in episode one. But she’s a married white woman—making her connection with Hank taboo on multiple levels, especially in a small town circa 1962.
We don’t know what will become of her relationship with Hank now that he’s a fugitive. The show may pick back up with them eventually. But so far, we’ve witnessed many more scenes between her and Lilly, starting in episode three.
© HBO
Lilly’s wrapping up a brief return to Juniper Hill Asylum after a breakdown in the grocery store—you’d need your medication adjusted too if you saw your dead father’s head in a pickle jar—and is sharing a moment with her pal Ingrid before she goes.
“It’s going to be okay, dear,” Ingrid reassures her; clearly, Lilly has unloaded many woes on her, including her rift with Ronnie (Amanda Christine), who happens to be Hank’s daughter.
“My father used to say that life is about the journey,” Ingrid continues. “But I think it’s more about who you take that journey with. And if this Ronnie means as much to you as it sounds, you’re going to find a way to make things right somehow.”
She also offers this very welcome reassurance: “If you tell me that you’ve seen the impossible, then I believe you. Most people, they only believe what they can see with their own eyes.”
Ingrid Kersh says all the right things, and it happens again in episode three when Lilly seeks her out again. The kids are starting to poke into Derry’s grim history, and Lilly wants Ingrid’s insights.
“I do remember some kids going missing in the ‘30s,” Ingrid muses, though she claims she hasn’t thought about that in years. It was the Depression. Times were tough back then.
She’s encouraging of Lilly’s detective work, though: “My father always said that with good friends at your side, anything’s possible. And it sounds like you have those.”
In episode five, we learn she’s Ingrid Kersh, married to an unpleasant man who mostly cares about how his steak is cooked. Lilly runs to her with the news that Matty—the boy who went missing at the beginning of Welcome to Derry’s first episode—has somehow escaped his prolonged captivity in the sewers. What’s worse, he’s pretty sure one of the kids from the theater, Phil, is still alive down there too.
Mrs. Kersh sensibly tells Lilly to go to the police, but it’s clear by now that authorities in Derry have zero patience for kids and their clown nonsense.
Mrs. Kersh, at least, is willing to listen, but she begs Lilly not to go to the sewer in search of Phil. Lilly agrees, but as we saw in episode five, it wouldn’t be a show about Pennywise if kids didn’t barge into Derry’s underground tunnels and find a demonic clown waiting for them.
Episode six begins with another flashback to an earlier Pennywise “cycle,” a glimpse into 1935. We see a younger version of Ingrid Kersh leading a little girl into the Juniper Hill Asylum basement because “this is where the clown told you to meet him.” A red balloon appears, which is never a good sign.
© HBO
Before we see the full scope of that encounter, we go back to Welcome to Derry’s present day. Lily has another freak-out, this time in math class when she sees her father’s pickled corpse slithering around in her desk. “Who’s gonna help you now, crazy?” the apparition cackles.
Who else but Lilly’s best friend in the world, and maybe only friend now that she’s on the outs with Ronnie and the rest? Ingrid doesn’t answer her door, but Lilly goes inside anyway. Sitting in plain view is a photo album, filled with wedding portraits and the like; the images get older and older as Lilly flips through, until we finally arrive at 1908 and see a man who is clearly Pennywise out of make-up.
It’s Ingrid’s father. The one with all the homespun advice. This is sinking in as Ingrid suddenly appears; instead of being angry about the intrusion, she gives the distraught Lilly a big hug, telling her, “Whatever it is, it’s going to be ok.”
Then, Lilly notices another photo over Ingrid’s shoulder. It’s the man from 1908, this time in full Pennywise regalia. Ingrid notices her looking at it and asks, “Have you seen him?”
Uh-oh. “You saw him! Oh, sweetheart, you did it! You brought him back!”
Lilly, growing ever more uneasy, spies a vintage clown costume and a pointy white wig; it’s exactly what the clown in the cemetery was wearing when the kids went on their photo mission. Later, we saw that same pointy wig spying outside Will’s house. It’s also what the little girl clown was wearing in the 1908 flashback in episode three.
“I thought he might appear that night. I was worried I might miss him!” Ingrid explains, admitting it was her in the graveyard with the kids. Then, she tells Lilly what we’ve already guessed: “My father was a carnival performer. He called himself Pennywise the Dancing Clown.” Also, “I adored him, and he was taken from me.”
There’s no elaboration beyond that, but we can guess her father was Bob Gray, a name known from It lore that Welcome to Derry’s creators have been teasing will appear. While we’re pondering what “he was taken” means, we go back into the 1930s and see that Ingrid overheard a young patient, Mabel, talking about Pennywise, only to be scolded, “There are no such things as clowns in pipes.”
Pennywise? As in, Ingrid’s long-lost father? With Mabel in tow, Ingrid heads to the basement, and it goes about how you’d expect. The sequence is filmed in black-and-white aside from pops of yellow (Pennywise’s eyes) and red (the balloon, Mabel’s blood), but despite witnessing a child devoured by a supernatural clown—a child she delivered up to be slaughtered—all it takes is an appearance from “Papa” to get Ingrid on board with the program.
© HBO
Bob Grey appears to his daughter, calling her “pumpkin” and saying he’s missed her. “Don’t be scared; I can explain everything. Just open the door and let me in! Everything’s gonna be all right!”
There’s a literal door that gets opened here, but you can infer that It wormed its way into Ingrid Kersh right then as well, exploiting her desire to reunite with her beloved father again.
“I did what I had to do to see him again,” she explains to Lilly, who is quaking in fright. “If he could just see me once more as his Periwinkle [Ingrid’s clown character], remind him of the love we shared, I know that he’ll be able to break free.”
Though Ingrid assures Lilly she would never let anything hurt her, how can you believe the word of a woman who’s been dressing up in a 50-year-old clown outfit trying to reconnect with her long-dead father? “No one who dies here ever really dies,” she tells Lilly. “Come with me tonight and let me show you!” Lilly’s response to this invitation is to slice her with the alien dagger and get the hell out of there.
This surely won’t be the only Bob Gray appearance on Welcome to Derry, especially since we now know that Ingrid has been trying to resurrect her father for 27 years—all while encouraging kids to believe the unbelievable, since kids are tasty bait for Pennywise.
We’re glad that Lilly has realized in Derry, you’d better be extremely careful before you trust anyone—even someone who appears completely harmless. It’s a lesson Beverly Marsh has to learn for herself decades later when she has her own encounter with Mrs. Kersh in It: Chapter Two.
New episodes of It: Welcome to Derry arrive Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
