The Stephen King adaptation wrapped up its first season Sunday night on HBO with a little slice of fan service.
It: Welcome to Derry is a direct prequel to Andy Muschietti’s It and It Chapter Two. So it’s not surprising that Muschietti and the rest of the team behind the HBO series brought back some familiar names and faces—other than Pennywise, of course—along the way.
Earlier in the season, fans learned the backstory of doomed clown Bob Gray and his daughter, Ingrid. After losing her father to Pennywise, Ingrid stayed in Derry, got a job at Juniper Hill Asylum, and married the local butcher. She became Ingrid Kersh and was played in Derry’s main timeline of 1962 by Madeleine Stowe.
Fans of It Chapter Two sat up tall when Ingrid’s last name was revealed in episode five: Kersh, as in Mrs. Kersh, the creepy old lady-slash-Pennywise disguise (played by Joan Gregson) that Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain) encounters during a return trip to Derry? Yes. It’s her, in a manner of speaking. And we know this because of what was revealed about Ingrid’s later years in It: Welcome to Derry‘s finale, the cheekily titled “Winter Fire.”
In “Winter Fire,” we see that Ingrid becomes a permanent Juniper Hill resident after encountering Pennywise—after seeking him out and doing some awful things to tempt him into appearing—and realizing, once and for all, he was not her father anymore.
