‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Explained: Is Mrs. Kersh Pennywise’s Daughter?

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for It: Chapter Two and It: Welcome to Derry.

HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry has captivated audiences by amplifying one of the most recognizable texts in genre history. Stephen King‘s 1986 novel It, follows the Losers’ Club, a group of seven unpopular tweens who find themselves hunted by an interdimensional monster. Commonly known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård), It lurks in the sewers, emerging every twenty-seven years to terrorize its young prey by shifting into the form of the child’s greatest nightmare.

King’s novel unfolds in dual timelines as the Losers’ Club battles this shapeshifting entity both in childhood and as adults. Interspersed between these segments are chapters titled Interludes that chronicle other disturbing events in Derry’s dark history. 

Created by Andy and Barbara Muschietti along with showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane, each season of It: Welcome to Derry centers on one of the monsters’ feeding cycles, but seaon one’s episode 6, “In the Name of the Father,” fleshes out one of the novel’s more mysterious chapters. After returning to Derry as adults, the Losers, save for Mike, must recover their memories via “walking tours” throughout the town to reacquaint themselves with their frightening past.

Beverly Marsh finds herself walking towards her childhood home, hoping for — or dreading — a reunion with her abusive father, Alvin. But when she knocks on the apartment door, she meets someone even more dangerous. Mrs. Kersh appears to be a friendly old woman, but she’s hiding a horrific secret. For years, Constant Readers have speculated about the identity of this peculiar woman, wondering if she could be the monster’s daughter. Named for this cryptic relationship, “In the Name of the Father” clarifies her connection to the shapeshifting beast. 

Madeleine Stowe as Mrs. Kersh in “It: Welcome to Derry.” Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO

King’s original version of this encounter is a nightmare wrapped in a fairy tale. When an elegant older woman answers the door, Beverly realizes that she’s misread the name over the bell, mistaking Marsh for Kersh. The new occupant of her childhood home reluctantly informs Bev that her father is dead before inviting the stunned woman in for tea. King describes a tall woman in her late seventies with hair that is “long and gorgeous, mostly white but shot through with lodes of purest gold. Behind her rimless spectacles were eyes as blue as the water in the fjords her ancestors had perhaps hailed from. She wore a purple dress of watered silk. It was shabby but still dignified. Her wrinkled face was kind.” 

Wandering through the suite of rooms, Bev is surprised to find a much sunnier dwelling than the one she shared with her lecherous father. Her old bedroom has been turned into a sewing studio, and she marvels at an ornate cedar trunk engraved with the letters R.G. While preparing snacks, Mrs. Kersh explains that she immigrated from Sweden in 1920 at the age of fourteen and worked at the local hospital. Her husband made a series of successful investments, allowing her financial security in her twilight years. Yet, sitting down to tea, the handsome old woman begins to change. Beverly first notices the woman’s yellowing and jumbled teeth, far from the pearly whites she noticed at the door. As her hostess gulps her tea, Bev notices that her eyes have also begun to change from deep blue to a sinister yellow, tinged with dashes of red. 

As she slowly transforms into a shrunken hag, Mrs. Kersh begins to taunt Beverly with her family connection. Referencing her “fadder,” she explains, “His name is Robert Gray, better known as Bob Gray, better known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. However, that was not his name, either. But he did love his jokes, my fadder.” She will go on to insist that she was born from the monster’s “asshole“ and that they are “the last of a dying race … the only survivors of a dying planet.“ She and Pennywise “are one“ and have been looking forward to feasting on the returning Losers. Later, we will learn that the entity known as It is indeed from another dimension and has been tormenting Derry since before the dawn of modern man. 

Joan Gregson as Mrs. Kersh in It: Chapter Two

As the woman begins to grow more monstrous, her apartment also begins to change. A wooden table now appears to be made of fudge while the floorboards transform into gooey chocolate bars. Mrs. Kersh has become the witch from Hansel and Gretel and threatens to push Beverly into her human-sized oven, an interesting reference considering the author’s newest publication is Hansel and Gretel, a horrifying children’s book chronicling the famous fairy tale. Bev remembers being terrified by the story’s cannibalistic plot before noticing that the creature has shifted once again. Her father, Alvin, now screams from within Mrs. Kersh’s purple dress, voicing previously unspoken threats of sexual abuse. He will go on to transform into the recognizable clown and chase Beverly out of the apartment. Sprawled on the sidewalk, she’s shocked to find the building boarded up and abandoned. This disturbing encounter has been an illusion. 

Intentionally vague, this chapter has tantalized Constant Readers for decades. Who is this mysterious Robert Gray/R.G., and is his daughter a human being or another manifestation of the entity? The most commonly accepted theory is that Robert Gray was once a human circus performer known for dazzling the local children. Taking note of this talent, It likely ate Mr. Gray and appropriated his clown character as a default persona. But what of Mrs. Kersh? Was she, too, a real person, eaten and absorbed alongside her father? Considering her transformation, the literary Mrs. Kersh does seem to have supernatural powers or at least the ability to syphon off Its transformative skill.

Further complicating the matter, later chapters reveal that It is not only female, but pregnant. Taking the form of a giant spider — the closest our human minds can come to picturing this otherworldly beast — the adult Losers scramble to destroy dozens of eggs that It has laid in the sewer system. Perhaps Mrs. Kersh is one of these babies, hatched from eggs laid in a previous cycle. 

Muschietti revisits this frightening sequence in his 2019 adaptation It: Chapter Two, which follows the adult Losers’ return to Derry. While substantively similar, Muschietti adds a bit of visual flair and certainty to King’s vague narrative. This Mrs. Kersh (Joan Gregson) is a bit more unkempt, but also invites Beverly (Jessica Chastain) in for tea. However, we see her moving with inhuman jerks in the background as her guest tours her pleasant home. Sitting down to chat, Mrs. Kersh mentions growing uncomfortably hot and fans her collar to reveal blistered and melted flesh beneath. As she excuses herself to bring out some cookies, Bev asks her about family photos lining the walls.

From the darkened kitchen, Mrs. Kersh tells Beverly about her “fadder“ who came to America as an immigrant before joining the circus. As she drops this bit of unsettling information, Bev notices an ominous portrait. A tall man in a suit stands with a frowning little girl in front of a stage wagon emblazoned with the words, “Pennywise the Dancing Clown.“ His strangely sinister grin resembles the murderous monster we’ve come to know and fear. 

As Beverly digests this revelation, Mrs. Kersh — now naked and monstrous — launches an attack. A gangly and still-growing banshee, she chases Beverly from the apartment and into a maze of crumbling halls. At the far end, Beverly sees a door slowly open, and the man we assume to be Robert Gray (Skarsgård) shows his face. After soaping white makeup onto his skin, he claws the iconic red slashes down his cheeks, transforming into Pennywise before her eyes. He screams to her about saving the others, referencing her harrowing vision of the Losers’ Club’s destruction. Though Muschietti does not explicitly reference Robert Gray or R.G, this scene confirms Its use of the once-human circus performer’s iconic face. 

Set two cycles before this interaction, It: Welcome to Derry provides an origin story for this sinister encounter. We first meet a younger Mrs. Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe) in 1962 as a kind housekeeper at the Juniper Hill asylum. Lilly (Clara Stack) turns to the compassionate woman for advice on how to navigate the dangerous events plaguing the town. On her latest trip to Ingrid’s house, she wanders into the woman’s attic. Thumbing through a family photo album, Lilly sees the grinning circus performer that will one day grace the walls of Beverly’s childhood home. But as she embraces the mysterious woman, she sees a more damning portrait. Hidden behind other decorations is a framed portrait of Robert Gray in full costume. His elaborate white shirt and pants are identical to those worn by the murderous clown, yet rather than an oblong and cracked forehead, he wears a bald cap outfitted with stylized red hair. 

Photograph courtesy of HBO

Noting the girl’s unease, Mrs. Kersh realizes that Lilly has seen her “fadder“ and insists this connection has “brought him back.“ A flashback to 1935 shows a younger Ingrid (Tyner Rushing) working at the hospital. She leads a little girl named Mabel (Madeleine Cox) into the boiler room for a clandestine meeting with a mysterious friend the girl calls Pennywise. Equipped with his eerie red balloon, It does appear and makes momentary pleasantries before chasing them both through the industrial room. Mrs. Kersh is unable to save Mabel and screams in terror as the child’s blood pools under the steel door. But moments later, the murderous clown has transformed into her father. Beckoning to his “pumpkin“ through the glass window, Robert Gray convinces Ingrid to open the door. 

Back in 1962, Mrs. Kersh explains to Lilly that she believes she’s finally found her long-lost father, and his strange behavior can be explained away by “whatever he’s been through or wherever he’s been.“ Further flashbacks imply that she’s been luring children towards the monster, hoping with each sighting to free her father from whatever spell he’s fallen under. Once called Periwinkle, we learn that Ingrid has been donning her own clown costume and menacing children throughout the town. Lilly’s glance at her cottony-white wig reveals that she is the clown we see sitting near the freak show entrance in 1908, and she’s been lurking outside the Hanlon home. It’s Ingrid who was photographed in the cemetery, explaining why her image doesn’t disappear along with the other ghostly apparitions. The episode ends with Mrs. Kersh ominously donning the Periwinkle costume, foreshadowing more danger for the children of Derry. 

While this chapter gives us a satisfactory backstory for the frightening Mrs. Kersh, her future remains a mystery. Terrified by these revelations, Lilly gashes Indgrid’s hand with a ceremonial knife fashioned to battle the entity. Mrs. Kersh smears blood on Lilly’s back, indicating her current humanity, but we’ve yet to see how she will become the humanoid monster who terrorizes Beverly more than 50 years in the future. Has she been trapped in It’s deadlights, a hypnotic force known to cause insanity? Will she suffer the same mysterious fate as her long-lost father and become another of Its transformative faces?

Just two episodes remain in the first season of It: Welcome to Derry, promising answers to these disturbing questions. 

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