'IT: Welcome to Derry' episode 6: Is Mrs Kersh really Pennywise's daughter?

As IT: Welcome to Derry progresses, the number of familiar faces continues to stack up.

The most recent of these is Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe), the Juniper Hill worker who is in a secret relationship with Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), and whose notable last name we finally learned in episode 5. In the IT movies and in Stephen King's novel, Mrs Kersh is an elderly woman visited by Beverly Marsh, who turns out to be the creature in one of its many forms.

In the show, however, she appears to be a real person. And episode 6 finally gives us some interesting new information about her.

So what exactly happens, and what might it mean for her character?

What happens in IT: Welcome to Derry episode 6?

A spiralling Lilly (Clara Stack) visits Mrs Kersh's house in episode 6, only to find black-and-white photographs from 1908 of a young Ingrid with a familiar-looking man in a clown costume.

"My father was a carnival performer," says Mrs Kersh, who seems disturbingly elated at the idea Lilly has seen IT. "He called himself Pennywise the Dancing Clown. I adored him. And he was taken from me. The carnival moved on but I stayed in Derry. I suppose you could say I felt...drawn."

In a black-and-white flashback, we see a younger Mrs Kersh encountering Pennywise – who she thinks is her father – while working at Juniper Hill. Even when he chomps through a child in front of her, she doesn't seem put off.

"It was him," says Mrs Kersh. "Different, perhaps, changed by whatever he'd been through, or wherever he'd been. Oh, but it was him all the same. A daughter knows."

But is she really related to Pennywise, or is something else going on here?

Is Mrs Kersh really Pennywise's daughter?

The short answer is no, almost certainly not. Pennywise is an ancient alien entity who loves reaching into the minds of humans and borrowing their fears and traumas as disguises. He may well have used Mrs Kersh's father as inspiration for his clown name and identity, but it's clear from his reaction to Mrs Kersh calling him "papa" (confusion followed by laughter) that the connection is only in her head.

"Every time that he returned this shadow would steal my father away," Mrs Kersh tells Lilly. "I had to find a way to free him. So I did what I had to to see him again."

What seems far more likely than Mrs Kersh actually being related to Pennywise is that the creature decided to use her as a means to find more children to feed itself with. We know from the book and movies that IT sometimes treats vulnerable adults as pawns – it seems most likely that Ingrid is just another Henry Bowers.

New episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.