Madeleine Stowe Teases the It: Welcome to Derry Scene Shut Down by an Eerie Twist

Episode 7 of It: Welcome to Derry took a hard left turn with Ingrid Kersh, and Madeleine Stowe just explained why it landed the way it did. If you walked away thinking, wait, Ingrid did what and for who, you are not alone.

The reveal: Ingrid engineered the Black Spot tragedy

Here is the gut punch: Episode 7 confirms Ingrid set the Black Spot disaster in motion. Why? She believes Pennywise is her long-lost father, and she thought the catastrophe would lure him back. Yes, that is as bleak and complicated as it sounds.

Was Ingrid using Hank from the start? Stowe says that is not the full story

Stowe told the New York Times that the original plan for Episode 7 actually flirted with a different beat: producers considered a scene where Ingrid rushes in to try to save Hank and his daughter. In other words, the show toyed with making her crisis of conscience a lot more explicit.

'Her feelings for him are very real.'

That save scene got cut. Not because Ingrid did not care, but to underline that her loyalty to her father overrides everything once the supernatural starts flaring up around her. Stowe frames it as a tragic slide: Ingrid believes she is doing the right thing, and that devotion grows bigger than her feelings for Hank. She is not plotting like a classic villain; she is leaning into a belief system that pushes her into choices she never thought she would make.

Why Ingrid does not read as a standard Big Bad

Stowe was clear about playing Ingrid’s moral messiness: Ingrid is not driven by cruelty. She does not even see her actions as harmful. In her mind, this is an act of love. She has been frozen in time since she lost her mother and, crucially, her father Bob Grey (aka Pennywise). Stowe describes Ingrid as stunted by grief and by the illusions IT spun around her, stuck waiting for the impossible and convinced she can pull her father out of IT and bring him back to himself.

Episode 7 also shows Ingrid staring into the Deadlights. That does not exactly clear the fog. By the end, she is alive but hauled off in restraints, silently locking eyes with Ronnie and Will on the way out. Eerie, to put it mildly.

The Muschiettis say the finale will wreck you

Speaking to Collider, Barbara Muschietti did not hedge about the finale.

'The audience will be destroyed.'

Andy Muschietti followed by promising a payoff that is more emotional than you might expect and hinting at a structural twist tied to why the show is told in reverse.

'It is a very emotional ending. There is a feeling of closure. Of course, everybody that knows the movies knows that IT is alive in 1989, but there is a trick. There is something that happens and it is related to the reason we are telling the story backwards. Nothing is what it looks like in this world.'

Where Episode 7 left things heading into the finale

• The military finally finds and extracts the first pillar, which turns out to be made from the same material as the magical dagger.
• Shaw orders a physical workup on the pillar to speed up the hunt for the rest. Leroy warns him off. Shaw ignores it and burns the pillar anyway.
• That bright idea wakes IT mid-sleep cycle.
• IT shows up at Will’s house and attacks him, while Ingrid, rattled by the Deadlights, is carted away in restraints.

So, yes, Ingrid may have lit the fuse for a monster she believes is her dad, and the people in charge just poured gasoline on it. Place your finale bets. It: Welcome to Derry is streaming on HBO Max.