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IT: Welcome to Derry starts its chaos right from episode one, but Episode 6 finally drops the bomb everyone’s been waiting for. So who exactly is Periwinkle in IT: Welcome to Derry, and why is this clown so important?
The short answer is that Periwinkle is Ingrid Kersh’s clown identity, and she created it because she’s obsessed with finding her father, the original Pennywise.
And the long answer? Well, that’s where things get super creepy, super sad, and honestly kind of heartbreaking.
Let’s break down Periwinkle properly because this reveal changes everything.
Spoiler Alert for Episode 6!
Periwinkle’s origin story in IT: Welcome to Derry is way darker than anyone expected
If you’ve been following IT: Welcome to Derry like your life depends on it, Periwinkle’s reveal in Episode 6 might've hit like a truck. The show takes us back to 1935, where young Ingrid Kersh is working at Juniper Hill.
She isn’t scared of Pennywise at all, which already feels wrong, and then we find out why. Ingrid spent her whole childhood performing with her dad, who was a clown named Bob Gray. She even had her own little clown act called Periwinkle. That bond is huge for her, and it basically shapes her entire life.
But then her dad disappears during one of Derry’s earlier cycles. Ingrid grows up believing Pennywise swallowed her father whole and somehow kept a piece of him inside. So every time a kid at the asylum whispers about seeing “a clown downstairs,” Ingrid gets this spark of hope.
She thinks her dad is calling her. That hope is what leads her to make awful choices, including letting a kid walk straight into Pennywise’s trap because she wanted to see if it really was Bob Gray.
Over time, she convinces herself that Pennywise is just her dad “changed,” and says,
“It was him. Different, perhaps changed by whatever he’d been through, or wherever he’d been. But it was him all the same.”
That line just breaks your brain. It shows how long she’s been trying to pull Bob Gray out from under Pennywise’s control. And that’s how Periwinkle, the clown identity she once used on stage, becomes the one thing she thinks can bring him back.
Periwinkle has been around the show since Episode 3
The craziest part about IT: Welcome to Derry is that the show has been sneaking Periwinkle into scenes since Episode 3, and some of ya'll may have not even clocked it. That tiny clown watching Francis in the circus flashback? That wasn’t Pennywise. That was Periwinkle.
The clown in the graveyard that Will snapped with his camera? Also Periwinkle. And when Will was peeking outside with his telescope and saw a clown staring back? Yup. Still Periwinkle. Ingrid was literally right there the whole time.
By the time Lilly ends up in Mrs. Kersh’s attic in Episode 6, everything finally clicks. The costumes. The old photos. Pictures of her and Bob Gray from 1908. And that moment is where Lilly realizes she’s been confiding in the same woman who has been dressing up as Periwinkle to stalk her and her friends.
Ingrid doesn’t even deny it. She tells her straight up that she dresses as Periwinkle to “see him again” and to “remind him of the love that we shared.”
It makes every earlier scene creepier in hindsight because Ingrid wasn’t acting under Pennywise’s spell. She was doing it because she believed she could free her father.
She thinks Pennywise is hiding Bob Gray deep inside, and every kid she scares brings her one step closer to getting him back. It’s twisted, but it also shows how completely trapped she is inside her own grief.
Periwinkle’s presence connects every major horror event in the show
The reveal of Periwinkle isn’t just for shock value. It ties together almost everything happening in IT: Welcome to Derry. Ingrid has survived multiple Pennywise cycles, which explains why she remembers way more than anyone should. She was there during the 1908 chaos. She witnessed what happened in 1935. And she’s still in Derry in 1962, doing whatever she can to make Pennywise notice her.
Her connection to Hank also suddenly makes sense. Their relationship wasn’t just messy drama. Ingrid might’ve used it as a way to get closer to Ronnie and the other kids. If she thought Pennywise could appear again through them, she would follow them anywhere.
Meanwhile, Pennywise is influencing the town’s adults, including the racists heading toward the Black Spot. It’s a terrifying setup because it mirrors the exact horror described in Stephen King’s novel.
And now that Ingrid is fully dressed as Periwinkle at the end of Episode 6, she’s basically stepping into the same nightmare she thinks she can control. She doesn't realize Pennywise isn’t Bob Gray at all. It was never her father. She’s chasing a ghost that doesn’t exist, and the only thing waiting for her is more mayhem and more blood.
Periwinkle in IT: Welcome to Derry isn’t just another creepy clown. She’s Ingrid Kersh’s entire life story turned into a tragedy. The show uses Periwinkle to pull together the past, present, and future of Derry’s horror, and it explains why Ingrid is one of the most dangerous people in the series.
Her love for her father is the thing Pennywise twists the hardest, and that’s what makes Periwinkle one of the scariest characters we’ve seen so far.
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