Who is Bob Gray in It: Welcome to Derry? Bill Skarsgard’s second role explained
Brooke Palmer/HBOIt: Welcome to Derry Episode 6 reintroduced fans to Bob Gray, Bill Skarsgard’s second character in the series. Here’s who he is and why he’s in the show.
The sixth episode kicked things off with a stylish black and white flashback to 1935 as a nurse at Juniper Hill Asylum takes a young girl down into the basement to figure out why a strange man asked to meet her there in the middle of the night. It isn’t long before an ominous bright red balloon floats into shot, only to be grabbed by Pennywise himself.
Yes, the show is making full use of the clown now that he’s finally reared that ugly white head of his. But the episode carefully reveals more about Bob Gray, the man who inspired the alien creature to take on its identity as Pennywise in the first place.
Skarsgard reprises his role as Bob Gray from a brief scene in IT: Chapter Two when he terrorizes Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain), but the show reveals a surprising sidekick for the clown.
Who is Bob Gray in It: Welcome to Derry?
HBOBob Gray was the original version of Pennywise who performed in a travelling circus along with his daughter, Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe), who wore a similar clown outfit and was called Periwinkle. He was the human form of It who was “taken” from Ingrid during the creature’s hunting cycle in 1908.
It’s not clear why It decided to take Gray’s Pennywise persona as its own, but that will get answered in later seasons of the show. In the second flashback to Juniper Hill in 1935, a younger Nurse Kersh (Tyner Rushing) fails to save the little girl from being eaten by Pennywise, but when she looks through the window, her father’s face appears instead.
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In 1962, Ingrid admits to Lilly (Clara Stack) that she believes that her father and Pennywise are the same, telling the young girl that he’s “Different, perhaps changed by whatever he’d been through, or wherever he’d been.”
She then says that she dons her Periwinkle disguise because she thinks if It “could just see me once more as his Periwinkle, remind him of the love that we shared, I know that he’ll be able to break free.”
Surprisingly, she was the clown in the graveyard that the kids managed to take a picture of in Episode 3. For now, it seems like Ingrid is on a mission to save Bob Gray’s soul, but is she secretly in league with Pennywise?
Ingrid might be feeding Pennywise the children of Derry to get Bob Gray back
HBOThere’s an implication in the 1935 flashback that Ingrid isn’t actually affected by the young girl’s death – although she tried to save her at first, it did seem like she allowed it to happen because she saw Pennywise.
With that in mind, it’s possible that Ingrid has started feeding Pennywise the children of Derry in the hopes of getting Bob Gray back from the creature, or at least so that she can see him every 27 years when the cycle begins again. It’s clear from her reaction to Lilly recalling her encounter with Pennywise in the sewer that Ingrid hasn’t been able to see him for some time, and she’s elated that he’s back.
Ingrid tells her: “Lilly, you above all people should understand. If you could see your father again, hold him, be his little girl, wouldn’t you do everything you could to make that happen?”
Unfortunately for Ingrid, she will get closer to Pennywise than she ever expects, because she becomes the monstrous old woman that attacks Beverly in IT: Chapter Two. So it seems likely that she’ll get “taken” by Pennywise just like her father by the end of It: Welcome to Derry’s first season.
Until we learn more about what Pennywise has in store for Mrs. Kersh and the children, discover which It: Welcome to Derry scene scared Stephen King the most, learn about the plot hole that could’ve stopped Pennywise, and check out our list of the best horror movies of all time.