Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The Nun II.
The Big Picture
- The Nun II effectively bridges the entire Conjuring franchise together, connecting the main films and the Nun movies.
- The end-credits scene features a familiar residence in Connecticut and Ed and Lorraine Warren answering a call for help.
- The Nun II establishes a connection between Sister Irene and Lorraine Warren, both descendants of Saint Lucy, with Valak continuing to haunt them.
The latest installment in the Conjuring franchise is finally here. The eighth film in an increasingly spooky cinematic universe, The Nun II does a fantastic job of bridging the entire series together. Despite the obvious connection of Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet), I’d be lying if I said I didn’t go into the film looking for a deeper connection between the Nun movies and the main Conjuring films. Given the casting of both Vera Farmiga and Taissa Farmiga in the same franchise — real-life sisters and both accomplished scream queens — fans have been searching for a connection between their two characters since 2018. Now, we finally have our answer!
Directed by Michael Chaves, The Nun II follows the second biblical cage match between the demon Valak (Bonnie Aarons) and Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), and begins to dig into some of the established lore of The Conjuring. If you want to get the full picture of how these two branches of the franchise overlap you’ll definitely want to stay seated for an end-credits scene that will have audiences eagerly awaiting The Conjuring: Last Rites. The rest of this article contains major spoilers for The Nun II and its end-credits scene.
What Happens in the End-Credits Scene of ‘The Nun II’?
After the movie fades to black and a creepy reel of old-timey footage plays over the credits, we find ourselves at a familiar residence in New England — Connecticut to be exact! Cleverly using footage that was cut from The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It — also directed by Chaves — Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) make their third appearance in the franchise outside of the main The Conjuring movies. We see a familiar shot of the Warrens’ mailbox as a phone rings from inside the house. Someone, possibly a friend of their daughter Judy, shouts into the backyard for “Mr. Warren.” The call is for him. From the Conjuring franchise mainstay, it’s Father Gordon (Steve Coulter), a priest who frequently sends the Warrens to families that the church has turned a blind eye to. Ed and Lorraine come into their kitchen to answer the call, naturally asking how they can help.
With stills of this scene having been released during the promotional run of The Devil Made Me Do It, Chaves has previously explained that this footage was cut from an alternate plot that didn’t make it into the final version of the film. It’s an effective way to finally get that scene on screen in a part of the story where it alludes to what might be waiting in the next chapter.
Who are Ed and Lorraine Warren?
If you’re this deep into the Conjuring Franchise, you likely already know who Ed and Lorraine are — but just in case you’ve only seen The Nun and The Nun II, here’s a small primer. The core Conjuring movies are based on the real-life case files of ’70s demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. Since the first film, the franchise has evolved into its own fictional universe that follows Ed and Lorraine and some of the most terrifying spooks and specters that they’ve faced in their attempts to help families suffering from hauntings and demonic possession.
Frenchie (played by Christof Veillon) can be seen in a video used during a seminar led by Ed and Lorraine. They show footage of Frenchie as an example of what a person under demonic possession might look like. It’s suggested in The Conjuring that Frenchie does end up killing himself after attempting to kill his wife, and in The Conjuring 2 — also where we first meet Valak — we see the rest of what happened when Ed and Lorraine attempted to help save Frenchie. This is the first time that Valak forces a twisted vision of Ed’s death on Lorraine, and it’s implied that she’s haunted by the demon until their ultimate showdown at the end of The Conjuring 2.
How Are Sister Irene and Lorraine Warren Connected in ‘The Nun II’?
With Akela Cooper‘s clever script and some expert editing of previous footage, The Nun II effectively links Irene and Lorraine as descendants of Saint Lucy. The Nun II establishes that the demon Valak was a fallen angel who had been seeking a way to regain her angelic power. Saint Lucy, the patron saint of the blind, is featured heavily throughout The Nun II first in a painting, then a symbol on a rosary, and ultimately in both Irene and Lorraine. When Sister Irene and her companion Sister Debra (Storm Reid) visit the Catholic archives they learn that Saint Lucy was murdered by Pagans and that Valak had been present at Saint Lucy’s death and has been hunting for a holy relic passed down through her family for generations: her eyes. In a moment of realization for Irene, she understands that her clairvoyance was something she inherited from her mother, and the audience is treated to a brief montage of eyes belonging to Saint Lucy, Irene’s mother, Irene herself, and that truly iconic shot of Lorraine’s eyes in The Conjuring 2.
Lorraine and Irene don’t interact in the movie, which makes sense as their stories take place about two and a half decades apart, but it’s clear that they are cut from the same cloth. While we’ll have to wait until The Conjuring: Last Rites to see where Ed and Lorraine are off on their next mission, the inclusion of this moment in the end credits seems to imply that Valak may not be done haunting the descendants of Saint Lucy.
