The Craft: Legacy Director Confirms [SPOILER] Was Raped

Warning: This post contains spoilers through the end of The Craft: Legacy. 

Zoe Lister-Jones, director of The Craft: Legacy has confirmed that new character Lily was a product of the rape of a returning character. Lister-Jones wrote and directed the sequel/reboot to the cult classic 1996 movie The Craft, which stars Cailee Spaeny, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone and Zoey Luna as the new coven of witches. The movie released on VOD this week, just in time for Halloween, and unfortunately reviews were mostly tepid.

However, fans are still watching, and have been shocked by the movie’s twist ending, which reveals that main character Lily (Spaeny) isn’t actually the daughter of Michelle Monghan’s character, Helen. Rather, she was adopted by Helen, and her real mother is one of Helen’s former patients, Nancy, who was one of the witches in the original, played by Fairuza Balk. That ending sets up The Craft 3, something Lister-Jones has said was part of her plan when writing The Craft: Legacy, and now she’s revealed a bit more of Nancy’s back story that might come up in a potential third film.

Speaking to Collider in a spoiler-filled interview, Lister-Jones says that, as many have speculated, Lily is a product of rape, and the terrible incident is one of the reasons Nancy is in an institution dealing with her mental illness. The director adds that she is interested in exploring more about how Lily may have inherited Nancy’s trauma in a potential third movie, hinting that Balk’s character will play a much bigger role if the franchise continues.

There’s a whole backstory for her [Nancy] which Michelle Monaghan’s character alludes to, which is that Lily was a product of rape. I pictured Nancy’s journey after the scene that we left her in in the original in the institution as being one that was really tragic, but that she pushed through. But her struggle with mental illness, especially having been told that her powers were a curse essentially, would have led her to a place of defeat and so we did talk about that, where she would be in this outpatient facility and why she would be there and if she would be there by choice, which we really thought she would be, that it felt like the safest place for her to be in a world that had been very unkind to her. I’m just really interested in the ways in which women inherit trauma, and so that then of course will be further explored, hopefully one day, in the story between Lily and Fairuza[‘s character, Nancy].

Whether that third films happens is a topic for much debate. Fans will have to respond in a big way to The Craft: Legacy, especially since its been released on VOD rather than theaters. If it does do well enough, though, it’s clear that Lister-Jones already has a plan for the third movie. Hopefully, by exploring Nancy’s backstory in more depth, The Craft 3 can be less messy and forgettable than The Craft: Legacy is, and live up to the original’s reputation as a cult classic.

It will also be interesting to see how Lister-Jones deals with Nancy’s rape in a potential third film, and if the rapist is revealed as Lily’s father. Hopefully that doesn’t form part of the main plot, as the most interesting aspect of the dynamic is Lily’s connection to her mother, Nancy, and the original coven of witches. For now, fans of The Craft: Legacy and the 1996 original will have to comb through both movies for any potential clues as to what happens in the third.

Source: Collider

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Daniel Gillespie
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Daniel Gillespie has been a writer and editor since 2009.

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