John Cena’s Retirement Is the Final Chapter of a Superhero Story

Since 2002, John Cena embodied a mythos usually reserved for comic book characters. Now his wrestling retirement run has felt less like a farewell and more like the final act of a saga that has spanned across different timelines. It’s a significant event that challenges everyone who has been on this journey with him to […]

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This week sees the release of the “final” film (or so they say) in the Conjuring Universe, The Conjuring: Last Rites. In all four of the mainline Conjuring movies, there are  life and death stakes for the fictional versions of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson onscreen. Given how involved the real-life Judy Warren and late Lorraine Warren have been as advisors for the Conjuring Universe films, it was never likely that franchise stewards James Wan or Michael Chaves would stoop to Tarantino-esque historical subterfuge where Ed get killed by a demon and dragged to hell. We know the Warrens survived all their cases. 

That said, we asked star Farmiga and Wilson how they continually pull off the magic trick of investing the audience in the Warrens’ fate within these high-tension horror stories.

“It’s a good question,” Wilson says. “They both went on. Lorraine had about another 40 years after this, and Ed about 30. I don’t know… how do you pull the audience along? I think it’s always life and death for the families, and it’s life and death for them. Specifically with Ed, we had done so much work on his heart attack. I was very conscious of ‘guys we can’t keep going back to the well on that.’ It’s got to be new. We have to have a new demon, so to speak.”

According to series producer and Last Rites story creator James Wan, choosing which real-life haunting case the Warrens investigated is the key to unlocking an audience’s rooting interest for each film in the series. In this movie, this meant tying in the fate of the Smurl family, a new bedeviled set of characters whose case is the centerpiece of the film, with that of the Warrens’ own daughter, Judy. Their child nearly dies at birth in the film’s opening scene, then two decades later becomes integral to the Smurl investigation alongside her own impending marriage.

As Wan explains, “One of the big factors we look into is if a particular case is A) well known enough, and B) if it ties in with the emotional story of what we want to tell with the Warrens’ dynamic.”

“It wasn’t up to us,” Farmiga notes. “It’s a very interesting question to discuss. It’s hard with spoilers and all that, but it is up to the writers. They had to make it life or death, for a couple to go through a stillbirth. There are life and death circumstances that were written into the plot of this, and this is the most bloodthirsty demon they could have written that has a very personal grudge. It was up to the writers to make it personal, emotionally and with veracity.”

Wilson adds, “You know what it is too, Vera? In terms of loss, right? Because if you’re structuring a film—take away what’s real and what’s not—you want to find a low point for your character, and a lot of times it’s impending death. But there’s such a loss here, of them trying to grapple with ‘are we losing a daughter?’ It’s like in every parental movie with a daughter that’s about to get married. Are you losing your daughter but gaining a son? There’s life-changing moments in this film from the very beginning, a super life-changing tragedy is like that. You never get over it, so you’re already imbuing them with such a sense of loss… so it’s all about wins and losses in this movie. We always have that in terms of demons, but you have that in terms of family here as well, so it’s not as cut and dry as like, ‘And this person will die in this film.’” 

Farmiga would seem to agree.

“I think what’s different about this, especially for Lorraine, is Lorraine’s always tried to protect Judy,” says Farmiga. “She’s always wrapped her in spiritual bubble wrap trying to protect her, keeping the noise out, keeping the shadows at bay. But now it’s different. She’s very different.”

Mia Tomlinson, who takes over the role of Judy from previous actresses Sterling Jerins and Mckenna Grace, was given first-hand stories from the real Judy (now Judy Spera) about the paranormal minefields of “growing up as a Warren.”

“Judy’s very guarded,” Tomlinson explains. “She’s quiet, she’s keeping it to herself. She’s trying to hol