The Exorcist: Believer's Shocking Ending Was Added In Reshoots [Exclusive]
This post contains spoilers for "The Exorcist: Believer."
Ever since Father Merrin and Father Karras entered Regan MacNeil's bedroom to perform an exorcism at the conclusion of 1973's "The Exorcist," the endings to each entry within the "Exorcist" franchise have been a point of controversy and contention. In the first film's instance, the priests losing their lives during the exorcism made a lot of audience members and critics confused as to the message of the movie, with writer William Peter Blatty observing that "at that point in the movie, most of the audience is a little out of it." Blatty would run into other ending issues while making "Exorcist III" in 1990, where he was forced to reshoot and add an exorcism sequence into a film that was never intended to have one. As for what's going on during the hectic finales of "Exorcist II: The Heretic," "Exorcist: The Beginning," and "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist," those are other articles entirely.
All that's to say that the "Exorcist" franchise has a troubled history when it comes to delivering a finale that fulfills the obligations of each individual film while inevitably competing with what's come before. The latest installment of the series, David Gordon Green's "The Exorcist: Believer," is no exception. As a recent exclusive interview with Green conducted by /Film's BJ Colangelo reveals, the ending of "Believer" went through several changes during production, resulting in multiple finales being shot. Not only that, but the one that made the final cut of the movie seems to indicate that there may be more going on than meets the eye, especially with regard to any future sequels.
The demon scores a point
In "Believer," 13-year-old girls Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O'Neill) are possessed by the demon Lamashtu, much to the horror of their respective families. When Angela's father, Victor (Leslie Odom, Jr.), and Katherine's parents, Miranda (Jennifer Nettles) and Tony (Norbert Leo Butz), gather a group of religious leaders and friends within their community to help exorcize the girls, Lamashtu fights back by offering the families a choice: One of the girls can live, but not both. Although Miranda and Victor know this is the demon attempting to trick them, Tony cracks under the pressure, telling the demon that he chooses his daughter. As a result, the trickster demon takes Katherine's soul, and we see her in a dreamlike dimension being pulled into darkness by many hands while Angela is set free of Lamashtu.
Colangelo asked Green if this ending was always part of the film, and whether there may have been an alternate concept where both girls got to live. Green explained:
"Yeah, we shot it. We wrote it, we shot it. There are little moments even in some of the trailers that you'll see of a baptism that were from a version of the movie that we did. I'm a really, I don't know, spontaneous and playful, organic [director], taking the detours and inspirations that I found along the way, and something didn't feel honest about just a clean win. I won't go into the very ending of the movie, but there's a moment where I wanted real warmth, but I wanted to make sure that there was always a mark for the other one [the demon] on the scoreboard."
Will Katherine return?
The "Exorcist" franchise presents a moral universe where the forces of Good and Evil exist, and where the mysterious events that occur are taken on faith. In this way, such things as characters being resurrected (after a fashion, anyhow) can come to pass — although Damien Karras (Jason Miller) perished at the end of "The Exorcist," he returned (albeit possessed by a serial killer) in "The Exorcist III."
While there's little doubt that, after the events of "Believer," Katherine has died, there exists the possibility that she may turn up in a future sequel to the film. Sure, this could take the form of flashback scenes or visions had by another character, but the fact that we see what happens to her soul from a subjective point of view during the finale of the movie implies that her story may not be done yet.
After all, Angela certainly has a connection to her, being both her best friend as well as being a co-possessee of Lamashtu; perhaps the next film in David Gordon Green's proposed trilogy (tentatively titled "The Exorcist: Deceiver") may see Angela attempt to contact the lost soul of Katherine in Hell. Alternatively, "The Exorcist" is a series about possession, so perhaps Katherine's soul (or a demon-poisoned version of it) may turn up in someone else's body. If Green's comments are anything to go by, any and all "detours and inspirations" are possible.