The Conjuring: Last Rites may have featured cameos from franchise creator James Wan and Valak actress Bonnie Aarons, but there was another appearance originally planned that would've wound up stretching fans' imagination a little too far, director Michael Chaves has revealed.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the horror filmmaker said that they had hoped to include Taissa Farmiga, who plays Sister Irene in The Nun spin-offs, in the Avengers: Endgame-style final scene, which sees Ed and Lorraine's daughter Judy marry her partner Tony Spera. Lili Taylor's Carolyn and a couple more of the Perrons, the family Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) helped in the 2013 movie, are glimpsed in the pews, as are Frances O'Connor's Peggy Hodgson from The Conjuring 2, Julian Hillard's David Glatzel from The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, and several others.
"The idea of bringing in this long-lost relative in Sister Irene, and then also dealing with the difference of age, was too complex once you did the math. It would've become too big and too sprawling," Chaves admits of bringing Irene back. "I did text Taissa to say, 'You should show up at the wedding, just as a little glimpse, a cameo. We won't worry about the [25-year] age gap or anything.' But she was shooting something, and we couldn't do that."
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In The Nun II (2022), it was revealed that Farmiga's Sister Irene is (distantly) related to Vera Farmiga's paranormal investigator Lorraine; both of them being descendants of clairvoyant Christian martyr Saint Lucy. Trouble is, The Nun II takes place in 1956, so Irene wouldn't exactly look like the 20-something Irene we know in The Conjuring: Last Rites, which is set 30 years later. Unlike the Perrons and the Hodgsons, Irene has technically never met Lorraine, either, so it'd be a bit bizarre for her to have been there.
Obviously, Bonnie Aarons doesn't appear as the antagonistic abbess Valak in the ceremony scene; instead, she's in full glam and blends in with the other guests. With that, Farmiga could've followed suit if she had been available, though her likeness to real-life sister Vera and the fact that she'd be instantly recognizable as Irene arguably sank that idea.
The Conjuring: Last Rites is available to buy or rent digitally. For more, check out our list of the best horror movies of all time, or our guide to some of the other upcoming horror movies heading our way.
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