The First Omen is the latest sequel to a long-standing horror franchise, following the example of other series like Halloween or The Exorcist that have received modern reinventions and expansions. Directed by Arkasha Stevenson, 2024’s The First Omen is directly connected to the series and serves as a prequel to the original The Omen. The First Omen‘s ending leads straight to the events of the first film in the series and serves as an unexpected explanation of Damien Thorn’s birth parents.
In the process, The First Omen quietly makes a lot of changes to the lore established in the original 1976 film, The Omen. This includes retconning Damien’s mother and the circumstances of his birth, as well as introducing a new wrinkle in the form of a twin sister. The First Omen also steadily reveals the surprising group that’s behind the events of the series, and why they worked to create the Antichrist. Here are the biggest twists and turns in The First Omen ending and how they set up further sequels in The Omen franchise.
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Margaret Gives Birth To Damien (& His Sister) In The First Omen’s Ending
How The First Omen’s Ending Remixes Damien’s Origins
The ending of The First Omen reveals that Margaret has been the intended mother of the Antichrist all along, leading to the film’s climax where she gives birth to Damien and his twin sister. For much of The First Omen, Margaret and Father Brennan work under the assumption that Carlita is intended to be used as the mother of the Antichrist. Margaret seeing the Mark of the Beast on the roof of her mouth seems to confirm this. However, their investigation reveals Margaret is a child of Satan and is the true target of the plan to birth the Antichrist.
What Nell Tiger Free Has Said About Margaret’s Ending & Future
The First Omen Star Thought The Ending Opened Up Possibilities For Her Character
The revelations that arrive by the ending of The First Omen throw Margaret’s entire life (and much of the film’s backstory) into question, including the visions she experienced as a child and Cardinal Lawrence’s long-standing affection for her. Margaret ends up giving birth rather suddenly in the film, delivering twins. The boy is heralded as the Antichrist, as the previous attempts to sire him had all resulted in failures. In the end, the conspiracy takes away the infant Damien and leaves a wounded Margaret and her baby daughter to die. This explains why they were never mentioned in the original film.
“I mean, I think it’s so smart what they did at the end, with the twist at the end, and I think it opens up the door to so much more to the story, like where these two other people could go, and their story could be running parallel to [the events of The Omen].”
However, their fates aren’t currently sealed. Both Margaret and her daughter survive the ending of the film, going into hiding from the rest of the world. During an interview with Radio Times, Nell Tiger Free (who plays Margaret in The First Omen) revealed that she’d like to return to the character in future stories.
Noting that the franchise has been inspiring spin-offs and sequels since it debuted in 1976, Free believes that a follow-up could explore what happened to Margaret and her daughter during the events of the original films.
Who Got Margaret Pregnant In The First Omen?
How A Fun Night Out Turned Into A Nightmare For Margaret
Ahead of her intended responsibilities as a nun, Margaret is taken out by her supposed friend Luz for a night on the town. While out, she flirts with a man named Paolo and drinks in excess, ultimately blacking out and forgetting much of the night. Initially, Luz brushes the event off and convinces Margaret it was just a fun night out. In reality, Paolo and Luz were part of the conspiracy to impregnate Margaret with the Anti-Christ, and played their part in luring Margaret to the conspiracy.
After becoming inebriated while out with Luz and Paolo at the disco, Margaret was captured by the conspiracy and forcibly impregnated by a jackal-looking demon. This demon is later revealed to actually be Margaret’s father as well, making her capable of carrying the Anti-Christ to term. This ends up being the true purpose of the conspiracy hidden within a sub-sect of the Catholic Church, who, as is revealed by the end of The First Omen, have been manipulating Margaret all along.
Margaret’s Past & The Church’s Role In Creating The Antichrist
A Secret Conspiracy Within The Church Led To The Birth Of Damien
Similar to Carlita and her own children, Margaret was born on the sixth of June at 6:00 AM, which is considered in-universe to be a sign of the devil in The Omen Franchise. The First Omen reveals that the devil had been attempting to sire a mortal heir, but kept failing to produce Antichrist. Instead, the idea became to force one of the devil’s other offspring like Margaret or Carlita to mate with the devil, which could then produce the Antichrist. It’s a dark and horrifying turn of events and explains much about Margaret’s mysterious past as an orphan raised by the Church.
One of the biggest twists in The First Omen ending is the motivation behind the birth of Damien. It turns out there is a secret faction of the Catholic Church who, fearing their waning power in the world, decide to assist Satan in his mission. Their intention is to arrange for the Antichrist’s rise as a means of terrifying the public, which could then spur them to return to the Church. Sister Silvia, Luz Valez, and Cardinal Lawrence are all part of this conspiracy. It’s a horrifying turn, with their plans undercut by the other films in the series.
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How The First Omen’s Ending Connects To The Original Movie
The Final Moments Of The First Omen Lead Directly To 1976’s The Omen
The First Omen is a direct prequel to the events of The Omen, serving as the origin story for how Damien was conceived and born. This connection to the 1976 horror classic is reinforced in The First Omen‘s final scenes. After leaving Margaret and her daughter to die in a fire that doubles as a means to cover their tracks, the secretive conspiracy behind Damien’s birth quickly takes the baby to a nearby hospital. There, they arrange to give him to the Thorn family after a “tragic accident” costs them their newborn son.
Along the way, they inspect a folder containing information about the Thorn family. This gives the audience a quick look at a picture of Robert Thorn, an ambassador who they intend to use as a means of giving Damien a privileged and powerful life. Robert was played by Gregory Peck in The Omen and served as that film’s central protagonist. Notably, Robert and Margaret share a thematic downfall in The First Omen ending, as both get a brief chance to kill Damien in their respective climaxes but fail to do so before they can be brought down.
How The First Omen Retcons Damien’s Origin
Damien’s Mother Was Different In The Previous Film
Although The First Omen ends with a direct connection to The Omen, it also makes some deliberate retcons to The Omen‘s lore. Damien’s birth is shown in The First Omen. Quickly sired by the devil and coming to term unnaturally quickly, Margaret is subjected to a C-Section operation that leads to Damien’s birth. In The Omen, it was instead suggested that Damien’s mother had actually been a jackal. This led to one of The Omen‘s most horrifying reveals, which saw Robert and his ally Keith discover the jackal’s skeleton (as well as the skeleton of Robert’s actual son, who had been killed to make room for Damien.)
The presence of Margaret throws that into question, although her escape from the fiery church at the end of the film alongside Carlita does include imagery of a burning jackal screaming in the flames. There’s also the existence of Margaret’s daughter and Damien’s twin sister. In the original The Omen films, there was no indication that Damien had any blood relations. Damien’s sister could theoretically possess similar powers to her brother, or could even be something of a counter to Damien. It’s an interesting idea and one that could justify further expansion of the franchise.
The First Omen’s Ending Sets Up A Sequel
Damien’s Mother & Sister Could Return In Future Films
The First Omen‘s final moments set up a potential expansion of the franchise. Although Margaret is wounded and left for dead by the conspiracy to birth the Antichrist, she and her daughter are saved by the intervention of Carlita. Together, the pair are revealed to go into hiding. The final moments of The First Omen take place years later, likely within the same time frame as much of The Omen‘s plot given the age of Margaret’s daughter. Father Brennan can locate them and warns Margeret that her survival has been discovered by the conspiracy.
Brennan predicts they’ll soon be coming for them, setting up a potential follow-up story where Margaret, Carlita, and Margaret’s daughter are forced on the run. This could be an interesting set-up to explore in other films, potentially exploring any supernatural abilities possessed by Margaret’s daughter. Damien is shown in The Omen and the subsequent sequels to have unique demonic powers. It’d also be interesting to see more of the conspiracy within the Catholic Church, exploring how far their reach extends and how their efforts to control Damien fared in later years.
What The First Omen’s Director Has Said About A Possible Sequel
Arkasha Stevenson Wants To Explore Margaret And Lyla’s Story
The prospect of a sequel is particularly exciting for Director Arkasha Stevenson. As reported by Screen Rant, Stevenson has noted there are several elements of The First Omen that she’d like to expand upon in a prospective sequel. Like Nell Tiger Free, Stevenson wants to see more of Margaret and her daughter Layla, contrasting their role in the universe against the arc Damien goes through in the initial sequels to The Omen.
Beyond that, Stevenson noted that she’d also like to delve further into the conspiracy within the church that resulted in the birth of the Anti-Christ. Notably, they aren’t portrayed as completely devout worshipers of the demonicly born child, but rather true believers of the church who believe they needed a great enemy to overcome so that the world would turn back to them. While no direct sequel to The First Omen has been formally announced at the time of this writing, those lingering questions do set up plenty of avenues for future films to explore.
The Real Meaning Of The First Omen’s Ending
How The First Omen Makes The Franchise More Tragic
The First Omen is ultimately a tragic horror story, with the villains behind the plot getting everything they wanted. The film’s themes center around Margaret’s dawning horror at the lengths institutions like the Church can go to maintain power. Early in the film, Cardinal Lawrence expresses frustration with the younger generations turning away from the Church, which is later revealed to be a central aspect of his motivation to help birth the Antichrist. Margaret was forced into their system and conditioned in a way that made her a perfect target for their conspiracy.
It’s only when Margaret begins to rebel and think for herself that she endangers their schemes and is able to fight for herself. Even if it comes too late to stop them, Margaret’s efforts to break free of their control end up helping give Carlita a reason to resist the influence of the corrupted church — and in turn rescue Margaret in the film’s climax. While The First Omen may end on a dark note, Margeret and Carlita’s refusal to give in to authority affords the characters a brighter future where they have freedom and happiness (at least until that authority can hunt them down.)
How The First Omen Ending Was Received
Overall, response to The First Omen is positive, meaning that the horror prequel managed to avoid any pitfalls that led to it being seen as a clear attempt by 20th Century Studios to cash in on the popularity of a classic franchise (as many others in the genre often do). Arkasha Stevenson’s 2024 entry into The Omen franchise currently sits with an 83% critical score and 70% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, highlighting that The First Omen has overcome a hurdle all franchise rejuvenation’s face and been welcomed as an addition to the wider canon.
The ending of The First Omen has been a key strength for the movie, and has been highlighted in several reviews both from a cinematic perspective, and because of how its twists and turns expand the lore of The Omen franchise. Notably, many critics also praised The First Omen for not caving into imagined fanbase pressure and getting heavy-handed with references to the wider The Omen universe or previous films. Writing for Paste Magazine, reviewer Brianna Zigler writes:
The self-immolating suicide of a young nun (Ishtar Currie Wilson) who jumps from a ledge and proclaims, familiarly [to 1976’s
The Omen
], “It’s all for you!” as Carlita, Margaret, the nuns, and the children look on in horror. That callback, a fairly humorous zoom and namedrop at the very end of the film, and a physical photograph of the late Gregory Peck, are about as far into reference territory as
The First Omen
ever delves.
This was a commendable achievement for The First Omen, and balancing awareness of previous movies against being innovative with new scenes and concepts is always challenging for modern entries to classic horror franchises. Praise wasn’t universal of course, and there were also those who didn’t feel The First Omen hit the mark both as a new The Omen movie, and as a film in its own right.
Understandably, many of the negative responses from fans of The Omen and its sequel highlighted the ending, as the direction of the narrative made several changes to the established canon. However, overall, The First Omen ending was taken as a strong way to end Margaret’s story while also keeping the door open for more sequels, and as a well-crafted transition into the films that take place later in The Omen timeline.
The First Omen is a horror film from director Arkasha Stevenson that acts as a prequel to the 1976 film The Omen. The film follows a young woman who goes to Rome to become a nun but begins to question her faith after encountering a terrifying darkness that aims to spawn an evil incarnate.
- Director
- Arkasha Stevenson
- Studio(s)
- Phantom Four
- Writers
- Ben Jacoby , Tim Smith , Arkasha Stevenson , Keith Thomas
- Cast
- Nell Tiger Free , Tawfeek Barhom , Sonia Braga , Ralph Ineson , Bill Nighy
- Franchise(s)
- The Omen
- Release Date
- April 5, 2024
- Runtime
- 119 Minutes
