-
[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for The Craft: Legacy.]
As one might expect, Zoe Lister-Jones’ The Craft sequel, The Craft: Legacy, does tee up the possibility of another installment in the series. At the end of Legacy, it’s revealed that Michelle Monaghan’s character, Helen, isn’t Lily’s (Cailee Spaeny) biological mother. Lily was adopted and is actually Nancy’s daughter, Fairuza Balk’s character from the 1996 movie. Legacy concludes with the two reuniting at the facility that Nancy’s confined herself to voluntarily.
While on an episode of Collider’s The Witching Hour, Lister-Jones told us a bit about why she avoided the temptation to have Balk appear earlier on in the film:
“I always wrote this with a third film in mind ... again, I had so many new characters to dig into and make sure that their arcs were fully fleshed out that I think ultimately it was just too - again, I didn’t want to do a disservice to these other characters that really should have their own film, and so I think that would be my intention with the third is to give a lot more space to an intergenerational storyline.”
As for where that intergenerational storyline could take us, Lister-Jone shared her interpretation of Nancy’s experience after the events of the first film and her current headspace:
“There’s a whole backstory for her 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.”
Lister-Jones also added, “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.”
As for the new coven members introduced in Legacy - Lourdes (ZoeyLuna), Tabby (Lovie Simone) and Frankie (Gideon Adlon) - Lister-Jones is also intent on exploring their situations further, perhaps digging into a particular topic that had to be cut from this movie, their ancestry.
“Lourdes’ grandmother was a bruja in the film and we did have a version where she was more included in the storyline. I’m just fascinated by brujería and those traditions and that generation of healers that each of these young women would have ancestry that was rooted in these varied cultural backgrounds. Tabby’s ancestry was rooted in West African traditions that ultimately landed in the American South and then Frankie, I like to believe, she had her ancestors in Salem. I bit off a lot in this movie, and there are a lot of characters and there was a lot to try to streamline into 90 minutes and so that is just part of the process, is sometimes killing your darlings and it’s really sad, but necessary and I hope I have the opportunity to explore these characters even further.”
These could certainly be some mighty rich topics to dig into more, so hopes are high that Lister-Jones will get the opportunity to continue her story. If you’d like to hear even more about her experience making The Craft: Legacy, you can check out her full episode of The Witching Hour at the top of this article!