The Exorcist: Believer Hints at Regan’s Fate After Original Movies

A new trailer for The Exorcist: Believer was released by Universal Pictures, Morgan Creek, and Blumhouse, and in it a tease of what fans can expect for Linda Blair’s Regan McNeil. Blair’s character from the 1974 original The Exorcist movie is not expected to appear in the film, even though the actress reportedly worked as a consultant on the new movie. The new trailer for The Exorcist: Believer however makes a pointed reference to Regan, arguably a bigger one than the first trailer. In the first footage only a photo of Linda Blair is seen, but this time a character calls out Regan by name to Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil.

In the opening sequence, of the new trailer for The Exorcist: Believer, Ellen Burstyn appears as her character Chris from the original The Exorcist, a part that landed her her first nomination for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. When Chris approaches one of the newly possessed young girls, noting “We’ve met before.” The tiny girl then speaks to her in a demonic voice asking, “Are you looking for Regan?” They repeat the query before screaming, “She burns in hell!” 

Where is Regan in The Exorcist: Believer?

With Linda Blair seemingly not appearing in The Exorcist: Believer, the new trailer for the film seems to imply that her character could be dead. Since one of the young possessed girls tells Chris that Regan “burns in hell,” that could be a hint that the character has died in-between the films. One thing that’s clear though is that when any possessed figure speaks in any Exorcist movie, what they say should be taken with a grain of salt, so much so that it’s almost certainly a lie that they’re using to provoke a reaction.

Is The Exorcist: Believer a sequel?

In the same way that the 2018 Halloween movie was a sequel to the original Halloween, The Exorcist: Believer is a sequel to the 1974 original The Exorcist. Director David Gordon Green, who directed the three recent Halloween movies, puts his own mark on The Exoricst in the same way, creating a new legacy sequel. Unlike his Halloween movies though, Green developed The Exorcist: Believer so that it wouldn’t remove any of the other movies in the long-running horror franchise from canon. 

“To be honest, I’m not avoiding any of them, but I don’t know them very well,” the filmmaker told Entertainment Weekly. “I’ve seen all of them. I’ve seen Exorcist III more than any of them. I know that one very well. Say what you will about Exorcist II, but it ain’t shy. It is a fearless epic of ideas, but [we’re] not necessarily following a character from Exorcist: The Beginning. We’re not looking into that. It’s not that type of a franchise that needs to check boxes, but I’ve got two more movies, so maybe I’ll find some threads to unravel from one of those.”  

The Exorcist: Believer lands in theaters on October 6th.The film is produced by Jason Blum for Blumhouse and by David Robinson and James G. Robinson for Morgan Creek Entertainment. The executive producers are Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, Stephanie Allain, Ryan Turek, and Atilla Yücer. Universal Pictures presents a Blumhouse/Morgan Creek Entertainment production in association with Rough House Pictures. It’s described as follows:

“Since the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 12 years ago, Victor Fielding (Tony winner and Oscar nominee Leslie Odom, Jr.; One Night in Miami, Hamilton) has raised their daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett, Good Girls) on his own. But when Angela and her friend Katherine (newcomer Olivia O’Neill), disappear in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, it unleashes a chain of events that will force Victor to confront the nadir of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before: Chris MacNeil.”