The Ending Of The First Omen Explained
Contains spoilers for "The First Omen"
"The First Omen," a prequel to 1976's "The Omen," takes place in 1971 and has all the trappings of a movie filmed in the 1970s — except this movie ups the "ick" factor for audiences of today. In fact, Disney almost earned its first-ever NC-17 rating for one of the movie's more gruesome scenes (the film was released under Disney's 20th Century Studios banner).
"The First Omen" tells the tale of Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free), a young American woman who goes to Rome in preparation to take her vows to the Catholic Church — a hop, skip, and a jump away from St. Peter's Basilica and the Pope. But Margaret soon realizes that something is very wrong with the parish she's chosen to throw her lot in with, and it all revolves around Carlita Scianna (Nicole Sorace), an odd, orphaned girl who seems to be mistreated by the local nuns.
While the nuns warn Margaret away from Carlita, Margaret, who is also an orphan, insists that it's the nuns who are in the wrong. Much like Carlita, Margaret would get in trouble for seeing imaginary things when she was little. As a result, she overly identifies with Carlita. Still, something strange is going on, but unfortunately, Margaret may find out what it is way too late. Here is the ending of "The First Omen" explained.
What you need to remember about the plot of The First Omen
Early in "The First Omen," Margaret, a young novitiate of the Catholic Church, is met by Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy) at the airport in Rome. Margaret was mentored by Cardinal Lawrence when she was young and has been loyal to him ever since. She's in Rome to work at Vizzardeli Orphanage before becoming a nun. At the orphanage she's introduced to Sister Silva (Sonia Braga), the head of the facility. She also meets Carlita, an orphan who draws strange pictures.
Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson), an excommunicated priest, approaches Margaret in St. Peter's Square and tells her Carlita is involved in evil doings. But Margaret only sees the good in Carlita. When one of the sisters at the orphanage horrifically commits suicide, however, Margaret visits Brennan in secret. He asks her to bring him the files about Carlita, thinking there's a conspiracy within the Church to have her give birth to the Antichrist.
While the nuns are welcoming Luz (Maria Cabellero), Margaret's roommate, to their ranks, Margaret finds a secret passage in the wall of Sister Silva's office. She follows it to the basement, where she finds the files on Carlita ... and all the other attempts to birth a child fathered by Satan. Margaret is stopped from attempting to escape with Carlita by the nuns, but not before she sees the mark of the Antichrist — 666 — on the roof of Carlita's mouth. Father Gabriel (Tawfeek Barhom), who's sympathetic to Margaret, breaks her out and they return to Father Brennan.
What happened at the end of The First Omen
Father Gabriel, Father Brennan, and Margaret determine that there was one other successful birth besides Carlita's: Margaret's. She has the mark of the Antichrist on her head beneath her hair. Her memories suppressed until this moment, Margaret now flashes back to an earlier evening when she was mated to a jackal-like demon and realizes that she's already pregnant.
Gabriel and Brennan take Margaret to have the baby aborted but their car is hit on the way there. Only Margaret remains conscious. She gets out of the car and behaves as if she's possessed, while her belly swells from the pregnancy. She's taken back to the orphanage by the evil priests and nuns — led by Cardinal Lawrence — and undergoes a c-section.
Margaret has twins — a boy and a girl — and the congregation proclaims the boy to be the Antichrist. Margaret asks to hold him, but kills Cardinal Lawrence with a scalpel and threatens the baby. When she hesitates, Luz stabs her and takes the child. The congregation departs, as Sister Silva tells her minions to burn the place down with Margaret and her baby girl inside. Carlita gets Margaret and the baby out, but not before Margaret sees the jackal in flames. The evil priests and nuns enact their plan to put the boy up for adoption. Meanwhile, Father Brennan finds Margaret, Carlita, and the baby girl. He informs Margaret that the cult will be coming to kill them, and that her baby boy now has a name: Damien.
What the ending of The First Omen means
On one hand, "The First Omen" leads directly into 1976's "The Omen." Margaret, the previously unknown mother of Damien, has given birth to him. At the same time, as in the original film, Robert and Katherine Thorn's (Gregory Peck and Lee Remick) baby has been killed, with Robert Thorn told that the baby died during childbirth. Robert is persuaded to secretly adopt Damien from the orphanage to save his wife from suffering emotional trauma, not knowing the child's origin. As a result, the Antichrist is placed with a powerful family and positioned to do his true father's bidding on Earth.
On the other hand, there are interesting new possibilities for sequels since the story of Margaret in "The First Omen" was never explored before. Margaret does not want to be evil despite her lineage and seems to want the same for her baby and Carlita. But if the evil members of the church who wanted Damien to be born are coming to kill her and her baby, will that bring out her (and Carlita's and the baby's) demonic side? After all, while we know that the Antichrist is a boy, we don't know anything about his twin sister or his mother, and what they're capable of.
Why did Sister Anjelica sacrifice herself?
At one point in the film, Margaret approaches Carlita only to find her talking to Sister Anjelica (Ishtar Currie Wilson), a strange nun whom Margaret had previously been introduced to. Until now, Anjelica has seemed relatively harmless, but now her actions become more bizarre. Anjelica encourages Carlita to produce a drawing of a woman who is pregnant, something Margaret deems inappropriate.
Margaret chases Anjelica off and believes the situation is done with — until she sees Anjelica standing on a balcony on the top floor of the orphanage. Exclaiming "It's all for you," Anjelica lights herself on fire, jumps off the balcony, and crashes into the window below, while the children and nuns down in the courtyard run screaming from the sight.
Why does Anjelica do this? Is she driven by supernatural forces to destroy herself before she can reveal too much to Margaret? The reasons for her act are not entirely made clear narratively, but we can guess why the scene takes place: it's a deliberate homage to a famous scene near the beginning of "The Omen," in which Damien's first nanny, saying, "It's all for you," hangs herself at Damien's birthday party, her body even crashing through a window just like Anjelica. If you want the real reason why Anjelica does and says nearly the same thing (with the addition of fire to make it extra horrific for modern audiences), that's probably it.
Who is Paolo and what does he know?
When Margaret first meets her roommate Luz, the latter puts Margaret in a skimpy outfit and takes her out to a club to experience what she'll be missing when she takes her vows. Margaret gets drunk, dancing with and kissing a handsome young man named Paolo (Andrea Arcangeli). While Margaret can't remember what happened after that the next morning, Luz assures her that she was well-behaved.
Later, Margaret sees Paolo on the street while she's in her novitiate clothing, but he tries to run from her. Distraught, he turns and gestures to his head when he is hit by a truck and killed in grisly fashion. Margaret later realizes that Paolo was trying to tell her that she has the mark of the Antichrist on her head. He knows because he was there during the ceremony where she was mated to the jackal.
Clearly, Paolo was working with Luz to lure Margaret to the club and incapicitate her. Luz and Paolo have been part of this conspiracy for a long time. Luz stays loyal to the cause and wants the Antichrist to be born, but meeting Margaret personally seems to have messed with Paolo's head. As a result, he's hit by the truck. In previous "The Omen" movies, people were killed when they tried to disrupt Damien's trajectory, so it's likely that by telling Margaret about her birthmark — something she clearly knew nothing about — he has earned the wrath of Satan.
What's with all the imagery of spiders and claws?
The spiders in "The First Omen" are most likely symbolic. They appear in interstitial scenes between the main action of the narrative. Never do spiders factor into the story of "The First Omen," so it's safe to say they don't have anything directly to do with the plot. Instead, the spiders appear before or after scenes and appear to foreshadow what's to come — specifically, Margaret's increasing entanglement in the web of the people plotting to bring the Antichrist into the world.
The meaning of the claws is more elusive. The claws are seen when Margaret hallucinates, first early in the film when she watches a woman give birth and then later when she loses Carlita on a field trip to a museum in Rome. It turns out, though, that these actually belong to the jackal-like demon, which Margaret sees when the demon rapes her, but which her memory suppresses. Margaret hallucinates them likely because her subconscious mind is trying to uncover the memory, even though consciously she doesn't remember her real experience.
Why do the priests and nuns want to birth the Antichrist?
In "The First Omen," Father Brennan, who is also a character in "The Omen," is the one who sheds light on why members of the Catholic Church would ever want to bring about the Antichrist. He explains to Margaret that people — especially young people — are turning away from the Church. In order for the Church to maintain its power, a faction of men and women within the Church have decided to create the Antichrist. They believe they can control it, and will let it wreak havoc just enough to strike fear into people's hearts, driving them back to their faith. Cardinal Lawrence confirms this when he tells Margaret right before she gives birth that her child will bring people back to the Church.
This seems like a rather drastic action to get people to return to Catholicism. However, perhaps fear of the Antichrist is the easiest way to get people to come running back to the Church. After all, fear can drive people to believe in things they wouldn't normally, including their own lapsed faith. So while it's a horrifying plan, the faction's logic may be sound.
How The First Omen rewrites Damien's origin
While "The First Omen" leads directly into "The Omen," it actually changes what we know about Damien's parents. "The Omen" explains that Damien was born from the coupling of a female jackal and Satan. In fact, when Robert Thorn goes to a deserted graveyard and digs up the grave of Damien's mother in "The Omen," which is marked with a headstone that says Maria Scianna, he finds the body of a jackal. In "The First Omen," however, this tale is retconned so that Margaret is the mother and Satan is a jackal-like demon.
While it doesn't undo everything, it does raise some questions. In particular, in "Damien: Omen II," a doctor finds that Damien has the chromosome structure of a jackal. Does this mean that Satan actually inhabited the body of a jackal to impregnate Margaret? If that's the case, it's possible that the jackal that is buried in the grave in "The Omen" is actually the corpse of the animal that Satan possessed, and at least that washes with "The First Omen."
What have the star and director said about the ending of The First Omen?
Both "The First Omen" star Nell Tiger Free and director Arkasha Stevenson, have been making the press rounds in support of the film. Free, best known for starring in "Servant," spoke about the scene near the end in which Margaret emerges from a wrecked car and seems to be possessed herself. "We didn't have any rehearsals, and we didn't choreograph it ... We just went for it," Free explained to Bloody Disgusting. "If memory serves, it was two takes. I'd like to dispel any rumors that I was on sort of a pulley device or CGI. There's none of that ... But I'm lucky enough that Arkasha created an environment where I just wanted to push myself as hard as I possibly could for her."
Meanwhile, Arkasha Stevenson was excited to talk about the directions in which a sequel to the movie could go. "What is really fun is — as an 'Omen' fan — there's the big question of where Damien came from and this film answers that, but then all these other questions pop up," Stevenson told ComicBook.com. "And I feel like for me, I could keep going back in time and learning how the conspiracy started, where the jackal came from. It's fun to think in both temporal directions."
Whatever comes next, Free would be excited to be a part of it. "I would love to see what happens next," Free shared with The Hollywood Reporter. "I'd be happy to stay in this universe a little while longer."
What could the end of The First Omen mean for the franchise?
If "The First Omen" does well at the box office, it could restart "The Omen" franchise. While Richard Donner's original "The Omen" was followed by two sequels, a made-for-TV movie, a 2006 remake, and a short-lived 2016 television series, none of them have quite lived up to the reputation of that first film. The filmmakers of "The First Omen" attempted to make a movie that satisfies both people who loved the 1976 original and those who just want a good scare, and it seems they were successful: at press time, 80% of critics have given it a thumbs up on Rotten Tomatoes.
"The First Omen," as director Arkasha Stevenson's comments above indicate, could leave the door wide open for a new series of sequels or another prequel going even farther back in time. Though the original movies chronicled what happened as Damien grew up and embraced his destiny as the Antichrist, "The First Omen" essentially sets up a parallel story that could serve the filmmakers well. The first order of business will likely be a sequel to the current film, concerning how Margaret and her baby girl survive, and what chaos the baby may wreak as she gets older. If the filmmakers are lucky, this could jumpstart a whole new set of films all centered around "The Omen" universe.