SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for The Conjuring: Last Rites. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
When a long journey comes to a conclusion, be it via a graduation, retirement, or any such era-ender, it’s customary to have a celebration including the people who helped made that journey special – and Conjuring: Last Rites is a film that brings that tradition to the big screen. The 2025 movie will be remembered for being the last title to feature Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, and its final scenes mark the occasion by featuring a collection of awesome cameos from stars of the franchise.
In the aftermath of helping the Smurl family banish the evil that has been residing in their home, the Warren family in The Conjuring: Last Rites gets to have a big celebration with the wedding of Judy Warren (Mia Tomlinson) and her fianceé Tony (Ben Hardy). As the camera pans over the collection of people in the church, there are a number of recognizable faces, and when I interviewed director Michael Chaves earlier this fall, he told me about how the franchise reunion came together. Said the filmmaker,
That was there, was always there, in the first draft. And, you know, it was really important to one of our executives, Dave Neustadter, who doesn’t get enough credit on the series, but he is really… he is such an incredible ally and creative force in the series. And he’ll come in with these kind of great instincts and he was like, ‘We gotta get everybody in there. We gotta get everybody that we possibly can.’
Looking at the guests at the wedding, one notices that all three previous Conjuring movies are represented. The Conjuring’s Lili Taylor and Mackenzie Foy return as Carolyn Perron and Cindy Perron; The Conjuring 2’s Frances O’Connor and Madison Wolfe reprise Peggy Hodgson and Janet Hodgson; and Julian Hilliard plays David Glatzel from The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. In addition to all of those actors, James Wan is also a member of the crowd, celebrating his role as a franchise producer and director of the first two films in the series.
Michael Chaves told me that everybody was invited to join the party, and while not everyone was available at the time the sequence was shot, he was thrilled with everyone who said yes. Additionally, he told me that he hadn’t met a number of them prior to their Last Rites cameos, so it was a golden opportunity for him just as a fan. He added,
We were shooting in England and he was like, ‘Anyone who’s willing to travel, we gotta get them over there.’ And so we brought as many people from the series as possible. We had an even wider net, but some people were working. We couldn’t coordinate everything. But I’m really happy with everybody that we got in there, and, you know, for a lot of the people it was my first time meeting them. I’m a fan of the series as well, so I was a total nerd, just like geeking out with them.
Following its record-breaking arrival in theaters this past September and its arrival on digital release, The Conjuring: Last Rites has now made its streaming debut and is available to watch with a HBO Max subscription (along with all of the other titles in the Conjuring Universe).
