Do you want to know if The Nun II has a post-credits scene? We'll tell you right here: There is one mid-credits scene and no after-the-credits scene in the movie.
Full spoilers follow for The Nun II!
The Nun II centers on the return of Valak the Demon Nun five years after its temporary defeat at the Abbey of Saint Carta at the hands of Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), Father Burke (Demián Bichir) and Maurice “Frenchie” Thierrault (Jonas Bloquet). Having escaped the Abbey within Frenchie’s soul, Valak’s now wreaking havoc across Europe and putting the young students of a French boarding school in jeopardy. Sister Irene is deployed to fight the demon again, and their battle reveals some pretty interesting details about Irene’s backstory which pull into focus how Valak has chosen its targets.
The Nun II Ending Explained: What Are the Eyes of Saint Lucy?
The latter half of The Nun II introduces a new relic to the Conjuringverse: the Eyes of Saint Lucy. Throughout The Nun II, Sister Irene receives visions of the marytrying of Saint Lucy, the patron saint of the blind, and of Valak’s influence on those events as the fallen angel attempted to return to full power. She learns that Saint Lucy’s eyes, imbued with divine power, were removed upon her death and hidden within the French boarding school (formerly a monastery), where the majority of The Nun II’s action takes place, and that by acquiring the Eyes, Valak would become unstoppable. Irene’s visions reveal the Eyes of St. Lucy and she recovers them, but during the final confrontation between Irene and Valak, the demon nun steals them for itself and goes Super SaiNun, nearly martyring Irene herself by setting her ablaze in the process.
Prior to this point, flashbacks to Irene’s childhood had been detailing a foundational moment in her life: Her father had her mother institutionalized after she claimed (truthfully) that she had been having supernatural visions. As she’s being burned, Irene realizes her abilities and her visions of the past mean that she’s a direct descendant of Saint Lucy, and her understanding of that is one of the things that gives Irene the strength to overcome the demon nun in their final confrontation. At the moment of Irene’s realization, images flash before her eyes of her mother, Saint Lucy herself, and another woman implied to be a descendant of Saint Lucy, one who we already know full-well has medium abilities: Lorraine Warren.
The connection between the characters feels like a meta nod to something Conjuring fans have been intrigued by since The Nun’s release: Sister Irene is played by Taissa Farmiga, younger sister of Vera, who plays Lorraine. Even though the events of The Nun movies take place 20 years prior to The Conjuring films, that fact alone had been enough to generate speculation on a familial connection between the characters… and that’s before you take into consideration that Vera and Taissa bear a strikingly close resemblance to each other. There was even early speculation before The Nun’s release that Irene was actually a younger version of Lorraine, although information revealed about Ed and Lorraine’s backstory in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (also directed by Michael Chaves) essentially quashes that possibility. Commenting on the shared lineage between Irene and Lorraine, Chaves told IGN: “Yeah, I think there's always been a desire for that connection and obviously they look too close to be a coincidence. Honestly, I think that's part of the discovery of it and I think there is definitely a thread there that is intentionally left a little bit open.”
The connection between the characters feels like a meta nod to something Conjuring fans have been intrigued by since The Nun’s release.
While the powers of the Eyes of St. Lucy are not very clearly established, there’s a pretty mind-bending moment from earlier in the movie that hints at what they’re capable of. At one point, Sophie, one of the boarding school students, goes looking for her mother and opens a door… which opens to reveal this shot from The Conjuring 2:
Irene swoops in to close the door for Sophie, saving her from this vision which neither can quite comprehend. As you’ll recall, this shot was from the perspective of Lorraine Warren and her daughter, Judy, whose own clairvoyant powers are hinted at heavily throughout Annabelle Comes Home (set in 1972, a year after The Conjuring).
Remember: The Nun II takes place in 1956 and The Conjuring 2 is set a full 21 years after that. Perhaps the dormant Eyes of St. Lucy created an environment within the school which made a precognitive vision like this possible. Or perhaps this image from the future is conjured by Valak, who is well-known to traffic in deception, having planted a vision of Ed’s death in Lorraine’s mind during Frenchie’s eventual exorcism. In any case, this timey-wimey vision of the future opens doors to new storytelling language for the franchise to play with. Also of note: This kind of soft spacetime continuum has an analog in another James Wan-created franchise. Insidious: Chapter 2 saw both Josh and Dalton Lambert astral-project into the past and be responsible for some of the supernatural bumps in the night that occurred in the previous film.
Does The Nun II Have a Post-Credits or Mid-Credits Scene?
As noted above, there’s no post-credits scene in the film. As for The Nun II’s mid-credits scene, it’s a brief, fairly non-descript tease for the next entry in the franchise, but there are some things of note worth calling out. Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) get a phone call from their colleague in the Church, Father Gordon, who’s eager to send them on their next investigation. That’s it. Still, there are a few things we can glean from this scene and whether it’s setting up a potential The Nun III or the fourth mainline movie, The Conjuring: Last Rites, which is expected to be released in the next couple of years.
First, the scene repurposes footage cut from Chaves’ The Devil Made Me Do It, which was set in the early 1980s. With Ed and Lorraine aged-up accordingly, it’s safe to assume The Nun II’s mid-credits scene takes place just prior to or after the events of that movie. That’s further confirmed by the presence of Judy Warren - although we don’t see her face, she’s clearly a teen and not the young kid we first met in the 1970s-set The Conjuring and Annabelle Comes Home.
It’s likely that this is nothing more than a reminder to audiences that Last Rites is the next Conjuring movie to be released, but with how many times Valak has been “defeated” and returned, it seems at least possible that the demon Nun could come back with (another) vengeance in Last Rites to bring closure to characters from both the Conjuring and Nun movies. There seem to be at least three avenues to have Sister Irene’s presence in that story make sense: Taissa Farmiga could reprise the character, but would need to be aged-up to account for Irene being canonically older than Lorraine; Vera Farmiga could pull double duty and play both characters; or another actress could be cast in the role.
Until more is revealed about The Conjuring: Last Rites, you’ll just have to hope you’re a descendant of Saint Lucy and you receive a vision from the future. Let me know; it’d be great to get ahead of that Ending Explained.
