If you thought the original “Omen” was spooky, 2024’s “The First Omen,” a creepy prequel to the 1976 classic, gets way beyond horrifying. Well, as horrifying as an NC-17 Disney-backed movie can get, that is.
Meet Margaret Daino, played by Nell Tiger Free, who’s on the brink of taking her vows. But her chosen parish isn’t as holy as one would think, especially with a creepy orphaned girl, Carlita, stirring up trouble. Despite all the signs, Margaret is drawn to Carlita, maybe because she’s also an orphan herself, and realizes there’s something wicked going on with the kid and the nuns. But alas, it’s too late now!
Let’s dive into the twisted ending of “The First Omen” and see if the retcons made it better.
The plot
In “The First Omen,” Margaret, a young nun-to-be, arrives in Rome to work at an orphanage. There, she meets Cardinal Lawrence, her old mentor, Sister Silva, who runs the place, and Carlita, who just can’t help herself when it comes to drawing weird stuff.
Things start to heat up when an excommunicated priest warns Margaret about Carlita’s dark side. But Margaret still chooses to ignore all that and trusts the girl. That is until one of the nuns ends her life in a very shocking way. That’s when the main plot of Margaret seeking answers involving Carlita’s future baby Antichrist kicks in. Meanwhile, Margaret discovers a hidden passage in Sister Silva’s office, revealing disturbing files about Carlita and other satanic pregnancies. Caught by the nuns, Margaret glimpses the mark of the Antichrist on Carlita’s mouth. With the help of Father Gabriel, she escapes to confront Brennan. That’s the plot in a nutshell.
The ending of The First Omen
The main characters piece together a shocking truth: Margaret has the mark of the Antichrist! How did she get it? Usually, being impregnated by a demonic entity would do that to a gal. Intent on stopping the pregnancy, they head to get an abortion, but their car mysteriously crashes.
Margaret’s unholy pregnancy is progressing rapidly, and evil priests and nuns, including Cardinal Lawrence, perform a gruesome c-section, revealing a pair of cute twins, one of which is titled the Antichrist by the congregation. For some reason, Margaret, still trying to protect her children, turns on the Cardinal but is stopped by Luz, who takes the baby. As the cult plans to give the boy up for adoption, Father Brennan locates Margaret, Carlita, and the baby girl, revealing that the cult is coming for all of them. This is also when we learn the boy’s name – Damien.
What does this all mean?
In “The First Omen,” Margaret gives birth to Damien, who is then adopted by Robert Thorn. This saves Robert’s wife from emotional trauma, but at the same time, places the Antichrist with a powerful family and positions him to do his real daddy’s bidding on Earth. Also, there could be more sequels as the story of Margaret has never been explored before. The evil members of the church who wanted Damien to be born are coming to kill her and the baby, which makes us wonder if that will bring out their demonic sides. After all, we don’t know anything about Damien’s twin sister or his mother and what they’re capable of.
Why are there so many spiders in the movie?
The spiders don’t play any direct role in the story, but for some reason, there’s a lot of arachnid-related imagery. They show up in between the main scenes and seem to foreshadow what’s coming up next, which is Margaret getting tangled up in the plot to bring the Antichrist into the world. Aside from all the spiders, Margaret hallucinates some really nasty claws, but they actually belong to the jackal-like demon that raped her. Margaret’s memory suppresses the brutal experience, but her subconscious mind eventually pushes it up, hence the hallucinations.
Changes to Damien’s origins
The story of Damien’s parents in the 2024 movie is slightly different from what it was in the original movie. According to “The Omen,” Damien was born from the union of a jackal and Satan. However, in “The First Omen,” Margaret is Damien’s mother, and Satan is a jackal-like demon. This change raises some questions about the truth behind Damien’s origin. For instance, in “Damien: Omen II,” a doctor discovers that Damien has the chromosome structure of a jackal. So, does it mean Satan actually took over the body of a jackal to impregnate Margaret? If that’s the case, the buried animal in “The Omen” could be the jackal Satan possessed, and that would make sense with “The First Omen.”
