The (bad) apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The First Omen and references to rape.
The Big Picture
-
The Omen
introduces Damien’s first adoptive parents, Robert and Katherine Thorn, who die by the end of the film. - Although Damien is killed in
Omen III: The Final Conflict
, the fourth installment,
Omen IV: The Awakening,
introduces Damien’s children, twin siblings Delia and Alexander. -
The First Omen
makes changes to the canon by revealing that Damien’s birth mother was not in fact a jackal, but Margaret Daino, who births both Damien and his twin sister Layla.
The First Omen, the recently released prequel to the chilling 1976 horror classic The Omen, details the events that lead to the birth of the Antichrist, Damien, played in the original film by Harvey Spencer Stephens. The franchise, as a whole, brings Damien’s entire life to the screen, from his birth, to his adolescence, to adulthood, to his death, to… we’ll get there. It’s like Darth Vader’s story told across the first six Star Wars films, only Damien doesn’t turn to the dark side — he is the dark side. Like any child, Damien needed parental figures to help raise him, and as the old adage goes, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Although in Damien’s case, the villagers usually died. It leads to a very unconventional family tree, with dear old dad, Satan, scorching one side and a host of others, some through adoption, some by blood, on the other.
The First Omen
A young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church, but encounters a darkness that causes her to question her faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate.
- Release Date
- April 5, 2024
- Director
- Arkasha Stevenson
- Cast
- Ralph Ineson , Nell Tiger Free , Bill Nighy , sonia braga
- Main Genre
- Horror
- Writers
- Tim Smith , Arkasha Stevenson , Keith Thomas , Ben Jacoby , David Seltzer
Robert and Katherine Thorn, Damien’s First Adoptive Parents
The Omen is 1970s horror at its best, a film filled with deceit, terror, and an inescapable destiny that claims a number of lives. Damien is born on the sixth day of June, at six o’clock in the morning, a point in time spot-on in its Revelations relevance. All we know is that his father is the Devil, and his mother was a jackal, which presumably would have made shopping for Mother’s Day pretty simple, with a bag of kibble from the local pet shop. This isn’t disclosed to Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck), the future American ambassador to Great Britain, who is offered the now-orphaned Damien after his own child is stillborn. Robert agrees to adopt Damien, and convinces his wife Katherine (Lee Remick) that Damien is their own child, keeping her in the dark about the fate of their own baby. A new branch of Damien’s family tree is mere months away, with Katherine pregnant with a sibling. Only Damien snaps that twig off by knocking Katherine off a balcony with his tricycle, a fall that kills the unborn baby. (The Omen, The Shining, Saw XI — what’s the deal with tricycles in horror films?)
The so-called accident has Robert thinking twice about Damien’s true identity, having been warned by Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton) that Damien is the Antichrist. Any skepticism he may have had goes out the window when he uncovers the 666 birthmark on the boy. Robert also learns that Damien’s entry into their life wasn’t a coincidence, but premeditated. Robert and Katherine’s baby wasn’t stillborn, but murdered, and Damien was placed in their care to give the son of Satan a foot into the political world. Unfortunately, Robert’s attempts to right this unholy wrong, by killing Damien in a cathedral with seven ancient daggers, is cut short when he is killed by police. With Katherine now dead at the hands of Damien’s nanny — it’s so hard to get good, un-Satanic help these days — the first branch of the family tree stops there, and Damien stands with the U.S. President and the First Lady at his parents’ double-funeral.
‘The First Omen’ Director on the Joys of Making a Disney Movie with a Vagina
Arkasha Stevenson recaps her journey to making her first feature, a studio horror movie that addresses autonomy over the female body.
Richard, Ann, and Mark Thorn, Damien’s Second Adoptive Family
Damien’s story continues with Damien: Omen II, set seven years after the events of the first film. Now a 12-year-old, Damien (Jonathan Scott-Taylor) is living with his uncle Richard (William Holden) — the younger brother of the deceased Robert Thorn — aunt Ann Thorn (another Lee, Lee Grant), and his cousin Mark (Lucas Donat), with whom he attends a military academy. The family also includes Great-Aunt Marion (Sylvia Sidney), or at least included, until she got on the wrong side of Damien and kicked it after a raven in her room startled her, leading to a fatal heart attack. Like his brother before, Richard is told about Damien being the Antichrist, and comes in possession of the same seven daggers meant to kill him. Only Mark hears the conversation about it, and asks Damien if it’s true. Dad might be the father of lies, but Damien admits the truth, that he is, in fact, the spawn of Satan. Damien does give Mark the chance to join him, but Mark’s refusal leads to Damien inflicting a fatal aneurysm on Mark’s brain. Mark’s death pushes Richard to act, and he picks Damien up from the academy with the full intention of stabbing him. Instead, Richard is stabbed with the daggers by Ann, his lovely wife, who is actually a Satanist, who has “always belonged to him.” With gratitude, Damien causes a boiler room to explode, killing Ann in the process. Alone again. Interestingly, a doctor in the film discovers the root of Damien’s family tree in Damien’s marrow cells, as they resemble that of a jackal. As in Mama Jackal. Too bad a falling elevator cable accidentally — sorry, “accidentally” — kills him.
Gene, Karen, Delia, and Alexander York
Omen III: The Final Conflict sees Damien (Sam Neill) appointed the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom after the last one ended his own life (another convenient “accident”). Damien doesn’t do anything in the film that grows the Beelzebub/Thorn family tree, but he sure as hell stops a bunch, commanding his followers to kill all boys born in England the morning of March 24, 1981, in an effort to stop the Second Coming of Pop’s enemy, Christ. It doesn’t work, and Damien is killed, at last, with the dagger that has been itching to do the job since 1976. The end of the family tree? Not a chance.
Omen IV: The Awakening, which Collider ranks as the worst of the franchise, introduces Virginia congressman Gene York (Michael Woods) and his wife Karen (Faye Grant), who adopt a girl named Delia (Asia Vieira) from an orphanage. Around the age of seven, Delia begins to show sociopathic traits and violent tendencies, and accidents — here we go again — befall people around her.
Karen, who is now pregnant, suspects something is not right about Delia, and hires a detective to track down her birth parents. The detective, shortly before his death, sends Karen his findings in a letter, which she receives shortly after the birth of her son, Alexander (Cydney McPherson). Those findings link Delia to the family tree, and it’s all very twisted. See, Delia is Damien’s daughter and the protector of the new Antichrist, her twin brother Alexander. How does that happen? Glad you asked. Delia actually carried Alexander’s embryo inside of her, where it was removed by Karen’s doctor — a Satanist, naturally — and implanted into Karen. This would be the gnarled, twisty part of the family tree.
‘The First Omen’s Margaret Daino, Layla Daino, and Carlita Scianna
We are given a little bit of information about Damien’s birth in The Omen, but the little we know isn’t entirely accurate, as the prequel The First Omen makes clear. For starters, thanks to some twisted logic, a cult brings about the birth of the Antichrist in order to drive people back to the Catholic Church. They initially use a jackal to impregnate young women, with the jackal a conduit for Satan himself. The plan produces only two healthy offspring, both females. Since the Antichrist must be male, they believe that having the jackal impregnate one of the two will bring about a healthy, unheavenly boy, so they select Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free), who is now a nun. After being drugged and then raped by the jackal, she becomes pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl. Following their birth, the boy is given to Robert Thorn and is named Damien, where The Omen picks up, while the girl, Layla, is taken into hiding by Margaret and her sister, Carlita (Nicole Sorace).
If The First Omen is indeed part of the canon, then this new knowledge changes what we know of Damien’s family tree. It was his father that was the jackal, not his mother, and the introduction of a previously unknown twin sibling presents an offshoot of the family tree that future films in the franchise, should there be any, can explore.
The First Omen is currently playing in theaters in the U.S.
This article was originally published on collider.com