The Conjuring: Last Rites Almost Landed a Major Cameo — Until the Math Killed It

Here is a fun little what-if from the Conjuring-verse: The Conjuring: Last Rites nearly squeezed in one more cameo at the big wedding finale, and it would have bent the timeline so hard you could hear it creak.

The Endgame-style victory lap that almost got wilder

Director Michael Chaves told The Hollywood Reporter he wanted Taissa Farmiga to pop in as Sister Irene during that finale curtain call — the scene where Ed and Lorraine Warren watch their daughter Judy marry Tony Spera while a ton of familiar faces sit in the pews like a spooky family reunion.

• Lili Taylor shows up as Carolyn, with a couple more Perrons from the original 2013 movie
• Frances O'Connor returns as Peggy Hodgson from The Conjuring 2
• Julian Hilliard appears as David Glatzel from The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
• James Wan sneaks in with a cameo
• Bonnie Aarons is there too — not as Valak, but glammed up, blending in with the guests

So why not Sister Irene?

The idea sounds cool until you start doing the math. The Nun II (released in 2022) is set in 1956. Last Rites takes place roughly 30 years later. Sister Irene, who we know as a twentysomething in The Nun films, would look very different by then. On top of that, Irene has never actually met Lorraine in the mainline Conjuring movies, so having her casually pop into Judy's wedding would be... awkward.

There is also that lore twist from The Nun II: Irene is distantly related to Lorraine — both descend from Saint Lucy, a clairvoyant Christian martyr. That connection is a neat thread, but paying it off at the wedding, across decades and with no on-screen relationship, starts to feel like cramming a season finale into one shot.

Chaves put it simply: bringing in Irene, and then dealing with the age difference, would make the moment too big and too sprawling.

He did try to brute-force it anyway. Chaves says he texted Taissa with a pitch along the lines of: just show up for a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo, and we will pretend the 25-year age gap is not a thing. Scheduling killed it — she was filming something else and could not make it.

The Bonnie Aarons of it all (and why Taissa would have stood out)

Bonnie Aarons is at the wedding as herself, not in demonic nun drag, and it works because she is unrecognizable without Valak's look. In theory, Taissa could have done the same low-key nod. In practice, she looks a lot like her real-life sister Vera Farmiga, who plays Lorraine, and fans would clock Sister Irene in a heartbeat. That would turn a sweet background cameo into a giant lore swing.

The Conjuring: Last Rites is out now to buy or rent digitally.