The various films in the Conjuring universe have so many interlocking threads, it can
be hard to keep track of them all.
Here's everything you need to know about the history of The Conjuring universe before you
see The Nun II.
The Nun films are the earliest-set entries in The Conjuring Universe.
Taking place in 1952 Romania, director Corin Hardy's The Nun follows the novitiate Sister
Irene who, along with a priest named Father Burke, is ordered by the Vatican to investigate
a cloistered abbey where a few nuns have died under mysterious circumstances.
Although the abbey appears to be populated with worried nuns when Irene and Burke arrive,
it turns out that none of them were real, but instead spectral illusions meant to blind
Irene and Burke to what's really going on.
In the Dark Ages, the abbey was originally a castle built by the Duke of St. Carta, an
occultist who summoned the demon Valak before being defeated by Christian knights.World
War II bombings then unleashed the demon, who took the form of a nun as its earthly
body.
"As if there was any doubt before, this place is no longer holy."
Sister Irene and Burke attempt to banish Valak using the same thing the knights did, a vial
filled with the blood of Jesus Christ.
Although they appear to be successful, the end of the film shows paranormal investigators
the Warrens giving a lecture showing footage of Frenchie possessed by Valak years later.
While Valak is arguably the Warrens' foremost demonic foe, Malthus, the malevolent demon
whose form of choice is a highly creepy-looking porcelain doll known as Annabelle, is also
a contender.
The origins of the doll and its subsequent possession are detailed in David F. Sandberg's
Annabelle: Creation.
The film begins in 1943 in Los Angeles County, when toymaker Samuel Mullins and his wife
Esther are grief-stricken after their young daughter Annabelle is killed in a car accident.
As the grieving parents pray fervently to anything that will let them see their daughter
again, Malthus answers disguised as Annabelle's spirit and asks to be transferred to a vessel.
The Mullins choose a doll that was supposed to be a gift for their late daughter, and
soon after realize that the spirit inside the doll is not Anabelle, but something evil.
They then attempt to quell the demon by sealing it inside a closet covered in pages from the
Bible.
12 years later, in 1955, the Mullins allow Sister Charlotte and a group of displaced
orphans to take shelter in their home after their orphanage is shut down.
Sure enough, one of the orphans, a polio-stricken girl named Janice, frees Annabelle from her
closet cage, and the doll proceeds to terrorize her and her friends.
The demon possesses Janice and causes the deaths of both Samuel and Esther before Sister
Charlotte manages to lock her away in the closet once again.
However, the possessed Janice escapes and finds her way to another orphanage in Santa
Monica, California.
There, she re-names herself Annabelle, whereupon she is adopted by Pete and Sharon Higgins.
12 years after Annabelle's escape, John R. Leonetti's Annabelle begins.
Near the beginning of the film, we witness a grown Annabelle Higgins return home to murder
her adoptive parents.
The Higgins' next-door neighbors, John and Mia Form, overhear the murder before being
attacked by Annabelle and her boyfriend.
As the police arrive and attempt to subdue the killers, Annabelle slices her own throat
while holding the porcelain doll that John had recently bought for his pregnant wife.
This ritualistic killing puts Malthus back in a creepy doll, which proceeds to make Mia
and John's lives a living Hell.
As Mia tries to protect her newborn baby, they simply cannot get rid of Annabelle.
Their fight gets only more complicated when their friend, Father Perez, warns them that
the demon cannot be removed from the doll, for it will try to claim another soul.
"Demons can't just take souls, Mia.
The soul needs to be offered to the demon before it can take."
Annabelle continues to terrorize Mia, attempting to drive her so mad that she'll commit suicide
and give the demon her soul.
Fortunately, Mia's neighbor and friend, Evelyn, guilt-stricken by the accidental death of
her own daughter years earlier, sacrifices herself in Mia's place.
This sacrifice causes the demon and the doll to disappear.
Six months later, the Annabelle doll is bought by a woman in an antique shop as a gift for
her daughter, Debbie, and the cycle continues.
The opening scene of James Wan's The Conjuring depicts Debbie and her friend Camilla as they
recount strange things about the doll Debbie's mother bought for her.
After contacting a medium, the spirit surrounding the doll communicates to them that it was
the ghost of a 7-year-old girl named Annabelle Higgins who died in their apartment and asked
to be allowed to possess the doll.
After the two women agree, the paranormal activity only worsens, and the young ladies
decide to reach out to paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren for assistance.
Based on the real-life figures of the same names, Ed and Lorraine Warren are a husband-and-wife
duo that draw from Ed's skills as a non-ordained demonologist and Lorraine's powers as a clairvoyant.
Ed and Lorraine investigate the Annabelle doll at Debbie and Camilla's behest, discovering
that the doll is indeed possessed.
The Warren's inform the young women that the demon in the Annabelle doll had been attempting
to manipulate the two into allowing it to take over one of their bodies.
The Warrens then remove the doll from the apartment and lock it in place inside their
Occult Museum.
Sometime between the events of The Nun and The Conjuring, the Warrens were called upon
to help perform an exorcism on poor Frenchie, a harrowing ordeal during which the Valak-possessed
man touched Lorraine.
The Warrens play that exorcism footage while lecturing in Wakefield, Massachusetts in 1971,
a lecture that happens to be attended by Carolyn Perron.
In The Conjuring, Carolyn hires the Warrens to come investigate her family's new home
in Harrisville, Rhode Island, which has been subject to paranormal activity ever since
the Perrons moved in.
Sure enough, it turns out that the Perron's property was once owned by an accused witch,
Bathsheba Sherman, who sacrificed her own child in Satan's name before dying by suicide.
"It's no wonder they're going through what they are."
Her spirit is unleashed thanks in part to a creepy old music box, and she possesses
Carolyn in an attempt to force her to kill one of her five daughters.
Ed performs the exorcism while Lorraine brings Carolyn back to herself, and the couple manage
to banish Bathsheba and her curse.
With Carolyn free from possession, they take the haunted music box and file it away inside
their Occult Museum.
As it turns out, keeping a museum filled with cursed and haunted objects in your home isn't
the safest idea.
Unfortunately for The Warrens, it winds up being their daughter's safety they need to
worry about with their collection of morbid artifacts, rather than their own.
Four years after sequestering the possessed Annabelle doll inside their home, their young
daughter, Judy, is left to contend with the evil doll during the events of Gary Dauberman's
Annabelle Comes Home.
When Ed and Lorraine leave Judy alone at home while they go work on another case, they hire
teen babysitter Mary Ellen to watch her.
Mary Ellen brings along her friend, Daniela, who recently lost her father and hopes that
something inside the Warren's museum can help her contact his spirit.
The Annabelle demon plays another one of its tricks, however, manipulating Daniela to set
her free.
Once she's released from her case, Annabelle raises a number of other evil spirits to aid
in her plan.
One of the spirits is The Bride, a spirit who haunts a wedding dress to try to force
brides to kill their grooms.
The Bride possesses Daniela, forcing Judy and Mary Ellen to join forces to combat the
spirits.
Finally, an old recording of Ed exorcising the Bride frees Daniela, and Annabelle is
once again locked in her special case.
According to director Michael Chaves, The Curse of La Llorona is not technically part
of the Conjuring Universe, but it does share some overlapping characters and lore.
The film follows Los Angeles caseworker, Anna, who believes that Patricia Alvarez is abusing
her two young sons.
After Anna removes the boys from their mother, who gets arrested, the kids are mysteriously
drowned in a river.
As it turns out, Patricia was attempting to protect her boys from the curse of La Llorona,
the demonic spirit of a Mexican woman who drowned her sons in 1673.
As a result of her mistake, Anna accidentally passes the curse along to her own children
and seeks help and spiritual guidance from none other than Father Perez from the original
Annabelle film.
Father Perez not only recalls his ordeal with the haunted doll, but he also points Anna
in the direction of folk shaman and former priest Rafael.
Rafael gives her a cross made from a Fire Tree, the same type of tree that "witnessed"
La Llorona's original crime.
Through the resilience of Anna and her children, La Llorona is stabbed through the chest with
the cross and defeated.
It turns out that The Curse of La Llorona is not the only horror movie that has some
universal crossover with the Conjuring franchise.
At the beginning of James Wan's The Conjuring 2, Ed and Lorraine travel to Long Island in
order to investigate some grisly murders at an iconic house on Ocean Avenue with bay windows
that look like eyes.
If that description sounds familiar to you, that may be because it's the same house from
The Amityville Horror series.
The Conjuring films are based in part on the Warrens' real-life exploits, and in March
of 1976, the real Warrens did actually check out the Amityville house where Ronald DeFeo
Jr. murdered his family on November 13th, 1974, It was in this same house that the family
of of George and Kathleen Lutz allegedly experienced paranormal activity in 1975.
The opening of The Conjuring 2 not only depicts the Warrens' brief inquiry into the Amityville
house, it makes the Amityville investigation central to the Conjuring Universe's narrative.
During a seance at the Ocean Avenue home, Lorraine relives the horrific '74 murders
before encountering a demonic nun figure.
Back when the Warrens were conducting an exorcism on Frenchie, the possessed man grabbed Lorraine,
giving her a glimpse of Ed's death.
Upon encountering Valak's spirit during the Amityville seance, Lorraine sees another vision
of Ed's death, where his body is impaled by a large wooden spike.
One year later, in 1977, The Conjuring 2 continues by introducing the Hodgson family, who reside
in the London suburb of Enfield.
After her daughters play with a Ouija board, single mother Peggy Hodgson and her other
children witness increasingly distressing paranormal activity, culminating in her daughter
Janet being possessed by the spirit of an elderly man named Bill Wilkins.
A number of paranormal investigators, including the Warrens, descend on Enfield to decide
whether the activity is a hoax or not.
Meanwhile, Lorraine continues to see visions of Ed's death and Valak.
She fails to remember the demon's name — the key to controlling it — but does write it
down in a bible while in a trance state.
Eventually, Lorraine discovers that Wilkins is being manipulated by Valak, who is the
true threat to Janet, the Hodgsons, and Ed.
Valak appears to have similar powers as the Annabelle demon does, recruiting both Wilkins'
spirit and a possessed zoetrope toy to menace her victims.
After Valak possesses one of the Hodgson children to force her to commit suicide, Ed saves her.
In turn, Lorraine saves Ed by finding Valak's name in her bible and uttering it before her
husband can be impaled like in her visions.
"You are Valak, the defiler."
Having dominion over the demon, Lorraine condemns Valak straight to Hell.
After the battle is won, Ed takes the zoetrope as a memento for his Museum.
Four years later, in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, the Warrens visit Brookfield,
Connecticut to help with the exorcism of an 8-year-old boy.
The boy's sister, Debbie Glatzel and her boyfriend, Arne Johnson, are present at the event, and
things become so dire that Arne invites the demon to inhabit his body instead of the boy's.
Ed witnesses this transference while suffering a heart attack.
Upon reawakening a month later, Ed tells Lorraine about the incident, and Lorraine attempts
to warn Debbie and Arne.
She's unfortunately too late; the demon makes Arne stab his landlord 22 times, causing Arne
to be arrested.
It's then up to the Warrens to prove the veracity of his possession in court.
Ed and Lorraine begin acting as detectives, retracing the demon's steps.
They find the initial possession was due to a witch's totem that established a curse on
the Glatzels.
They get more information from a former priest named Kastner who has prior experience studying
the cult known as the Disciples of the Ram.
If that name sounds familiar, that's because it's the same cult Annabelle Higgins was part
of.
Through Lorraine's gifts, the Warrens find other victims who held totems and were stabbed
22 times, and they soon realize that an occultist is behind these curses and killings.
After cross-checking the victims' locations, Ed is briefly possessed at the Warrens' home
in Connecticut.
This causes the duo to realize that the occultist must be in the area.
They discover that Kastner has a secret daughter named Isla, who became bewitched by the occult
that her father was researching.
Ed and Lorraine search for Isla's altar, knowing that destroying it will stop her curses.
Despite Isla enchanting Ed again, the married couple's love prevails, the occultist's altar
is destroyed, and Isla is killed by the demon she summoned.
After she's defeated, the Warrens' add a cup from Isla's altar to their Museum.
In turn, Arne is convicted of manslaughter instead of murder in the first degree, and
the demons appear to be defeated for the time being.
Although The Nun II is another prequel to the main Conjuring films, given how the Conjuring
Universe jumps around in time, it feels safe to say that we haven't seen the last of the
Warrens — or their demonic foes — on screen.