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Review of the second season of "The Exorcist" series

Tue Jun 03 2025

The Exorcist: Season 2 Review - A Descent in the Finale

While the second season of “The Exorcist” series boasts diverse storylines, ideas, and even styles, its finale noticeably pales in comparison to its beginning and middle.

Veteran exorcist Marcus (Ben Daniels) and his young companion Thomas (Alfonso Herrera) are forced to go on the run when it becomes clear that the Vatican leadership is riddled with demons. However, this doesn’t stop them from fulfilling their duties. After dealing with a potential case of possession in a teenage girl, they take her to a private shelter on a small island, run by a widower named Andy (John Cho). But once there, Marcus and Thomas realize that something is amiss with the house and the surrounding forest.

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Recently, news broke about Disney’s acquisition of the Fox brand (including the TV channel that produces “The Exorcist”), casting doubt on the series’ future, as it doesn’t quite align with the “family-friendly” spirit of its new owners.

William Friedkin’s original “The Exorcist” was the highest-grossing horror film in cinema history until the release of “It” this year (if you don’t count M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense”). And if you adjust for inflation and ticket prices, its record remains unmatched. Therefore, it’s no surprise that Fox decided to revisit this classic. The biggest surprise of the first season (besides the unexpected plot connection to the film) was that the show managed to stand firmly on its own. Of course, it stands in the shadow of its great predecessor, but the first season confidently held attention and provided plenty of interesting ideas for a sequel.

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The second season immediately takes the narrative in a different direction. Instead of a slow, “dignified” exorcism in the interiors of an American suburb, we get a wild ride through the provincial backwoods, where Marcus and Thomas literally dodge bullets while trying to exorcise a demon from the possessed wife of a local sheriff. For a while, it seems like the series is heading towards a paranormal western a la John Carpenter’s “Vampires,” which is a good thing – the demonic conspiracy in the Vatican in the first season felt a bit too trashy.

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Unfortunately, the conspiracy returns after a couple of episodes, but thankfully, it doesn’t steal the spotlight this time. Instead, it serves as a kind of constraint for the main characters – Marcus and Thomas are being hunted by servants of dark forces, and they have no one to rely on but themselves. Meanwhile, a new storyline takes center stage, ultimately proving to be the most interesting of the season. It revolves around Andy, his five foster children, and his old friend from social services who comes to his house for an inspection.

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From the very first scenes, we understand that something terrible is about to happen in this family, and the episodes where evil hasn’t yet revealed all its cards are the best of the season. In some ways, they resemble James Wan’s films, which is a very favorable comparison for the series. Andy has many foster children, all of whom are very different (a rebellious teenager, a devout black youth, a blind boy, a mentally challenged strongman, a little girl who shies away from others), and the writers skillfully manipulate our expectations, constantly shifting the focus from one character to another. Andy himself has a skeleton in his closet – his wife recently committed suicide, and he has never come to terms with her death or understood what drove her to take that step.

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The Downfall of the Finale

Unfortunately, the season noticeably falters in the final episodes. An unjustifiably large amount of time is spent on Thomas’s emotional turmoil, whose power is rapidly growing, but his constant desire to take risks endangers his own soul. The demon, on the other hand, demonstrates the habits of the most dim-witted villains from trashy B-movies – instead of brutally and without further ado sending everyone to the next world, he starts catching his victims, tying them up, and going off on his own demonic business. Moreover, the possessed person sometimes shows outstanding paranormal abilities, and sometimes can’t find a fugitive hiding two steps away from him.

In the final episodes, the season becomes hectic, rushed, and dull-witted, and worst of all, it seems that we shouldn’t expect anything fundamentally new in the future. Yes, another demon specialist has been added to the company of Marcus and Thomas, but considering that the best thing in the second season was not related to this trio, it begins to seem that “The Exorcist” is already on the verge of a crisis in its second year.