Let’s make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in The Conjuring: Last Rites. The answer is not in the traditional sense, but along with the usual Conjuring movie use of photos of the real-life people the films are based on accompanying the closing credits, Last Rites does have a bit of a bonus photo and trivia fact it saves for after the closing credits.
Full spoilers for the movie follow!
Promoted as the final film in the series, The Conjuring: Last Rites is based on the real life Smurl family, and their claims in 1986 that their house was haunted. The film involves an old mirror being brought into the Smurls’ house – the same mirror Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) had a disturbing encounter with decades before – which quickly unlocks all sorts of increasing mayhem, from a light fixture falling to an unseen presence yanking the kitchen phone by the cord.
Even without knowing yet that it’s causing the growing danger around them, and unsettled by the feelings the mirror elicits, Smurl teenage daughters Heather (Kíla Lord Cassidy) and Dawn (Beau Gadsdon) throw it out, which leads to it being crushed in the back of a garbage truck. But instead of ending the problem, it escalates it. Now, Dawn is puking up blood and shards of glass, and their dad Jack (Elliot Cowan) is levitated into the air in the middle of the night. This sounds like a case for Ed and Lorraine Warren!
…Eventually!
The Chilling Warrens
So yeah, you’d think Ed and Lorraine would be getting a phone call about now, but Last Rites is oddly and frustratingly structured, keeping the Warrens separate from the Smurls for nearly two thirds of its run time. Having retired from taking cases – Ed’s ongoing heart issues are a concern – the two are now holding sparsely attended lectures, where college kids sarcastically ask if the Warrens are like the Ghostbusters (we’re in the mid-’80s now, after all).
The one major thing directly tethering the Warrens to any current supernatural happenings for much of Last Rites is Ed and Lorraine’s daughter, Judy (Mia Tomlinson). The psychic abilities she’s inherited from Lorraine have grown now that she’s an adult, and she begins to be overwhelmed by visions of all sorts of spooky things – from imagining good ol’ Annabelle the doll coming out of the basement to menace her, to being menaced by the same spirits the Smurls are seeing, albeit without know that’s what she’s seeing.
Lorraine does begin to gradually get some new visions herself, and Ed and Lorraine’s disconnect from the Smurls begins to dissipate when the Warrens’ friend (and Conjuring Universe regular) Father Gordon (Steve Coulter) hears the reports about the Smurls and their claims of being haunted, and goes to see them on his own. While blessing the house, he sees firsthand evidence of the dark spirits within, and goes to the church to seek assistance. Except whatever was in the house now follows him and kills him, making it look like he hung himself before he can speak to anyone about his concerns.
Gordon’s death finally brings the Warrens fully into the Smurls’ story after Judy finds out what brought Gordon to Pennsylvania and she is compelled to go there to help in some way. Accompanied by Judy’s fiancée, Tony (Ben Hardy), Ed and Lorraine go to bring her back and though they briefly try to simply leave with her, Judy convinces her parents to stay and figure out how to stop what’s haunting this family.
The Conjuring: Last Rites Ending Explained/Ending Disappoints
Despite its earlier fate, the mirror has now mysteriously returned to the Smurl house, discovered in the attic where it is once more intact. In the film’s prologue, a case brought a young Ed and Lorraine into contact with the mirror in 1964, where being in its presence profoundly affected the very pregnant Lorraine, sending her into labor. Judy was then born stillborn, but after Lorraine prayed to God, the baby miraculously was okay.
Now reunited with the mirror, which Lorraine labels as a demon, Ed and Lorraine admit that in the aftermath of nearly losing Judy, fearful of what could happen, they never followed up on the mirror or where it ended up or what happened to the girl who came to them for help in 1964. This scene establishes a bit of a “we must atone for our original sin” idea that’s not really followed up on.
Rather than try to destroy it again, Ed and Lorraine decide to bring the mirror back to their home, hoping that containing it within the collection of items in their artifact room will put a stop to the Smurls’ hauntings. In the midst of this, Lorraine learns the history behind the three spirits the family has been seeing and how, in their mortal life, they lived on the property where the Smurls’ house now sits, back when it was a farm. The most fearsome spirit – seen as a longhaired man wielding an axe – killed both his wife and her mother in a jealous rage, after he discovered his wife was cheating on him. Now all three of them haunt this place… or do they? Lorraine says she feels something else is what’s truly behind this, using these three spirits as a façade for something demonic actually controlling them.
When Ed and Jack try to move the mirror out of the house, it seems to take on a life of its own. The sheet they put over it is whipped off by an invisible presence and Jack is injured when the mirror falls on his foot. Things escalate further when the mirror moves of its own accord and Judy is slammed to the ground and is unresponsive. Ed begins to give her CPR only for him too to suddenly be in distress and unable to continue, looking like he may have a heart attack. Tony is able to take over for Ed and Judy is revived, and Ed rallies as well, resuming his prayers against the mirror.
With the mirror now pinning Tony down by the throat as the others desperately try to move it, Judy begins to become overwhelmed, until she once more thinks of the song Lorraine taught her when she was little so she could focus when the visions were too much for her. Lorraine, who’s always told Judy to try to repress her abilities if they’re too much for her, realizes the error of her ways, and tells her she should embrace them and not run from them. Focusing her abilities, Judy is able to hold back the demon in the mirror, telling it “You’re not there,” as numerous cracks appear in the glass. The demon screams in anguish, banished away.
After saying farewell to the Smurls, the Warrens return home, where Ed and Tony move the mirror into the artifact room, alongside Annabelle, the painting of the demon nun, and all their other objects. As he begins to walk out of the room, Ed – who’d been resistant to giving his blessing to Tony asking Judy to marry him earlier in the film – pauses before tossing the keys for the artifact room to his future son-in-law, saying “Welcome to the family.”
Which is all sweet, except it doesn’t fix the fact that the final showdown feels underwhelming, as chaotic as it is. The opening text of Last Rites reiterates what a large part of the marketing campaign of the film has leaned into – saying this was the final case the Warrens took on and there was a big reason for that. In theory, you could say hey, both Ed and Judy almost died! That would be enough to shake them! Except that’s not really presented as changing their perspective on things or hurting their resolve. Plus Ed’s heart issues were something spoken about at the start of the film and were already the reason they stopped taking cases in the first place. So them taking on one last case only to be reminded, yep, Ed still has heart issues, doesn’t feel quite so impactful.
Even more frustratingly, the movie seemingly sets up an impending reveal when Lorraine says there’s something more ominous behind what’s occurring, only to drop the ball on a satisfying answer for what that is. The more ethereal nature of The Conjuring’s threats made it unlikely to be a returning character in the classic sense – Judy has two freaky visions of Annabelle, but that seems to be a side effect of what’s occurring with her escalating abilities, not the cause of this movie’s threat – but minus, say, making Valak the Nun the big bad here, it would be hard to have someone step out of the shadows that would work as a callback to the previous films. But Lorraine’s dialogue suggests a pay-off we just don’t get beyond the thing in the mirror being a generic demon.
Just have Sacha Baron Cohen play Mephisto here or something, Conjuring!
Does The Conjuring: Last Rites Have a Mid- or Post-Credits Scene?
The Conjuring Universe films have had mid- or post-credit scenes in the past, but as a pseudo-finale – it’s the final Ed and Lorraine film, though it feels doubtful the entire larger franchise is done – Last Rites bypasses a traditional extra scene with any actors. But it does still have something after the closing credits.
Like the other Conjuring movies do with their respective cases, near the end, Last Rites has onscreen text about the aftermath of the story, informing us the Smurls lived in the house for three more years and never faltered in their insistence that something supernatural occurred there. We then get a final scene set at Judy and Tony’s wedding, which includes some dialogue-free cameos from previous films in the series, including Lili Taylor, Mackenzie Foy and John Brotherton reprising their roles from the first movie, Frances O’Connor and Madison Wolfe from The Conjuring 2, and Julian Hilliard from The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.
Our final moments are spent watching Ed & Lorraine dance together at the reception, looking at each other with love. Lorraine has a vision of the future, seeing glimpses of her and Ed and the remainder of their happy lives together, including being visited by Judy, Tony and their grandchildren.
More onscreen text then tells us about Ed’s eventual death from a stroke at the age of 77, and Lorraine’s later death at the age of 92. It alludes to controversy around the couple and their claims (one might argue that’s an understatement), while saying they were pivotal figures in mainstreaming the idea of supernatural investigations.
Where previous Conjuring movies included real-life imagery and recordings pertaining to the case we just watched covered in the movie during its end titles, Last Rites is a bit different in what it presents while the main cast and credits are shown. There isn’t as much focus on the Smurl case specifically, instead going with more of an overview of images and news stories about the real Ed and Lorraine from throughout their life and career, underlining this is a cinematic farewell for them.
Then, after the rest of the closing credits play, one final real-life photo comes up onscreen, this one of Ed Warren looking into a mirror – which on screen text lets us know is the actual mirror Ed and Lorraine held onto after the Smurl case, adding it to their collection.
And the text continues to let us know that this type of mirror is called… a conjuring mirror.
It’s a bit of a fun final tidbit, even as it’s also innately a little silly too as a last minute “aha!”-type reveal, as though Will Smith just walked onscreen and said “You’re telling me this is some kind of Conjuring mirror? And we need to give Last Rites?”
Note: This story was updated on Sept. 5, 2025 with full spoilers. It originally ran on Sept. 4.
