The following contains spoilers for The Conjuring: Last RitesThe Conjuring: Last Rites uses its post-credits scene to pay tribute to the real-life Warrens — and reveal something about the тιтle of the franchise. The fourth film in the Conjuring series (and ninth overall entry in the franchise), Last Rites serves as a send-off to Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga’s Ed and Lorraine.

While the film’s overall happy ending is a victory for the family, the post-credits serve as a fitting and ultimately bittersweet epilogue about their eventual fates. Here’s why the post-credits beats of The Conjuring: Last Rites close out Ed and Lorraine’s story and how it retroactively changes the тιтle of the entire Conjuring movie series.

Last Rites’ Post-Credits Scene Reveals The Real Life Fate Of The Warrens

The post-credits of The Conjuring: Last Rites features a final picture of Ed Warren alongside the Conjuring mirror that inspired the film, ending the film (and the current series) with a tribute to the Warrens. The Conjuring films are based on the lives of the Warrens, a married pair of paranormal researchers.

Although the real-life Warrens remain controversial for several reasons, the film series has always depicted them as heroes fighting against demonic forces. The films have always emphasized that true life inspiration, adding a layer to the hauntings by placing them firmly in the real world. The credits to the films often reinforce this connection.

This carries over to the credits and post-credits of Last Rites, which makes sense on a thematic level. The film is very much designed as an off-ramp for the characters from the franchise, giving the Warrens as happy an ending as it could. This could also allow the series to move on beyond the Warrens in future films.

The real-life footage of Ed and Lorraine on talk shows, the pictures of the family, and the grainy home video all serve to reinforce the idea that the Warrens were real, and their exploits might have also been more than just supersтιтion. It plays up a long-running selling point of the entire franchise in a way that naturally fits the ending.

It’s been suggested that The Conjuring franchise will continue on in new ways even if the story of the Warrens has concluded, but horror fans have grown attached to the family over the years. By using the credits and post-credits to Last Rites to give them a happy ending, audiences can move on to new stories.

The credits serve as a final epilogue for the couple, closing out their story in a natural way. The final sH๏τ is one last pH๏τo of Ed among the items they’d collected, underscoring the impact his life and stories (along with those of his family) have subsequently had in popular culture, thanks in part to the Conjuring series as a whole.

What Last Rites’ Post-Credits Scene Reveals About The Conjuring Series

That’s what makes the choice to end the film with a sH๏τ of the Conjuring mirror an interesting decision. Within the film itself, the mirror is connected to an early case with the Warrens, the enтιтy connected to it coming close to killing Judy as she is being born.

This effectively makes the mirror, inspired by one of the Warrens’ cases, the bookends threat of the Warrens’ story. From the birth of their daughter early in their careers to an attack against her as they retire, this makes the mirror symbolic of the Warrens’ entire franchise-long arcs fighting demons at risk of their own lives.

Last Rites doesn’t use too many former threats beyond a specter of the Annabelle doll. Even that is just a tool of the demon in the mirror, creating haunting visions meant to weaken Judy’s defenses and allow it to possess her. In a sense, the mirror could be seen as a representation of all the unknown evils the Warrens fought.

That makes it a fitting item to see in the final picture with the real-life Ed, serving as the dark counterpoint to the Warrens themselves. If the Warrens inspired the heroic actions of their film counterparts, the dark stories about the mirror (and the other artifacts) influenced plenty of nightmarish demons in the Conjuring franchise.

This also makes it retroactively perfect to have the franchise тιтled after a mirror that was used to communicate with the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ and gave way to demonic forces. That could sum up the entire Conjuring franchise in a nutshell, laying out the central danger of all the otherwise disconnected films in the franchise.

Every Conjuring movie sees old spirits and the evil enтιтies held back and contained by people like the Warrens, represented by the Conjuring mirror. Therefore, retroactively naming the series after such an item highlights how the barriers between life and death are the central threat of the entire series.

It’s a subtle touch, but a good idea for how to make this film truly feel like an ending. It’s a clever way to give The Conjuring: Last Rites a deeper thematic connection to the larger franchise, with the post-credits scene helping give the film a proper bookend quality.