Exorcist Martyrs Trailer Clues Tie Mike Flanagan's Film to The Exorcist III

The trailer for Mike Flanagan's Exorcist Martyrs is packed with clues that tie it to The Exorcist III, right down to a name tag that reads Kinderman. I rewatched all six movies in the franchise this weekend to break down the details you might have missed. The film hits theaters on March 12th, 2027.

A spoiler warning: I'll be referencing the events of the first and third Exorcist films and how they relate to this new one. In interviews, Flanagan has hinted that it will be a kind of sequel to the third movie. Later in this piece I'll get into the thread I think runs all the way back to the original.

Scarlett Johansson's Julie Miller opens on a classic Exorcist staircase shot

The trailer opens at night with Scarlett Johansson's detective, Julie Miller, standing at the top of a steep staircase. She's backlit by street lights, so her features are impossible to make out. She descends the steps to a crime scene while a photographer flashes pictures, and she asks the rookie detective, played by Sasha Calle, who played Supergirl in The Flash, how old the victim is. The answer: "15 or 16 tops."

Any Exorcist fan knows a figure at a steep staircase is a mainstay shot. In the first film, two characters die at the foot of a long staircase. The third film opens with a very similar shot: Lieutenant William Kinderman standing at the same steps he walked up in the first film. He was the same cop character in both movies, although two different actors played him. The poster for The Exorcist III shows Kinderman at the top of the steps looking down, with the tagline "Do you dare walk these steps again?"

The Exorcist III is widely considered the best of the series after the original, and it has a huge cult following that includes Flanagan himself. He said Martyrs can be enjoyed as a standalone, but there will be a ton of Easter eggs and extra bits for fans of the earlier films, plus a thread for super fans that runs all the way back to the original.

The first victim recreates the martyrdom of St. Andrew

The victim is an altar boy from the church, crucified upside down on an X-shaped cross in the church crypt. In an interview with IGN, Flanagan said the killer is recreating the deaths of religious martyrs in twisted ways. St. Andrew, an apostle of Jesus who refused to renounce his Christian faith, was reportedly martyred by crucifixion upside down on an X-shaped cross like this one. He apparently asked to be crucified this way because he saw himself as unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus. My old CCD studies from growing up Catholic are really coming in handy here.

A crime scene specialist pulls a religious necklace from the boy's mouth. I saw a bunch of people online misidentifying it as Father Damien Karras's necklace from the first and third films, but that one was a St. Joseph medal. This one is St. Andrew. You can see the X-shaped cross on it.

Bible verses written in blood quote Judges, Revelation, Malachi and Romans

Words written in blood flash by, lit by the photographer's camera. One wall reads, "But you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you." That's Judges 10:13, where God tells the Israelites who called out for help that, because they kept worshipping other gods, he refused to save them this time. Flanagan told IGN that the scariest part of The Exorcist to him is the idea that Satan is out there terrorizing people and God is nowhere to be seen.

Next is "When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison," from Revelation 20, which goes on to say Satan will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth. This was basically saying that even some who pretend to love God can be tempted to Satan's side if they don't truly love God in their hearts. Then there's "And now you priests, this warning is for you," from Malachi in the Old Testament, God speaking to the priests of ancient Israel. On the other side is "There is no one righteous, not even one," Romans 3:10, written by the Apostle Paul about how everyone is a sinner before God.

Julie Miller links famous serial killers to possession

After shots of the New York skyline, a bridge with a cemetery behind it, and the church, Julie talks to the prison chaplain, Father William, noting that the FBI didn't start interviewing serial killers until the 1970s. We see Father William preparing to give mass to a very underattended service, with an altar boy beside him. It's not clear if this is the same boy we saw crucified, from an earlier point in the film.

Julie mentions H.H. Holmes, America's first serial killer, who said he was possessed by Satan. His real name was Herman Webster Mudgett, born in 1861. He committed a ton of crimes, mostly in Chicago, and ultimately confessed to 27 murders, although not all the people he named were actually dead. He was executed in 1896. Meanwhile, at FBI headquarters, Flanagan mainstay Rahul Kohli, from Midnight Mass, Carrie and The Fall of the House of Usher, talks to agents in FBI jackets. It's not clear who he's playing, but presumably someone high up in the FBI.

Written in blood on a mall map is Revelation 13:18: "Let those who have insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666." Scholars have tried to decipher how that number was arrived at, and there are a ton of theories, but no one agrees on the answer.

Over an autopsy, Julie lists the Night Stalker, Bundy, Gacy and the Son of Sam, all of whom she says claimed to be possessed. Richard Ramirez was active in LA and San Francisco in the mid 80s, had an interest in Satanism, left satanic symbols at some of his crime scenes, and died awaiting execution in 2013. Ted Bundy was active across the US in the 70s, was executed by electric chair in 1989, and claimed an entity fueled his violence against women. John Wayne Gacy was active in Chicago in the 70s, convicted of 33 murders, and died by lethal injection in 1994; he claimed a darker side of his personality named Jack was responsible. David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, was active in New York in the 70s, sent mocking letters to newspapers and police, and claimed a demon in a dog named Sam ordered him to kill, though he later admitted he made that up. He's still in prison and has a parole hearing every couple of years, as recently as May of this year.

The severed index finger points straight back to The Exorcist III

Julie follows a blood streak through an abandoned mall, shines her flashlight into a barrel, and seems terrified by what she sees. Then we see a body's right hand with the index finger cut off. This is where I connect the dots. The Exorcist III also started with the death of a boy, left by a serial killer who used religious imagery, in that case crucified on a pair of rowing oars. A couple of priests also get murdered in that film.

That killer followed the same MO as the Gemini serial killer, who had been executed by electric chair 15 years earlier, and knew details only the police knew. One was that the killer always cut off the index finger of the right hand. He also left messages in blood on walls. So the crimes then and now definitely seem connected, and it seems like Martyrs will deal with the idea that many serial killers had demons, or one demon, inside them. The detective in The Exorcist III was Bill Kinderman, the same cop from the first film. Here, the fingerless hand belongs to another crucified victim, and it looks like that's maybe Julie sitting against a pillar beside it.

Legion and a 12th birthday echo the earlier films

Father William talks about Mark 5:9 across much of the trailer: Jesus asks a possessed man his name, and the man says, "My name is Legion, for we are many." The Exorcist III was based on the novel Legion by William Peter Blatty, who wrote the original Exorcist book and movie and also wrote and directed the third film, where Kinderman recites the same passage. Then Julie's son, Max, celebrates his 12th birthday, the same age Regan was in the first Exorcist when she got possessed.

Julie's Kinderman name tag suggests she's Bill Kinderman's daughter

Julie walks down a prison hallway, and her name tag very clearly reads Kinderman. Bill Kinderman had a daughter named Julie, whom we saw in The Exorcist III, and I think it's safe to say this is her all grown up. Flanagan confirmed she's a single mother, so I'm guessing she got married, took a different last name, and then got divorced or separated, another similarity between her and Regan's mother from the first film.

She seems to be walking to witness the execution of serial killer Father Sunday, played by John Leguizamo. Flanagan confirmed this was the case that made Julie's career, 13 years before the main events, which explains why her name is still Kinderman here. Sunday is flanked by two guards in orange hoods, which Flanagan said guards at public executions sometimes wear for anonymity. The witness gallery is far fuller than the mass was. Father William is there as chaplain, and would have heard Sunday's last confession and delivered last rites. The clock reads midnight, a pretty odd time for an execution. Outside, protesters hold signs reading execute justice, not people and all life is precious, plus a Hebrew expression meaning the explicit name of God that you'll recognize from Ready or Not and that got co-opted by some followers of the occult. A bald woman in a robe spreads her arms wide among them.

A figure a little reminiscent of Pazuzu, a barrel of glass and an upside down entity

A kid in a Gorilla Tag backpack, maybe Max, walks past a man standing stock still with extreme features a little bit reminiscent of Pazuzu, the demon whose face we saw for a split second in the first movie. Julie sits across from a man played by Scoot McNairy; it's not clear who he is, but he gives a very creepy smile before the cut. A figure in an orange hood breathes heavily. In what I assume is Julie's house, a kid who looks a little bigger than Max, but could be Max, comes in wearing a hood that looks made from a pillowcase. A black and white photo on the bookshelf could be Bill Kinderman; from far away, it could kind of be George C. Scott as he appeared in the third film.

Back at the mall, among naked mannequins, the barrel lid pops off and a creepy person or demon thing pokes out amid blood and what looks like broken glass. This mirrors the martyrdom of St. Eulalia, a 13 year old girl tortured for her faith by being sealed in a barrel of glass shards and rolled down a hill. Then a terrified Max sees an upside down entity in a hallway. The banister is right side up, so this thing is hanging from the ceiling, which recalls the famous scene in the third movie where an old woman crawls along a hospital ceiling.

Laurence Fishburne's priest and a possessed Max

The rookie detective looks at something in terror, and a man in an orange hood appears to ambush her before Julie fires at him. I'm assuming it's all one scene, but clever editing could be misleading us. Then there's Laurence Fishburne as another priest. Exorcist movies typically pair a priest in a crisis of faith with an older priest who has done an exorcism before. Priests don't usually fare well in these movies, so I'm worried for both of them. I'm guessing Fishburne's priest is the one who knows how to perform the exorcism.

The strangest shot shows the abandoned mall full of figures in white. They look like more mannequins since they're not moving, but it would be terrifying if they were people standing still. Julie chases someone in an orange hood, and Fishburne opens his Bible, maybe the start of an exorcism I assume they're performing on Max, given the final scene. Julie's son is definitely possessed. Flanagan called Exorcist Martyrs "the scariest movie I've ever gotten to work on."

Where's your hype level for Exorcist Martyrs?