INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Did ‘The Exorcist’ On Fox Make The Cut After The Finale? [Spoilers]

By Nick Younker
Published on: 11:16 PST, Dec 18, 2016

The Exorcist TV series that aired on Fox this year just wrapped up its first season run, and there are some noteworthy developments for the show that need to be addressed. But what fans of the Fox show and fans of the original film need to realize is that there were some key differences that may or may not have made the show a success.

First of all, if you are reading his article and have not seen The Exorcist TV show on Fox, or if you are one of the handful of people in the world that have not seen the original Exorcist movie from 1973, then you should know that there are spoilers for both the show and the film coming up. If you do not want either of those details spoiled for you, then you should only proceed with that caution in mind.

The first thing that fans of The Exorcist need to realize is that the show did feature some of the legendary characters from the original film, albeit with different actors, but they made a few departures from the source material which was originally derived from the author of the original work, William Peter Blatty.

William Peter Blatty wrote The Exorcist as a novel and a short time after it was published, he teamed up with William Friedkin to write the film, which mirrored the book as closely as possible with the special effects that were available to the duo in the early ’70s.

In the 1973 film, The Exorcist, the movie was so intensely shocking and scary that there were reports of people passing out at the theaters and even a few pregnant ladies having miscarriages. Most of this can be attributed to the content that was in the film, which featured a young girl doing extremely crude things while possessed by the demon Pazuzu.

The content was so shocking that it quickly made headlines across the country and the film went down in history as one of the scariest and highest grossing horror films of all time. According to Box Office Mojo, the theatrical run for The Exorcist brought in over $232 million in the United States and $441 million worldwide, back in 1973 and 1974. When that $232 million was adjusted for inflation, that means the film grossed over $952 million. By comparison, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the highest grossing movie of all time, but it only made $936 million last year and when adjusted for inflation, its gross only stands at $930 million.

Now that we have had a chance to understand the true scope of what The Exorcist was to pop-culture for the last five decades, we can use that to understand what kind of mojo The Exorcist TV series on Fox had going into this television season.

On the premiere episode of The Exorcist, fans are introduced to Angela Rance, a mother of two daughters with a husband that had suffered a brain injury that basically makes him useless as a parent, at times. That means that the weight of the family falls on Angela Rance to keep them together and safe. We also get a look at the two exorcists, Father Ortega and Father Keane, who seem to carry the titular roles of the show. They parallel the characteristics of the two exorcists from the first film, Father Karras and Father Merrin.

Ortega, like Karras in the original The Exorcist, is conflicted with his faith in the church and seeks romantic solace in the arms of a married woman. Keane, like Merrin, is the veteran exorcist who comes in to help Ortega deal with the Rance family and their dilemma.

We later learn in The Exorcist TV show that the demon Pazuzu has found Regan and that she has been in hiding, living under the alias of Angela Rance. The demon has possessed her daughter in order to force Regan to invite him into her, which she eventually does to save her daughter.

Once possessed by the demon, Regan kills her formerly estranged mother, Chris MacNeil, and has a showdown with Ortega. Of course, the exorcist priest ends up victorious and seemingly kills the demon, but there are other demons left in the world and they have shown their faces throughout the first season, in the bodies of the possessed, of course.

The question now is whether or not The Exorcist will get renewed for Season 2 on Fox or get canceled. The short answer is that it is not likely. The Exorcist on Fox seemed to be more of a publicity stunt for the broadcast network to cash in on the craze that had not seemed to simmer down since the movie was released in 1973. The trick here would have been to lure viewers and fans of the original film into watching the show, then letting it fizzle out while pocketing the advertising dollars.

Some fans of The Exorcist may not have taken the bait, but others did. Although there were some shocking moments in the show, it happened on Fox under the watchful eye of Big Brother, otherwise known as the FCC.

The truth is, if producers of The Exorcist were really serious about making a unique television show about the story, the last thing they should have done was shopped it around to Fox in the beginning. A television show of that caliber should have been on a pay cable or streaming network from the very beginning where the content could have been presented unfiltered and Season 2 would have made the cut.

There is one scene in particular on The Exorcist Fox TV series that attempted to show Regan, as a young girl, first making contact with Pazuzu. The older Regan (Geena Davis) was standing in the room with Pazuzu as he showed her what he did when he first got in her. The scene was meticulously edited to insinuate that the young Regan had become despondent with drool coming out of her mouth, leaving the audience with the impression that she was having an orgasm.

There are better venues than Fox that are more well-equipped to present shocking details like that and The Exorcist had always been known to be more of a shocker than it was a horror film. HBO, Netflix, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, and Amazon Prime are just the first few that come to mind. But since Fox is a broadcast network, a potentially great TV series about The Exorcist will likely fall into oblivion with no other mention of the show past last Friday when the season finale aired.

[Featured Image by Fox]

Share this article: Did ‘The Exorcist’ On Fox Make The Cut After The Finale? [Spoilers]
geena davis
More from Inquisitr