Judy Warren in The Conjuring: Actresses, Age and Story

Judy Warren is the daughter of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. She first appears in The Conjuring (2013), directed by James Wan, where Sterling Jerins plays her as a child in a household that keeps the objects from her parents' cases. Jerins returns in The Conjuring 2 and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Mckenna Grace takes the role in Annabelle Comes Home, and Mia Tomlinson plays Judy in The Conjuring: Last Rites.

Her age is easiest to pin down from the 2025 film, which opens in 1964, when Lorraine's newborn daughter is born in grave danger but survives and the Warrens name her Judy. Counting forward from that date, Judy is about seven during the Perron haunting of 1971, about 13 during the Enfield case of 1977, about 17 in 1981 and about 22 in 1986. These ages are simple subtraction from the dates the films give, which is the only practical method because the stories jump across decades.

The credits list the character as Judy Warren. The films dramatize stories drawn from the Warrens' casework, so nothing Judy experiences should be read as proof of the paranormal. To see where she sits in the saga, the conjuring movies in order guide places all five of her films, and the wider cast of conjuring characters shows who else orbits the Warrens.

Judy's arc moves from a background role in the first two films to the lead of one spin-off and then to the emotional center of the 2025 finale. In The Conjuring (2013), she is attacked as a warning while the Warrens work the Perron case in the Rhode Island farmhouse, and after that attack the Perrons flee to a motel. In The Conjuring 2, set in 1977, Jerins returns and Judy is billed eighth, behind the Hodgson family of Enfield. That story belongs to Janet Hodgson, the girl the Warrens are asked to judge, and to Lorraine's vision of a demonic nun and of Ed's death.

Annabelle Comes Home (2019), directed by Gary Dauberman in his directing debut according to TheWrap, is the film that puts Judy in front. The Warrens take the Annabelle doll from two nurses and seal it in a glass case in the artifacts room at their home. A year later the couple leave Judy with her babysitter, Mary Ellen. Judy is lonely because her classmates avoid her over her parents' work, and Mary Ellen sets up a small early birthday party. Mary Ellen's friend Daniela, who blames herself for a car crash that killed her father, sneaks into the artifacts room and opens the case. That wakes the Ferryman, the Bride, a haunted board game and the Black Shuck. Judy and Mary Ellen rescue Daniela, but the Bride possesses her, and Judy plays recorded footage of Ed performing an exorcism on the Bride to free Daniela for a while. The girls then get the doll back in its case, and Daniela helps them shut and lock it.

Jerins is back in the 2021 film, where Judy is billed third behind Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. The plot follows the 1981 Glatzel exorcism in Brookfield, Connecticut, Arne Johnson's murder trial and the occultist Isla, so Judy is credited but the story centers on others.

The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025), directed by Michael Chaves, ties her to the oldest event in the Warrens' family history. In 1964 a difficult birth leaves Lorraine's newborn at risk before she survives. By 1986 Judy is an adult in a relationship with Tony Spera, and the Warrens are pulled toward the Smurl case in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, where an antique mirror, the one the Warrens handled in 1964, brings a dark presence into the family's home. Judy goes looking into the case on her own. The Warrens learn that the demon commands three other spirits and is hunting Judy in particular. It takes hold of her and turns on the family, and Lorraine saves her once more, as she did when Judy was a baby.

Judy's closest bonds are with her parents, with Tony Spera and, for one long night, with the babysitter and the older girl she helps in Annabelle Comes Home. Her father is Ed Warren, played by Patrick Wilson, and his recorded exorcism footage becomes the tool Judy uses against the Bride in 2019. In 2025 he walks her down the aisle at her wedding, which is the last big scene the saga gives their relationship.

Her mother is Lorraine Warren, played by Vera Farmiga. Lorraine saves Judy in both timelines of Last Rites, first as a newborn in 1964 and again in 1986, when the demon has taken hold of her grown daughter. The film frames the second rescue as a repeat of the first, which gives the mother and daughter pairing a shape the earlier films only hint at.

Tony Spera is played by Ben Hardy. He is Judy's partner in 1986 and the man she marries at the end of the film. Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) is her babysitter in Annabelle Comes Home, and Daniela Rios (Katie Sarife) is the friend of Mary Ellen's who opens the case and is possessed by the Bride. Judy and Mary Ellen rescue Daniela, and the birthday party her classmates eventually attend shows Judy as the one who keeps her head while the house falls apart.

The last relationship is with the Annabelle doll, which lives in the glass case in her parents' collection. For Judy the doll is less a legend than a neighbor, and the artifacts room is both her home and the source of her trouble.

Judy Warren lives through all five of her films, and the saga leaves her as a newlywed in The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025). In that film the demon singles her out, and she is the one it grips hardest in 1986, when she is a grown woman engaged to Tony Spera. Lorraine pulls her back, as she did on the night Judy was born in 1964, and the two Warrens then pray together to end the mirror's hold on their daughter and on the Smurl household in West Pittston.

What follows is the part that belongs to Judy alone: her wedding to Tony, with Ed walking her down the aisle. At the reception Lorraine pictures a future crowded with family. Judy has spent the saga as a child stuck in a house of cursed objects, so I think it is fair to read the scene as the series giving her a life outside her parents' casework. The character is credited only as Judy Warren, so the name Spera comes from the marriage rather than from any credit.

What comes next for her is unknown. Last Rites reads as a goodbye to Ed and Lorraine, and Warner Bros. has dated The Conjuring: First Communion for September 10, 2027, according to TheWrap. For the cast, production status and date, see conjuring first communion.

In my opinion, Judy's best moments come in Annabelle Comes Home and Last Rites, and they work because each one turns her parents' job into something she has to do herself. The strongest is the recorded exorcism footage. A girl playing her father's own work against a possessed friend is a clever practical use of the artifacts room, and it plays like a sleepover that goes wrong, which is why the scares land: the people in danger are teenagers and a lonely kid, not trained investigators. Compared with Annabelle (2014), where the family has no such defenses, the Warren house hands her real tools.

The second is the birthday party at the end of the same film. After a night of the Ferryman, the Bride and the Black Shuck, the payoff is classmates showing up to a small party, and it could be argued that this is the gentlest ending in the whole franchise.

The third is the 1964 birth in Last Rites. Opening on a baby at risk, with the cursed mirror in the picture, tells you the demon's interest in Judy is old before she has done anything. That sets up the 1986 confrontation, and I think a possessed Judy is the saga's most personal threat to the Warrens.

The wedding comes last. Ed walking her down the aisle and Lorraine's vision of a full family make a calm ending for characters who spent the saga on cases that the Warrens claimed and the films dramatize. To see how the stories fit together, the conjuring timeline lays out each case in order.