Valak the Nun: The Demon Behind The Conjuring Universe's Nun

Valak is a demon that appears as a nun, and the films use "The Nun" and "Valak" for the same figure. The credits shift with the film: the demon is listed as Demon Nun in The Conjuring 2, as The Nun / Valak in The Nun (2018) and as The Demon Nun / Valak in The Nun II. So, if you are asking whether Valak and The Nun are the same, the answer is yes. The habit is the disguise and Valak is the name.

Who plays The Nun in Conjuring? Bonnie Aarons, who is credited in the role in all three of those films. The character first reached the screen in The Conjuring 2 (2016), directed by James Wan, where Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) sees a demonic nun during a séance at the Amityville house, and the Hodgson haunting in Enfield, north London, follows.

Which demon is Valak? Within the story, one that is stronger than the spirits around it and can hide behind other faces. The Conjuring Universe is based on cases claimed by Ed and Lorraine Warren, and the films report those claims as drama. A screen demon is not evidence of anything paranormal, and no film or record presents a real Valak as proven.

The character has its own spin-off pair, The Nun (2018), directed by Corin Hardy, and The Nun II (2023), directed by Michael Chaves, both led by Taissa Farmiga as Sister Irene.

The films never show how the nun became Valak; they show a demon called Valak that wears a nun's form and is loose in the Abbey of St. Carta in 1952. That year is the earliest event in the Conjuring timeline, and it differs from the release order. In The Nun (2018), a nun dies at the Romanian abbey, the Vatican sends Father Burke and the novice Sister Irene, and a local called Frenchie guides them in. Valak's power comes through a gateway in the catacombs that a duke's occult rituals opened long ago.

The backstory therefore explains the place and the gateway more than the demon's origin. The film does not say where Valak came from before the abbey. It shows how the demon got through and how it was driven back: Irene discovers that many of the nuns she has been speaking with are not real, and that the Abbess was dead the whole time. A vial holding the blood of Christ is the one thing that can stop the demon, and Irene seals the gateway by spitting the blood into its face.

The Annabelle: Creation tag scene, also set in 1952, shows Valak in nun form walking through the Abbey of St. Carta. Director David F. Sandberg confirmed there are two tag scenes, and he said the post credit scene was not his idea, according to TheWrap. The Nun II, set in 1956, picks the story up four years after the first film. Valak is behind a string of deaths across Europe and hunts the descendants of St. Lucy so it can claim her relic, hidden at a boarding school in Tarascon, France.

The audience first met the demon through the Warrens. In The Conjuring 2, set in 1976 and 1977, Lorraine sees a demonic nun during a séance at the Amityville house, together with a vision of Ed being impaled. In Enfield, Janet Hodgson speaks in the voice of an old man who claims to be Bill Wilkins. Lorraine eventually realizes that the old man is a front for the nun, a stronger demon that has been hiding from her and blocking her gifts.

The Nun (2018) closes the loop by cutting to the 1970s and showing the lecture footage from The Conjuring (2013), where Ed names the possessed man as Maurice, Frenchie's real name. That ties the abbey to the Warrens' first encounter with Valak.

Valak is tied most closely to Lorraine Warren, to Sister Irene and to the people it possesses. The link with Lorraine is the strongest, because her gift is the thing the demon tries to block. In The Conjuring 2, it hides behind the Bill Wilkins voice, and Lorraine realizes the old man is only a front after the Enfield case is publicly discredited and the Warrens step away. Lorraine Warren and Ed Warren are both bound to it through her vision of a demonic nun and of Ed's death at the Amityville séance.

The second relationship is with Sister Irene, played by Taissa Farmiga. In The Nun (2018) she is a novice with no vows, who defeats the demon with the blood of Christ, alongside Father Burke. In The Nun II, Irene learns she is a descendant of St. Lucy, which is why the demon cannot burn her. She is paired there with Sister Debra, a nun unsure of her own faith.

The third is with its human hosts. Valak possesses Irene for a time in The Nun (2018), and Frenchie (Maurice Theriault) is secretly possessed by the end of that film. In The Nun II, Maurice is possessed at the boarding school in Tarascon, and the headmistress is killed.

The Conjuring 2 also ends with Ed adding a haunted Crooked Man toy to the Warrens' artifact collection beside the Annabelle doll. That sets up the Crooked Man as a separate spin-off thread, and he is only the next object on the shelf.

No film shows Valak destroyed for good; each ending sends the demon back rather than ending it. In The Conjuring 2, Lorraine learns the demon's name, Valak, and uses it to order the demon back to Hell. That breaks its hold on Janet Hodgson and the house, and the haunting ends. Ed saves Janet from falling and is nearly impaled on a broken tree stump that matches Lorraine's vision.

In The Nun (2018), Irene seals the catacomb gateway by spitting the blood of Christ into the demon's face. The victory is not complete, because Frenchie carries a hidden mark showing the demon had already entered him. In The Nun II, Irene and Debra banish Valak by reciting the Words of Institution as the wine turns into the blood of Christ. A post credit scene then shows Ed and Lorraine, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, using archive footage from The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.

Valak's status is therefore banished, with its last on screen defeat in 1956 and its first encounter with the Warrens in 1976 and 1977.

In my opinion, the best Valak scene is still the Amityville séance in The Conjuring 2, because it gives the audience the nun and Ed's impalement in one vision, and the rest of the film is spent waiting for it to come true. It could be argued that this is also the smartest use of the creature: a figure glimpsed briefly that haunts the whole film.

The second pick is the Enfield reveal that Bill Wilkins is a front. Perhaps the clever part is that the film lets the skeptical investigator, Anita Gregory, be partly right about faked disturbances, so the demon's real work hides behind a discredited case. It reads as a rule of how this creature operates: it prefers a cheaper disguise.

From The Nun (2018), I would pick the moment Irene realizes she has been praying alone, and that the Abbess was dead the whole time. It reframes every earlier scene in the abbey. The finale, with the blood of Christ spat into the demon's face, is a practical, physical answer to a supernatural problem, and it suits the film.

From The Nun II, my choice is the stained glass goat with eyes that light up red. Irene uses that clue to find the relic, which is a small piece of set design doing narrative work. The sequel does not top the Amityville vision, in my view, but it gives Valak a rule (it cannot burn a descendant of St. Lucy), and rules are what make a monster feel real.

If you are new to the character, start with The Conjuring 2 and then watch The Nun (2018), or follow the Conjuring movies in order to see how the two connect.