The Exorcist: Believer: Pazuzu Explained

https://www.dualshockers.com/the-exorcist-believer-pazuzu-explained/

Many of horror's most iconic villains are relentless forces, with Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger flaunting more than nine lives after their several sequel comebacks. The Exorcist franchise has a more supernatural threat at the helm, however, which is why Pazuzu the demon has been haunting the lives of priests and bystanders alike for decades.

Appearing as the main antagonist of now six entries in The Exorcist franchise, fans may be interested in getting to the bottom of Pazuzu’s origin and learning more about the inspiration behind author William Peter Blatty’s villain. Here’s everything you need to know about Pazuzu and the demon’s role in The Exorcist: Believer.

William Peter Blatty released The Exorcist novel in 1971, and the narrative follows the same characters and circumstances made famous in the 1973 film adaptation by William Friedkin. 11-year-old Regan MacNeil is possessed by a demon, and her mother enlists the help of priests Father Lankester Merrin and Father Damien Karras to perform an exorcism. The novel implies that the demon possessing Regan’s body is that of Pazuzu, as the demon’s statue was referenced and visited by Merrin during the prologue in northern Iraq.

Pazuzu returned in Blatty’s 1983 novel Legion, which was a direct sequel to The Exorcist, and it saw the demon taking revenge after being banished from Regan’s body by channeling the spirit of the Gemini Killer into Father Damien Karras’ body. Again, Pazuzu is not directly named as the antagonist, but it is implied that the same entity is behind these events.

The Exorcist movie adaptation referred to the male spirit possessing Regan’s (Linda Blair) body as Captain Howdy, but this is a front for the demon’s real identity, Pazuzu, confirmed by Father Lankester Merrin’s (Max von Sydow) connection to the demon’s statue. Pazuzu is finally named as the demon behind the possessions in the 1977 sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic, when the entity returns to possess Regan again, and The Exorcist III adapted the plot of Blatty’s Legion novel.

Two prequels to The Exorcist, Exorcist: The Beginning and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, followed a young Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård) and detailed the soon-to-be priest’s first duel with Pazuzu in Africa. In the 2016 television series, The Exorcist, Pazuzu returns to possess Regan’s daughter, Casey (Hannah Kasulka), but ends up possessing Regan (played by Geena Davis instead of Linda Blair) once again. However, Father Tomas (Alfonso Herrera) is able to rid the demon.

In David Gordon Green’s reboot, The Exorcist: Believer, Pazuzu returns to possess young girls Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O'Neill), after they both perform a ritual trying to contact the former’s deceased mother. Angela’s father, Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.), enlists the help of Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) to identify that it is indeed the return of Pazuzu, but instead of being exorcised this time, the demon claims the life of one of the girls and lets the other live before vanishing.

Pazuzu’s origin is rooted in ancient Mesopotamian religion, as the magical entity was known to be a personification of the southwestern wind that reigned dominance over the lilu wind demons and was identified as both a house demon or domestic spirit and a wandering wind demon roaming the wilds.

Described to have an “inhuman and grotesque form”, Pazuzu, the son of the God Hanbi, was known to safeguard homes by repelling other demons and scaring away unwanted guests. People pertaining to this culture would use spells and special artifacts to try and use Pazuzu as their protector, and unlike the events of The Exorcist franchise, Pazuzu worked harder to protect pregnant women and mothers.

Blatty was inspired by the wind demon from Assyrian and Babylonian mythology enough to bring Pazuzu to life as his main antagonist, but the author also took inspiration from the 1949 possession of 14-year-old Robbie Mannheim in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s also been reported that Blatty got the idea of Pazuzu from the 1900 book The History of the Devil by religion scholar Paul Carus, because there’s an illustration of Pazuzu’s statue among the text that looks very similar to the one Merrin encounters, right down to the loop through its head.

Of course, The Exorcist franchise is not the only piece of media that has involved Pazuzu or the demon’s statue. The Highlander television series showed the statue of Pazuzu when Duncan MacLeod battled a being akin to Satan. A similar statue also appeared in the episode There’s No Place Like Home within the Once Upon a Time series, and in the trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Additionally, an episode of Futurama named one of the gargoyles Pazuzu, and Ridley Scott’s 1985 fantasy Legend shows the statue of Pazuzu used in The Exorcist.