If you ever watched the original The Craft and thought, “This is great, but what if the witches had group chats, queer rep, and a stepdad who listens to podcasts about masculinity?” — The Craft: Legacy is basically that wish, monkey’s-paw style.
It’s messy, it’s earnest, it’s kinda dorky, and yet… it’s also weirdly lovable. Like a baby witch trying her first spell and accidentally setting off the smoke alarm instead of summoning Hecate. Technically a failure, spiritually on the right track.
New Girl, Same Witch Problems
Our new protagonist is Lily Schechner (Cailee Spaeny), an emotionally fragile, telekinetically gifted teen who moves to a new town with her therapist mom Helen. Unfortunately, instead of a fresh start, she gets:
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A new school
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Three new stepbrothers
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A motivational-speaker stepdad named Adam
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And, almost immediately, a period leak in class
Honestly, the bloodiest moment in the movie might be that scene. Lily stains her pants, gets mocked, then accidentally launches school bully Timmy into the lockers with her mind. Carrie White is somewhere in the ether nodding in approval.
Enter the trio: Frankie, Tabby, and Lourdes — the local weird girls who are already dabbling in witchcraft but are one member short of a full coven. They see Lily yeet Timmy and basically go, “Oh thank Goddess, the plot can finally start.”
When Lily responds telepathically to them, they realize she’s the missing fourth. Suddenly, they’re a complete coven, which in Craft logic means: let the glittery chaos begin.
Coven 2.0: Now With Group Consciousness
The girls are actually one of the best things about the film. They feel like actual 2020 teenagers:
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They talk like humans, not “edgy comic book villains.”
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They care about social issues and consent.
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Their magic is as much about friendship as it is about power.
Once they’ve got their foursome, they immediately jump into classic witchy activities:
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Freezing time
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Levitation
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Elemental magic
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Mildly unethical self-improvement projects
Their first big spell is on Timmy: they enchant him to be more sensitive and emotionally open. It starts as a “make the bully less awful” thing, and to the film’s credit, it actually plays with that question: if you magically alter someone’s personality, how different is that from just… manipulating them?
The answer, of course, is: very. But the coven is 16, drunk on power, and this is a Blumhouse movie, so nuance will be arriving late and bleeding from the nose.
Timmy, Softboi of the Year
Timmy goes from textbook jerk to surprisingly decent human. He apologizes, hangs out with the girls, and even drops the bomb that he’s bisexual and once hooked up with Lily’s stepbrother Isaiah.
For a hot minute, the movie becomes The Craft: Therapy Session, and it kind of rules. You get:
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A jock confronting his sexuality
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The coven bonding with him
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A sense that magic, for once, is actually healing something
So naturally, this can’t last.
Lily, freaked by her attraction to Timmy, casts a love spell on him — a big no-no in Witch 101. Shortly afterward, Timmy is found dead by apparent suicide. The girls freak out, cut Lily off, and bind themselves from magic.
It’s a genuinely dark turn for a film otherwise drenched in soft lighting and teen energy, and for a moment it hints at something sharp: the consequences of using power without understanding the trauma around you.
Then the movie remembers it also has David Duchovny as a pagan-rights-podcast dad and sprints toward the finale.
Stepdad, But Make Him Sinister
Lily’s stepfather Adam (David Duchovny) initially seems like your run-of-the-mill “new-age authoritarian.” He talks about discipline, masculinity, and personal responsibility in the exact cadence of those guys on YouTube who sell courses on “unlocking your inner alpha for $299.”
But gradually, he crosses the line from “annoying” to “oh no, he reads Jordan Peterson unironically.” Lily starts to sense danger. He’s controlling, he’s rigid, and he also has three sons who seem terrified of disappointing him.
When Lily snoops in his office, she finds her adoption papers, realizing she’s adopted and that her biological mother is a mystery witch out there somewhere. Helen, instead of maybe sitting her down over cocoa and talking it out like a therapist might, lets this all blow up at the worst possible time.
Then Adam pulls a full villain move: he confronts Lily, reveals he has magic too, and that he’s part of a male-led pagan cult that’s basically Patriarchy: The Coven Edition. He wants her powers, he’s been after her from the start, and he knocks her out to drag her off into the woods for a ritual.
You know, just standard stepdad things.
Final Battle: Hex the Patriarchy
Timmy’s spirit reaches out to the other girls via Ouija (honestly more emotionally present in death than most male leads alive), and tells them Adam killed him. They rush to help Lily, who wakes up in the woods with Adam explaining his evil plan like a man who has never once skipped an audiobook about “leadership in crisis.”
The girls try to freeze time, but Adam’s too powerful. For a second it looks bad — until they stop trying to out-macho him and go back to what actually works for them: collective energy.
They pool their elemental magic together — air, fire, water, earth — and focus it through Lily. Instead of just beating Adam, they melt him, basically incinerating Patriarchal Pagan Dad in a blaze of witchy group solidarity.
It’s not exactly subtle, but watching four magical girls literally burn down a controlling man who wanted to harvest their power? That’s the kind of blunt feminism I’m happy to have thrown at my face.
Oh, and About Her Mom…
After the dust settles, Lily isn’t expelled from the coven or punished. Helen agrees to move out with her. The girls go on being friends, presumably with stricter internal policies about love spells and alt-right warlocks.
Then Helen brings Lily to a mental health facility to meet her biological mother.
Door opens.
There she is.
Nancy Downs.
Fairuza Balk’s cameo as Nancy is brief but delicious. She’s older, still intense, and still radiates chaotic witch energy through about three seconds of screen time. The movie ends there, basically going, “Yeah, deal with that implication.”
It’s fanservice, sure, but it also reframes Lily’s story: she’s not just some random chosen one, she’s the daughter of the original franchise’s most iconic, unhinged witch. Therapy is going to be wild.
Legacy, Flawed but Charming
Is The Craft: Legacy a perfect movie? Absolutely not.
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It meanders.
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It sometimes feels like a pilot for a TV show rather than a fully formed story.
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It softens the moral ambiguity of the original with a more YA, affirming tone.
But it does a few things really well:
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It leans into queer and trans-inclusive casting (Zoey Luna as Lourdes, Timmy’s bisexuality).
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It updates the witchcraft narrative from “outcast girls go power-mad” to “girls navigating power, identity, and consent.”
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It gives us a magical-girl blowtorch ending where four teens team up to destroy an abusive man who weaponizes spirituality.
There’s something charming about how earnest it is. Where the original movie was all venom and black lipstick, Legacyis softer, more hopeful, and a lot more therapy-forward. Less “we are the weirdos, mister” and more “we are the weirdos, but we also journal about it and have boundaries.”
If you can forgive its flaws — and accept that it’s more mystical coming-of-age story than razor-edged 90s cult classic — you get a fun, slightly clumsy, feminist witch flick with enough dark humor and heart to justify its existence.
And honestly, any movie where teenage witches burn a toxic pagan-influencer dad alive while his dead closeted jock victim tattles on him from beyond the veil? That’s not nothing. 🧹✨🔥
