SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” now playing in theaters.
Freddy Fazbear and his friends have done it again.
The bloodthirsty animatronics beckoned enough franchise fans to theaters to make “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” a box office hit this weekend. The film’s ending — complete with a mid-credits scene, an end-credits scene and a handful of cliffhangers — is already encouraging plenty of debate and analysis online.
Emma Tammi, who directed both films in the series, spoke with Variety about the series’ next steps. During this film’s mid-credits scene, Springtrap — the antagonistic animatronic from the game “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” — is seen booting up. It’s implied that the spirit of William Afton (Matthew Lillard), the co-founder of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, now controls the device.
Tammi said that she and screenwriter Scott Cawthon (who also created the games) planned to bring the villain back for a third movie, after he makes a cameo in the visions of his daughter Vanessa Shelly (Elizabeth Lail) in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.”
“We end Movie One with him being dragged off, and the idea was always that he would be teed up at the end of Movie Two for a third film, should we be fortunate enough to make one,” Tammi said. “That really links to where Movie Three and Game Three enter the scene. We get these great glimpses of William Afton throughout this film that are really more through the lens of Vanessa and her memories and PTSD from her relationship with him. To then get a glimpse towards the end of what he is now becoming and has become, when the assumption is, at least from our characters within the film, that he’s dead … it’s just such a great way to bring it back to Afton.”
Yet Springtrap wasn’t the final moment in the film. Instead, we hear grieving father Henry Emily (Skeet Ulrich) leave a message for Mike (Josh Hutcherson) in which he reveals he was business partners with William at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, and warns him to avoid the Marionette, which has been taken over by his dead daughter’s soul.
“That was inspired by some of the tape recordings from the game,” Tammi said. “It was a mishmash also of picking up the Marionette at the end, as it intersects with Henry, and certainly as he’s reaching out to Mike. This film is really an introduction to Henry, without going too deep into his backstory. That recording felt like the perfect tease to nod our hat to the fact that we would be going deeper with him in a third film.”
Also exciting is the fact that Ulrich and Lillard might be onscreen together if the third installment is made. Notably, the pair made a splash in 1996’s “Scream,” where they played the deadly duo posing as Ghostface.
“Once [Ulrich’s] name was brought up for the first time, it just clicked so hard, and we all got so excited about it,” Tammi said. “I think every crew member who started catching wind that this was something that was going to happen had such an overwhelmingly excited response. It was an across-the-board validation for how cool this was going to be, and how well-received that reunion was going to be.”
Ultimately, despite the film’s emphasis on killer robots and a dense backstory, Tammi is proud to bring audiences human stories that fans can love as well.
“I think our human characters are as important as our animatronic characters, and as important as the lore,” she said. “For me, they all hold equal weight. I would absolutely want to continue that moving forward.”
