Longlegs theory explains why he didn’t kill Lee Harker

In Longlegs, it’s revealed that Lee Harker met the titular Satanist when she was a little girl – but she wasn’t killed, even though it was her birthday the next day.

The acclaimed horror movie follows Lee (Maika Monroe), a taciturn FBI agent with a knack for sensing things; she picks out a suspect’s house on nothing but a hunch and she works out a cryptic code in a single night.

When she’s tasked with solving the Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) case, it unravels at an alarming rate – so much so, he reaches out to her personally.

In the end, we find out that her mother (Alicia Witt) has been Longlegs’ accomplice all along, and the young girl at the beginning of the film was actually Lee.

Neon

Here’s the thing: from the Longlegs case files, all the families who fell victim to his cursed dolls had a father, mother, and daughter. So, why would Longlegs be interested in Lee, who only had a mother?

“There was no father figure in the house for him to use the doll on, so was he just killing girls born on the 14th on his own?” one Redditor asked.

Well, what if Lee was always part of the plan? “The best I’ve got is that ONE of the girls was always meant to be the ‘chosen’ one,” another user speculated.

“The Harker.. literally, like the angel harker on the sands who summons the beast from the ocean, and Longlegs was meant to fill the ‘father’ role in that family – living as the man downstairs, with the mother as the accomplice, to ensure the plan was carried out.”

Others have suggested that Lee was “the first piece of the ritual”, which tracks; he offered other mothers the “crimson or the clover”, but Lee’s mom may have been the first to strike a deal with him.

“From her perspective, she begged him to spare her and worked out a deal with him — but from Longlegs perspective he could’ve made all of the previous mothers beg in order to gain entry to offer his sinister deal, but they refused and he killed them,” another fan theorized.

“Maybe he killed these other mothers/children himself, but they weren’t specifically the families so he didn’t leave mementos.”

If you want to know how to watch Longlegs, we’ve got you covered. Make sure you also check out our breakdown of Longlegs’ ending, 5 movies that are even scarier, and the one thing the film’s director avoided because it “scared” him.