Practical Magic 2: why the curse is back when the 1998 ending 'broke' it
In 1998, Sally Owens took on a centuries-old family curse with a kitchen coven, an Arizona investigator and a lot of faith. Practical Magic 2 kills the investigator off before its story even starts.
The short answer is that the curse was never broken. Practical Magic 2 opened in US theaters on September 10, 2026, and in its opening Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian (Nicole Kidman) believe they lifted it back in 1998, until Sally's second husband, Gary, dies soon after their wedding. The film never says how. Aidan Quinn, who played Gary, isn't in the cast.
The sequel comes from Warner Bros. with Susanne Bier directing and Akiva Goldsman back on the script, now alongside Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel. Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest return as the aunts, Joey King plays Sally's grown daughter Kylie, and the story is loosely drawn from The Book of Magic, the 2021 novel that closed out Alice Hoffman's series.
What the 1998 ending actually said
Rewatch the first film and the curse never gets an official death certificate. Maria Owens's spell dooms any man an Owens woman loves, and the climax deals with a different problem: Jimmy Angelov's ghost possessing Gillian. The townswomen form a coven, exorcise Jimmy and exile him for good, and then, in the plot's own terms, they only hope this might also mean the end of the Owens curse.
The rest is Gary's theory. He tells Sally that curses only work if you believe in them, and Sally chooses him despite the risks. The sequel treats it as a bet Sally lost.
"Everyone we love dies."
— Sally, in Practical Magic 2 footage shown at CinemaCon, via All Things Ick
How the sequel spends the curse
The body count is what tells you the curse is fully operational:
- Gary: Dies shortly after marrying Sally. She renounces magic in grief, casts a spell so her daughters forget theirs and swears Gillian and the aunts to secrecy.
- Jet (Dianne Wiest): Years later, she follows a raven omen to the Book of Raven, which holds the cure behind sealed pages. She hears the deathwatch beetle and dies around her birthday.
- Gideon (Xolo Maridueña): At Jet's wake, Kylie tells her boyfriend she loves him. The next morning he's hit by a car and falls into a coma.
- Franny (Stockard Channing): Once the Book's pages open, they reveal that only a witch willingly giving up her life can break Maria's curse. Franny walks into the river while Jet's spirit watches, and the curse ends.
Getting there takes Kylie, the stolen Book of Raven, Sally and Gillian to Thornfield, England, Maria's birthplace. The villain is Tom Lockland (Solly McLeod), descended from Hannah Owens's second child by Lord Lockland, a branch of the family cut off from magic, who wants Kylie's magic. Sally, Gillian and Kylie destroy him with blood-bond circle magic, Lee Pace's professor Ian Wright, freed from Tom's curse along the way, helps Sally get her own magic back. A year later, Kylie marries Gideon and Sally kisses Ian.
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Why it's back, according to the people who made it
Bullock and Kidman have both pitched the curse as a family pattern that survives because nobody names it. That's also how the sequel justifies undoing the first film: Sally's silence, the forgetting spell and the secrecy are what let it catch the next generation.
"It's going to keep living on generation after generation."
— Sandra Bullock, to NPR's Morning Edition, on the curse as generational trauma
Kidman told People that she and Bullock started by asking why the sequel should exist at all. The answer they landed on, she said, was "how every family carries something and how do you deal with it".
The money behind the second spell
The rights came with drama attached. Village Roadshow, which held sequel rights to the 1998 film, went bankrupt, and in November 2025 Alcon Entertainment bought its sequel rights for $18.5 million, outbidding Warner Bros. Discovery for a piece of its own library.
The film cost a reported $75 million and opened to $30 million domestic, the low end of WB's own projection, though enough to end Spider-Man: Brand New Day's six-week run at No. 1. As of mid-October it stands at $105 million worldwide, already past the original's lifetime $94.4 million before adjusting for inflation.
Audiences gave it a B+ CinemaScore, up from the original's B-. Critics were harder: 36% on Rotten Tomatoes from 170 reviews.
"A mildly enjoyable sequel that's bigger on fan service than freshness."
— Justin Chang, NPR's Fresh Air
The studio that released it no longer exists in the same form: Paramount Skydance closed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on October 6, while the film was still in theaters. This time the cure is written in the Book of Raven and paid for with Franny's life. Any Practical Magic 3 will have to explain its way around that, and the new owners will get to decide whether it's worth the trouble.
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