(pb; 1983: fourth book in The Omen pentalogy)
Caveat: possible spoilers if you’re not aware of the events of The Final Conflict.
Eighteen years after the violent deaths in The Final Conflict, Damien Thorn’s body is dead, but his spirit and powers live on─this is because Carl Bugenhagen (who died in Damien—Omen II) was not able to pass on vital instructions on how to kill the Antichrist: one must stab Damien with all seven daggers of Meggido, in the shape of a cross, for him to truly die. Unfortunately, only one of the daggers─the one that ended his physical life─was used on Damien, so his infernal powers and mission were passed on to a new being. Father DeCarlo, present when Damien was killed in Final, knows this now and says as much in Armageddon─this is a mistake the brave old monk, even on his deathbed, means to correct.
The new person bearing Damien’s powers and hell-sourced drive is an unnamed seventeen-year-old boy (henceforth called The Boy in this review). The Boy, Damien’s dead-ringer-of-a-son, is a product of Kate Reynold’s animal-rough union with Damien in Final. The Boy is quietly tucked away at Pereford, a Thorn family estate─the same location where Damien lived in The Omen and Final.
The Boy is watched over by George, his old and loyal butler, and Paul Buher, seventy-year-old head of the Thorn corporation. Buher, seen and mentioned in Damien and Final, still grieves for the fallen Antichrist.
Buher’s mourning, anger, and sense of failure are exacerbated by The Boy’s attitude─he is a charmless, blunt, and arrogant child whose main mission is to destroy humankind to avenge his father’s death. The Boy, like Damien, brings about and spins terrorist attacks in the Middle East, and wants to kill the Christ child (who was born to gypsies in Final). Unlike his father, The Boy lacks charm and does not care about his role in prophecies: he is merely lashing out, living to inflict as much mass cruelty and destruction for its own sake.
This being an Omen story, bizarre and horrific Thorn-linked deaths occur. Among those hounded by the Antichrist’s son: Mary Lamont, a cultist who slew a child in Damien’s name in Final; Carol Wyatt, a reporter who begins snooping around Pereford; and Michael Finn, mentioned but not named in Final as the man who purchased the daggers of Meggido at an auction.
In Armageddon, it falls to Philip Brennan, US Ambassador to the Court of St. James, to stop Damien’s secret son. Brennan is kind, level-headed, not religious and can barely believe the wild stories about Damien, “the Thorn curse,” and Pereford, but as too-strange-to-be-coincidence events occur and the satanic death toll rises, Brennan is forced to acknowledge there may be some truth to Brother Francis and Father DeCarlo’s crazy tales even as others advance The Boy’s cataclysmic intent.
Armageddon─not a movie tie-in book─is a worthy sequel to David Seltzer’s Omen, one that not only matches the above-average, dark intensity of Seltzer’s story- and character-deepening source novel but answers the nagging question about DeCarlo and the monks being ignorant about the seven-daggers-to-kill-Damien requirement. From a reader’s point-of-view, McGill’s Conflict felt constrained, as if his creative hands were tied to the film’s choppy, hyper-focused storyline. In Armageddon McGill’s storyline flows better, there’s variation to its familiar set-up (even as it keeps true to established Omen elements, characterizations and themes) and it goes for broke in its raw, macabre finish, suitably ending on an abrupt, truly B-flick ending that somewhat mirrors Final’s.
McGill also brings more of the Omen’s inherent black humor to the fore (e.g., the fate of Damien’s corpse) as well as equally perverse, almost satirical twists and callbacks that elevate Armageddon, make it more fun and unpredictable (in parts). Followed by Omen V: The Abomination by Gordon McGill.
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A third film sequel to The
Omen (1976), Omen IV: The Awakening, aired on TV/Fox channel on May
20, 1991. (The previous Omen films were theatrical releases.) Co-starring
Don S. Davis (Stargate: SG-1, 1997-2007) and Michael Lerner (Elf, 2003),
Awakening is not based on Armageddon.
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