Damien in The Omen (1976) (top left), Damien - Omen II (top right) and The Final Conflict (bottom).
Maria Sciana (biological mother; deceased)
Damien Thorn II (biological son; deceased)
Delia York (biological daughter)
Alexander York (biological son)
Robert Thorn (adoptive father; deceased)
Katherine Thorn (adoptive mother; deceased)
Mark Thorn (adoptive cousin; deceased)
Richard Thorn (adoptive uncle; deceased)
Ann Thorn (adoptive aunt; deceased)
Damien Thorn I is the Son of Satan and the first Antichrist. He was adopted and raised by Robert and Katherine Thorn, then later by Ann and Richard Thorn. He grew up to become US ambassador to Great Britain, and was killed by one of the Daggers of Megiddo. He is rumored to have been reborn in his son, Alexander York. (or, according to the novelization, Damien Thorn II)
Biography
Damien was born of Satan and a jackal at a Catholic hospital in Rome, Italy, at 6 AM on 6 June.
The Omen (1976)
Shortly after Damien is born, Father Spiletto convinces Robert Thorn to adopt the newborn Damien to replace his own supposedly stillborn son. Robert and his wife Katherine adopt Damien and raise him as their own son. Robert never tells either Kathy or Damien that Damien is not their biological son. Damien and his adopted parents spent Damien's early childhood living in Rome. When Robert gets appointed as Ambassador to Great Britain, the family moves to London. On Damien's fifth birthday, a Hellhound forces his nanny Holly to commit suicide by hanging herself from the Thorn home's roof. Mrs. Baylock (who is secretly a servant of Satan) replaces Holly as Damien's new nanny. The day after Mrs. Baylock is hired, Robert and Kathy try to take Damien with them to a wedding. Damien attacks Kathy in the car in a fit of fright at the sight of the church where the wedding is to take place. Unable to calm Damien down, Kathy and Robert have no choice but to take him home.
Mrs. Baylock finds and gives Damien a Hellhound, which he takes a great liking to. The next day, Kathy takes Damien to a zoo, but as they drive through, the zoo's baboons, sensing that Damien is the Antichrist, attack the car. Two days later, while Damien is playing on his tricycle, he rides it down an upstairs hall and bumps into Kathy,who was tending to some floral arrangements while propped up on a small table causing her to fall over a balcony and fall on the floor below, leaving her seriously injured and hospitalized.
Damien newborn.
Robert travels to Rome to investigate Damien's origins the next day, leaving Damien in Mrs. Baylock's care in the meantime. While Damien is sleeping, Robert returns to London. Having worked out that Damien is the Antichrist but still being unsure, Robert finds Damien's 666 birthmark on his scalp. Just then, Mrs. Baylock attacks Robert, waking Damien up. After Robert knocks Mrs. Baylock out, he kidnaps Damien and takes him in his car to a church to kill him with the seven Daggers of Megiddo. However, at the last second before Robert can stab Damien, the police arrive and shoot and kill Robert. After the deaths of both of his adopted parents, Damien is taken in by the U.S. President and attends Robert and Kathy's funeral in Washington D.C. with him and his wife.
Damien meets Mrs. Baylock.
Damien - Omen II
Under a week after Robert and Kathy's funeral, Damien is adopted by his adoptive uncle Richard, and his wife Ann. He is enrolled in Davidson Military Academy alongside his cousin Mark, with whom he develops a brotherly bond. Damien also gets along very well with Ann and Richard, but Aunt Marion despises him and views him as a bad influence on Mark.
When Damien is 12, the day after Marion dies of a heart attack, Sergeant Daniel Neff is hired as the new instructor for Mark and Damien's platoon at the military academy. After Neff interviews Damien, Damien finds cadet Teddy beating Mark up; causing Damien to subconsciously make Teddy see a nightmarish vision until Neff breaks his focus. To take their minds off of what Damien just did, Mark and Damien decide to play rugby in the academy field.
Damien and Mark discuss Aunt Marion.
On Mark's birthday, at the party, Paul Buher, a businessman and friend of Richard, convinces Damien to take some of his friends to Buher's chemical plant. He also tells Damien that the time to become a man and accept his destiny is coming, without telling Damien what his destiny is. The next day, Damien plays an ice hockey game with Mark and Richard on the frozen lake outside the Thorn residence, but Richard's friend, Bill Atherton, is killed when he falls through the ice.
A day later, Neff takes Damien from his history class during a lesson, and warns him not to draw attention to himself. He also gives Damien a Holy Bible and instructs him to read chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation to discover who he is. Damien then goes up to his and Mark's room, and discovers from the Book of Revelation that the Antichrist bears a birthmark in the shape of three sixes.
Damien, distraught at discovering his destiny.
When Damien finds the 666 birthmark on his scalp, he realizes that he is the Son of Satan and runs from the academy, through the woods to the lake beside the Thorn residence; horrified and distraught at his destiny as the Antichrist. One day, Damien takes several other students from the academy, including Mark, on a trip to Buher's chemical plant. There, Damien notices that the employee David Pasarian is aware of the deaths of those who refused to sell land to Buher for the latter's agriculture project.
By this point, Damien has apparently begun to accept his destiny as the Antichrist. When the machinery keeping the chemicals contained breaks down, it releases toxic fumes which kill Pasarian and leave the rest of Damien's class ill while Damien is unaffected.
Damien watches Richard leave for New York.
Though Damien is unaffected by the chemicals, he is taken to hospital anyway as a precaution, where he stays with Mark for the night. Two or more days later, Damien follows Mark into the woods outside the Thorn residence. Mark tries to avoid Damien, and confronts him about his unholy origins and abilities as the Antichrist.
Damien admits first reluctantly and then proudly to being the Son of Satan, and asks Mark to join him. When Mark refuses, Damien kills Mark by using his powers to introduce an aneurysm into his brain. After Mark's funeral, Richard flies to New York to pick up Charles.
While Richard is away, Damien is awarded the Officer's Saber at the academy. After the celebration that night, when Richard returns, Damien is taken by Murray to the Thorn Museum, where Richard finds the Daggers of Megiddo and Ann stabs him with them to protect Damien.
Damien at Thorn Museum before killing Ann.
In order to ensure that he is heir to Thorn Industries, Damien then uses his powers to blow up the museum boiler, killing Ann and destroying the museum. He then leaves to begin his reign on earth.
The Final Conflict
At some point in his life, Damien majored at Yale and then went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. There, he captained the Oxford Eight to victory and won the Westchester Cup at polo in the same year. In 1971, Damien took over Thorn Industries and turned it into the world's largest multinational corporation over the following seven years. He also became the secret leader of a large Satanist cult called the Disciples of the Watch.
In March, when Damien is 32, he decides to try and become the new US Ambassador to Great Britain, and thus sends his Hellhound to kill the current ambassador so Damien can take his place.
Damien senses the Second Coming of Christ.
Afterwards, Damien meets the President at the White House, who wants him to be the new Ambassador. Damien agrees on the condition that he also be made president of the UN Youth Council.
Damien also meets Kate Reynolds at the Youth Council's party and spends Sunday with her and her son Peter. Kate and Damien begin to become romantically involved, but Damien also becomes worried that the Second Coming of Christ is approaching when he passes by a preaching about it. Damien is also interviewed by Kate on her show that night, but during the interview, Brother Benito tries to assassinate Damien with one of the Daggers of Megiddo.
However, Benito is killed in an accident (apparently caused by Satan to protect Damien) and Damien takes his dagger. Damien then returns home with his disciple and right-hand man Dean for the night and decides that in order to stop anyone from being able to kill Damien, they need to find and collect the other six Daggers.
Damien visits his home's statue of Jesus Christ, and vows to destroy Christ as vengeance for Satan's exile from Heaven. Later, earlier in the morning, when a second Star of Bethlehem forms, Damien senses it and that it is a sign of the Second Coming of Christ.
Damien orders his disciples to massacre hundreds of children to destroy Christ.
The next day, when Damien realizes that the remaining six priests from Subiaco have arrived and are hunting him, he spends the next day following one of them, Brother Matteus, through the countryside of England to an old ruin.
At the ruin, Matteus tries to lure Damien into an ambush by Paulo and Martin, but Damien causes Paulo and Martin to see Matteus as him and stab him instead, then seals them in a space under a grate to die. Damien then takes their Daggers, but believes that he is still not safe from Christ.
While he is participating in a fox hunt, Damien is hunted by Brothers Simeon and Antonio, who lure him away from the other hunters onto a bridge. But before Simeon or Antonio can kill Damien, Damien causes Antonio's horse to throw him off itself and into the river. Damien then causes the hounds being used in the hunt to tear Simeon apart, and takes Simeon and Antonio's Daggers.
Damien orders Simeon's death.
That night, Damien visits the Disciples of the Watch in a quarry. Believing that Christ has returned to earth via reincarnation, and will therefore be a vulnerable newborn baby, Damien orders the Disciples to hunt down and kill every baby in Britain born between midnight and 6 AM on March 24 (the night the second Star of Bethlehem formed). Damien also recruits Peter as a disciple and convinces him to spy on Father De Carlo, who has the last Dagger of Megiddo.
Damien also becomes closer to Kate, and invites her to his house. After saving her from drowning in the river outside the house, Kate and Damien sleep together and make love, including an act of sodomy. The next morning, after Kate wakes up, she finds Damien's 666 birthmark under his hair and realizes that he is the Antichrist.
At work that day, Damien is informed by Peter that De Carlo visited Dean's house the previous day and warned his wife about the peril their son was in. He confronts Dean about this and his son being one of the children born on the morning of March 24, and when Dean refuses to kill his own son, Damien sends his Hellhound to make Dean's wife do it. That night, Damien prepares to fully recruit Peter as a disciple, but Kate interrupts the ceremony. Damien agrees not to recruit Peter if Kate takes him to the Christ child.
Damien searches for Christ and dies.
Kate agrees and takes Peter and Damien to an old ruin. There, De Carlo tries to stab Damien with the remaining Dagger, but Damien uses Peter as a human shield and flees in search of Christ. While Damien is looking for Christ, Kate ambushes Damien for her son's death, stabbing him with De Carlo's Dagger of Megiddo. Mortally wounded and dying, Damien staggers to the ruin's altar, where Jesus Christ appears to him in the sky. Damien's last words to Christ are "Nazarene... you have won... nothing!" before dying on the altar of his wound.
Omen IV: Armageddon 2000
It is indicated that Damien's son, Damien Thorn II, is actually Damien himself reincarnated, with the Daggers of Megiddo having failed to destroy Damien's soul with his body as they weren't used on him in the proper ritual.
Omen IV: The Awakening
Delia York, Damien's biological daughter, hinted at one point that she is in contact with Damien's deceased spirit; and that Damien's spirit is the one who taught her that the inverted cross is the symbol of the Antichrist. It is hinted that Damien himself was ressurected and indwelt by Satan according to the prophesy (due to all the accidents occurring around his children and disasters falling upon those who would impede them) Furthermore, some thought Damien was reincarnated in his son; dispite all these theories, Damien's return was only hinted by the sudden, tremendous decline in Christianity and no one mentioning his death except for the doctor who extracted Alexander from Delia revealing to her adoptive mother that Damien was behind everything and his disciples waited for his children to come of age and bring about the end of days.
Relationships
Satan
When Damien discovered that he was the Son of Satan, he was horrified and distraught at first, but later became more proud of his unholy origins and Satanic heritage. Damien believed that Satan was a more suitable god than God, and was determined to avenge his father's exile from Heaven.
Robert Thorn
Robert was a loving and caring father to Damien. In Damien - Omen II, Damien ordered Teddy to never talk about his family when Teddy mocked Robert for his position on the military academy's rugby team.
Katherine Thorn
Katherine was initially a loving mother to Damien, but after her subconscious recognized Damien as the Antichrist, she began to fear him and distanced herself from him. When Damien knocked into Kathy, leaving her clinging onto a balcony for her life, he did not try to save her from falling (though this may have been because he was, as a 5-year-old, not aware of how badly Kathy would be injured when she fell). In Damien - Omen II, after Damien discovered he was the Antichrist he came to no longer consider Kathy his mother.
Mrs. Baylock
Damien apparently got on very well with Mrs. Baylock.
Mark Thorn
Damien had a brotherly bond with Mark and got along well with him. The two often looked out for each other and cared for one another; Damien subconciously made Teddy see visions after beating Mark up, and Mark expressed concern for
Damien with Mark's body after killing him
Damien when he ran from the Academy, and later that night when Damien wouldn't speak to him.
When Mark discovered that Damien was the Antichrist, he ran from him and then confronted him with what he knew. Damien told Mark he loved him and he was in the beginning of saying Mark meant more to him than anything, but Mark screamed, "The beast has no brother!" clearly upset and shocked.Then, Damien gave Mark several chances to join him, clearly wanting who he thought of as a brother to join him. However, when Mark refused, Damien killed him by inducing an annyerusm to his brain.
Afterwards, Damien screamed - possibly in anguish - and was brought to tears, running over to Mark's body. It could be entirely possible Damien didn't know what he was doing at that time, as he didn't know his scream would alert Ann and Richard or that they were in the woods. Damien later attended Mark's funeral.
Richard Thorn
Damien had a fatherly bond with Richard and got along well with him. However, Damien did not show any grief or empathy when Richard was killed.
Ann Thorn
Damien developed an almost motherly bond with Ann, but did not show any empathy, grief or remorse at all over killing her so that he could inherit Thorn Industries and rise to political power to fulfill his destiny.
Marion
Damien tried to be polite to Marion, but she despised him and saw him as a bad influence on Mark. Due to this, along with her retro hobbies and fashion, Mark and Damien gossipped about her behind her back.
Jesus Christ
Damien deeply hated Jesus, accusing him of making false promises to mankind and of denying humanity the ultimate pleasures of and beyond pain and death. He also blamed Christ for his father's exile from Heaven to some extent, and was determined to destroy Christ as vengeance for Satan's exile. However, Damien also feared Christ due to the prophecy in the Book of Revelation that Jesus would destroy the Antichrist.
Kate Reynolds
Damien apparently had a romantic interest in Kate, but when she discovered that he was the Antichrist, Damien used her son's eternal soul to blackmail her, and even used her son as a human shield.
Peter Reynolds
Peter developed a fatherly bond with Damien, but Damien also used him as a spy to gain information. Damien also wanted to recruit Peter as a disciple of Satan, but like most of Damien's other loved ones, Damien had no morals over killing Peter for his own well being; using him as a human shield against one of the Daggers of Megiddo.
Harvey Pleydell Dean
Dean was Damien's right-hand man and one of his closest disciples. Damien became more rash and angry towards Dean when provoked after Damien began to worry about his coming downfall by Christ, and even tried to force Dean to murder his own baby son.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Other Traits
Due to his unholy heritage and his destiny as the Antichrist, Damien possessed several harmful and unholy abilities and weaknesses. He could cause machinery to break down and/or stop working, and could cause people to see horrific visions and develop aneurysms. He also knew vast information about virtually every known historical event.
It was also shown that Damien was apparently immune to all major and minor mortal ailments (from colds and chicken pox to chemical poisoning), and that the Seven Daggers of Megiddo are the only weapons that could harm him; and even then Damien had to be killed with all seven of the daggers on a church altar to destroy his body and incapacitate his soul. He could cause people to hallucinate others as someone else, and could also control some animals such as dogs and horses.
Because of his Satanic status and lineage, Damien deeply feared churches as a child, and felt discomfort and pain when the second Star of Bethlehem formed during the Second Coming of Christ.
Trivia
- Damien is one of the only two characters to appear in more than one of the original Omen films, the other being Carl Bugenhagen.
- In the original ending for The Omen, Robert managed to stab and kill Damien with the Daggers of Megiddo before the former was shot.
- Originally in Damien - Omen II, Damien was going to be 15 instead of 12. He would also have had a girlfriend, so that when he discovered that he was the Antichrist, he would be torn between love and destiny. This idea was ultimately scrapped.
- Some aspects of Damien's life appear to mirror those of Jesus Christ's. When Damien was born in Rome, a new star formed over Europe (similar to how the Star of Bethlehem formed over Bethlehem when Jesus was born there); and Damien was just under 33 at the time of his death, which is the approximate age Jesus was when he was crucified.
- In The Omen and Damien - Omen II, Damien's 666 birthmark was on the top of his scalp. But in The Final Conflict, it was above his right ear.
- In Damien - Omen II, when Richard left for New York, Damien had a pimple beneath his bottom lip; and when Damien screamed after killing Mark, fillings were visible in his teeth. However, it was made apparent in the first Omen film that Damien is immune to mortal ailments.
- In The Final Conflict, it was indirectly indicated at one point in the film by Damien that he was born in 1949. But at another point in the film, Kate Reynolds indirectly indicated that Damien was born in 1945.