What You Need to Know About ‘X’ and ‘Pearl’ Before ‘MaXXXine’

Next month, July 5th to be exact, writer/director Ti West and writer/actress Mia Goth will unleash the final installment of their X trilogy, MaXXXine. So, let’s have a quick refresher of X and Pearl to get you ready.

Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), spoilers for X and Pearl will be all over the place here.

Shot in New Zealand in 2021, both films are products of COVID-era filmmaking. During production on X, the cast and crew found themselves quarantined in New Zealand. So, West and Goth made use of the time by writing the prequel Pearl to further explore the character. A24 greenlit the new project, and the movies were shot back-to-back, with both being released in 2022.

Set in 1979, X is about a group of burgeoning adult filmmakers who rent a farm in Texas to shoot their debut pornographic masterpiece. Maxine Minx, played by Goth, is one of the would-be stars who will do anything to get famous. Once the owners of the farm, an elderly couple named Howard and Pearl, find out what the group is up to, they have mixed reactions; Howard is angry, while Pearl is intrigued. The unstable couple starts killing off the porn troupe, leaving Maxine as the lone Final Girl. As she escapes into the night, it is also revealed that Maxine is the runaway daughter of a televangelist who is constantly preaching in the background of most of the movie via TVs and radios.

Pearl jumps back to 1918 (during the Spanish Flu outbreak, conveniently echoing the modern pandemic lifestyle) and shows the younger years of Pearl (also played by Goth). While her husband, still Howard here, is off in Europe fighting WWI, Pearl is oppressed by her stern mother and invalid father, her only escape being the few moments during the week in which she can sneak away and go to “the pictures” in town where she dreams of being a dancer in the movies. She’s so obsessed with Hollywood that she even names her farm animals after famous actors and actresses.

When Pearl catches wind of an audition for a traveling dance troupe, the lonely girl senses her chance and will do anything to win a spot…even if it means murdering everyone she knows. Howard comes home from the war to a smiling Pearl surrounded by the corpses of their entire family.

Oh, and both movies feature an alligator named Theda (after silent movie star Theda Bara) who helps Pearl both murder her adversaries and dispose of the bodies.

The character of Pearl seems to see a lot of herself in Maxine, as the two share similar lusts for stardom. Both want to succeed at any and all costs, but Pearl is a little more…psychotic about it. The elderly Pearl feels jealousy towards Maxine, which in turn triggers the violent, murderous rage that takes the lives of Maxine’s friends. Of course, Pearl and Howard were unstable decades before Maxine and company showed up, as referenced by the events of Pearl and the additional gravesites and bodies that are shown in the swamp in X, but something about Maxine’s presence at their farm just seems to ramp up that instability.

MaXXXine looks as if it is going to pick up where X leaves off, following Maxine Minx into the ’80s. The young actress’ quest for stardom has brought her to Hollywood where she gets caught up in more murder and mayhem. Aesthetically, both X and Pearl were presented in the style of their time periods, X being a ’70s grindhouse slasher in the vein of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Pearl leaning into the classic Hollywood, The Wizard of Oz-type of technicolor nightmare. If MaXXXine follows this trend, fans can expect a glitzy, neon-soaked tribute to eighties Los Angeles crime dramas.

Since Maxine is the only survivor of the first two chapters of the X saga (aside from Theda the gator), It’s not clear how her past will shape her present in MaXXXine. However, one can bet that her identity as the runaway child of a crazy evangelical will come into play somehow. The police who showed up to investigate the bloodbath in X may want to talk to her as well. And who will be the villain in MaXXXine? Will Pearl possess Maxine and keep killing, or will someone new pop up to keep the slaughter going? And how will they be connected to Maxine?

We’ll get our answers in just a few short weeks when MaXXXine is released on July 5th.