Calling all fans of supernatural chaos and Ted Lasso: Disney+ has conjured up the first full trailer for Hocus Pocus 2 and it stars Hannah Waddingham as a gorgeously glamorous witch. She’s an icon, she’s a legend and she is most certainly the magical moment.
Disney+ dropped the trailer at its D23 Expo, which is essentially a fan event that would make any Mickey Mouse enthusiast cream their jeans.
We already copped a Hocus Pocus 2 teaser in June, which showed a gaggle of mates summoning the Sanderson sisters — Winifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mary (Kathy Najimy) — back from the dead.
But the full trailer takes us back 370 years to ye olde Salem, when a nasty reverend banishes the three young sisters from the town forever.
As the enchanted girlies are running through the forest, they bump into Waddingham who, frankly, seems like a delightful witch. She’s also serving in a divine red dress with a feathery cloak and bedazzled eyeshadow. And don’t even get me started on her whimsical blonde curls.
She gives a teenage Winifred the living book of spells, which is the key to her and her sisters’ magic.
The way I genuinely thought I would find out I was a witch on my 16th birthday and receive a magic book, à la wee Winifred and Sabrina Spellman in Sabrina The Teenage Witch. But alas, I just went to school and studied F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s classic The Great Gatsby.
Fast forward to the present day and we see some high school pals — played by Belissa Escobedo, Whitney Peak and Lilia Buckingham — visiting Gilbert’s (Sam Richardson) Salem Magic Shoppe, where he gives them the OG black flame candle. Obviously, they light it on Halloween and shit hits the fan when they bring the Sanderson sisters back to life.
If the sisters want to live past sunrise, they need to steal the children’s souls, but not before they wreak a whole bunch of havoc and chaos on Salem.
Boy-turned-cat Thackery Binx, the 1993 flick’s legendary black talking moggy who was voiced by Jason Marsden, sadly does not reprise his role in Hocus Pocus 2. Instead, we’re treated to Cobweb, who is also black and adorable but isn’t endowed with Binx’s gift of the gab.
The film’s director Anne Fletcher told Entertainment Weekly that Cobweb would be paying homage to the OG’s legacy, and that Binx might be making an appearance in Hocus Pocus 2 — just not as a cat.
“We’re having some fun with him, so, we’ll see,” she said.
Someone from the OG Hocus Pocus who will be coming back though is Winifred’s zombified ex-lover Billy Butcherson (Doug Jones). Slay, I say.
Hocus Pocus 2 will be premiering on Disney+ on September 30, so you have a bit of time to dust off your broomsticks.
