Less than a year after Ti West’s X hit theaters to the delight of horror fans, the villainous origin story Pearl is now playing in theaters and the third entry in the franchise, MaXXXine, is underway. As the trilogy unfolds, the writer-director shared how the acclaimed 2021 film was turned into a franchise so quickly and teased what its audience can expect from the third installment in the series.

In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, West discussed not only the aesthetic differences between the first two movies – with one being a slasher-ific love letter to filmmaking and the other being a Technicolor fairytale horror – but also the connections between the X star and co-writer Mia Goth’s characters in these films. Both of her characters are doing what they can to reach their dreams, become actresses and achieve Hollywood stardom, but with vastly different tactics. Most intriguingly to fans of the first two films, West teased what audiences can expect from the yet to be filmed MaXXXine.

The ’70s set slasher X follows a group of young filmmakers who are making an adult film in rural Texas. When the reclusive elderly couple who own the property they are secretly using as a set catches them in the act, a bloodbath ensues – leaving the aspiring starlet Maxine (Goth) as one of the horror show’s only survivors. Pearl goes back in time to 1918 in order to explore the origin story of the pitchfork-wielding killer Pearl – who is also played by the dynamic Goth – delving into a psychological study of a young woman desperate to leave behind her family farm for a life of fame. Since A24 greenlit Pearl so quickly, West shot X and Pearl back-to-back, allowing him to use the same sets, keeping production costs low.

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Image via A24

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Giving fans a crumb of the concept for MaXXXine, West went into how all three films together will be a much more interesting piece of artwork than it would without the prequel. He even confirmed that the third film will be about Maxine, just in a different point of her life than the first film:

“To round the whole thing out, MaXXXine as a sequel to X is fine. MaXXXine as part of a trilogy is infinitely more interesting, so that was part of the overall concept,” West said. “I think what’ll be fun in MaXXXine, I’m not going to tell you what it’s about, but what’s fun is it is an evolution of the character, in the way that you met Pearl in X, but then you get to know a different side of her in Pearl. Yes, you have met Maxine. It is a continuation of Maxine, but she is at a very different point in her life. It’s going to be an interesting thing to catch up with her when we do, and to see Mia Goth in yet another way.”

West continued: “That was why the trilogy made more sense than a sequel because in many ways, MaXXXine is a sequel to X and should be more X. But MaXXXine as a part three will be a real departure, especially now, and there will be context of why that is. You’ll go, ‘I’m expecting something very different now.'”

The critically-acclaimed Pearl is in theaters now and X is currently available for streaming.