Ahead lies many spoilers that will ruin the move Split for you. If you’re interested in seeing the film, you may want to stop reading now. As M. Night is known for ending films with a twist, you may not be interested in knowing what the twist is. If you don’t care, or are like this author, and spoilers don’t ruin the experience then by all means read ahead!

One can divulge from the trailers for Split that the film is about three captive girls dealing with a very dangerous man with disassociative identity disorder (multiple personalities), played by one James McAvoy. What isn’t readily available is that this man has the ability to summon all of his personalities at once, becoming an animalistic, invulnerable monster.

Even more fantastic than this supernatural ability is that this villain lives in the world of Unbreakable. How do we know? Bruce Willis’ superhero like character David Dunn appears at the end of the film. The reveal makes it a stealthy sequel told from the perspective of the villain and his victims. Shyamalan discussed the character and films at AFI Fest this past November:

This was always part of the Unbreakable world. Kevin Wendle Crumb was a part of the original, original script for Unbreakable. I pulled him out because it just wasn’t balancing right. But a bunch of the scenes that are in this movie, I wrote 15 years ago. They were as is. Patricia opening the door. Hedwig’s first scene. Those were all written already. And it’s literally from the same moment that I created all the characters, all three of those characters. But I knew I wanted to do a movie about him because I just loved him so much, and I thought it’s a rich world for storytelling, so I was super, super excited to finally make it.

When writing the character, named Kevin Wendle Crumb (other personalities not withstanding), Shyamalan expressed that he found himself focusing on spending time with all of the personalities. Facing a lower budget, but with an actor that was up to the challenge, Split became the next film in this director’s arsenal. A one-shot spin-off to revive a character that never made the cut the first time around.

M. Night is fascinated by psychology, and thought he saw in Kevin strengths to his mental disorder, instead of weaknesses. After a brief meeting at Comic-Con Shyamalan, decided that he had to have McAvoy for the part. While he had originally planned for the character to hide behind disguises for various personalities, once the director saw McAvoy with a buzzed head he decided to reinvent the character. Instead of hiding behind disguises, Kevin would be one to throw himself into his multiple roles.

Both McAvoy and costar Anya Taylor-Joy said their favorite personality was Hedwig, a nine year old boy. According to the actor, this character was the most difficult to get down in rehersals, but once he had it down it was the easiest to play onscreen. The key to Hedwig was to keep in mind that this is a smart boy, not a dumb man.

Shyamalan felt the film was risky, involving cannibalism and molestation, but that it couldn’t have been done without producer Jason Blum. Blum expressed happiness with the film, noting that “if we feel safe, I’m not sure what we’re doing”. With the film’s low budget, it allowed the time they needed for reshoots and adding extra days after the three weeks spent editing revealed the need for more content. If you’d like to hear more of what was said, you can check out the entire interview here:

https://soundcloud.com/user-449009489/splitpodcastno-spoilers

There was little talk about the possibility of a complete sequel to Unbreakable, which may be due to them wanting to see how Split does first. In another interview with “The Hollywood Reporter“, M. Night Syamalan mentioned that he would like to make a final movie down the line that combines Unbreakable and Split. He also detailed that Bruce’s cameo, as a best kept secret, was done by not including him in the test film. Ultimately, the film stood on its own without the twist for people first viewing the film.

The twist is pretty awesome for fans of Unbreakable. The opportunity to revisit a fan favorite in such a different way makes the ending a definite surprise. Regardless of the spoilers, we’re definitely excited for the film.

What do you think of the twist? Would you like to see a sequel to Unbreakable to tie the films together? Sound off in the comments below!