Practical Magic 2 has landed in theaters, but one subplot that readers of Alice Hoffman’s follow-up novel is missing from the big-screen version: Antonia Owens’ romantic life. Actress Maisie Williams says she approached the role as a lesbian character, even though the film largely sidesteps that element of her story.
Williams told Gay Times that, across different cuts and script drafts, she chose to play Antonia with a clear same-sex identity — a creative choice she says enriched her scenes, especially those in which Antonia reacts to others’ romantic dilemmas.
The movie, scripted by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel and released under the direction associated with the adaptation, centers on Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian (Nicole Kidman) traveling to England to help Sally’s daughter Kylie (Joey King) after her boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) falls into a coma.
That focus shifts screen time away from Antonia’s fuller arc in Hoffman’s 2021 novel, The Book of Magic, where she is written as a lesbian with her own romantic partner, a lawyer named Ariel, who plays a part in unraveling the Owens family curse. The book also follows Antonia through an unexpected pregnancy that does not appear in the film.
- Book: Antonia is explicitly gay, has a named partner who aids the family, and becomes pregnant with a friend’s child.
- Film: The sequel spotlights Kylie’s romance and the family curse, while Antonia’s love life is downplayed or left implicit.
- On set: Maisie Williams says she performed Antonia as a sapphic character despite the movie not foregrounding that identity.
The differences raise immediate questions about representation in high-profile franchise sequels. For viewers who read Hoffman’s novel, the omission alters family dynamics and removes a queer storyline that some expected to see translated to screen.
Sandra Bullock has suggested a wider future for the franchise: she told Vanity Fair that a third film is possible if audiences respond and intimated the next installment could shift more focus to the younger generation. If a trilogy moves forward, that would be the clearest opportunity to restore or expand threads that Practical Magic 2 trimmed.
Why this matters now: mainstream sequels act as cultural signals — which characters and lives are shown matters to visibility and to how stories evolve across media. The handling of Antonia’s character affects not only fans of the book but also broader conversations about how adaptations balance source material with cinematic priorities.
For audiences and industry observers, the sequel’s choices have practical consequences: box-office and streaming performance will shape whether the franchise revisits omitted arcs, and creators’ willingness to foreground queer storylines in future installments will be tested.
In short, Practical Magic 2 delivers a new chapter for the Owens family on film, but several of Antonia’s novelistic threads remain on the page — leaving the possibility of a fuller on-screen portrayal dependent on where the series goes next.
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Hello, I’m Declan. I share my film reviews and discoveries with you to enrich your moviegoing experience.