With four features in his filmography, we now have certain expectations for a Robert Eggers film. We want moody visuals, we want excellent performances (especially from Willem Dafoe), and we want people using words that no one has used in 1000 years. What we don’t expect, however, is a sequel. Despite their stylistic similarities, each of Eggers’s four movies take place in different places and time periods, minimizing the potential for connections between them.

One would expect the same to be true of Eggers’s latest film, Werwulf, which stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a farmer in 13th century England. But in a recent conversation with Esquire, Eggers revealed that he toyed with the origins of the werewolf myth in a previous film, The Northman. When discussing the origins of legends about humans turning into wolfs, Eggers observed, “If we really want to get into it, we can talk about the Berserkirs [an ancient Norse term for especially ferocious warriors who wore bearskins] and the Úlfhéðnar [another Old Norse word, for “wolf-coats”] that you see in The Northman that come from Viking culture.”

Released in 2022, The Northman starred Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth, a 9th century Viking who sought revenge against his uncle for the murder of his father. A retelling of one of the myths that influenced Shakespeare‘s Hamlet, The Northman featured Eggers’s usual eye for historical detail, especially in his depiction of Viking culture.

An early scene finds young Amleth (Oscar Novak) and his father King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) acting like dogs as part of a ceremony held by Heimir the Fool (Dafoe, in a great performance, as expected). After a seven-year time jump, we see Amleth among the ulfhéðinn, performing another ritual to (metaphorically) transform from humans to beast before going into battle.