10 Horror Movie Survivors Who Vanished From Sequels
3. Helen Lyle - Candyman
Granted, Virginia Madsen's Helen Lyle didn't technically survive 1992's Candyman, but she did become something more than a mere mortal by the time Bernard Rose's picture rolled to a close.
Having become obsessed with the legend of the Candyman, Helen ends up in over her head, eventually offering her own life to Tony Todd's Daniel Robitaille and being burned alive in order to save a baby boy.
While that doesn't particularly make Helen a 'survivor' of this picture, per se, what it did do is transform her into an entity all of her own - as shown by her confronting her cheating husband Trevor in Candyman's final seconds after he unknowingly summoned her.
By showing Helen to now be an almost otherworldly presence similar to the Candyman, that means there there was plentiful scope to utilise the character in sequels Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh and Candyman: Day of the Dead. Instead, neither of these follow-ups opted to bring Helen back, despite both films being direct continuations of the events seen in that first Candyman offering.
Of course, as of this writing, Nia DaCosta's Candyman movie is starting to make its way to theaters across the globe, so who knows whether Helen might still have a role to play in this franchise...