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| “ | Candyman is not a "he". Candyman is a swarm, such a story, so much pain, it lasts forever. | „ |
| ~ William Burke telling Candyman's hidden origin story to Anthony McCoy. |
The Candyman Hive are the overarching antagonists of the 2021 supernatural horror slasher film Candyman, a sequel to the 1992 horror film of the same name. The Hive is a collection of condemned souls lost to racial violence across the United States.
History[]
| “ | Samuel Evans, run down in the white housing riots of the 50s. William Bell, lynched in the 20s. But the first one, where it all began, was in the 1890s. It's the story Helen Lyle found. The story of Daniel Robitaille. | „ |
| ~ William Burke on the members of the Hive before telling the story of the sect's founding member. |
It all started back in the late 1890s when Daniel Robitaille, a skilled painter by trade and the son of a freed slave, fell in love with a white woman who was the virgin daughter of one of his clients. When she was discovered to be pregnant with his child, her father led a lynch mob to run down and torture Daniel. They cut his right hand off, smeared his body with honey stolen from a nearby apiary, and a legion of bees stung him to death. Afterwards, Daniel's body was set ablaze and his ashes scattered across the landscape where Cabrini-Green is now. Daniel, from that point on, was reborn as the vengeful spirit Candyman who wrought fear throughout Cabrini Green.
Following his death, several other African-American men found themselves becoming part of the Hive such as Anthony Crawford, Samuel Bell, James Byrd Jr., and George Stinney Jr. if the shadow puppets are understood to be a reference to them.
In the 1970s, a young Burke unwittingly caused the police to beat the one-handed hermit Sherman Fields to death due to the assumption that he was the culprit behind razor-laced candy that a white girl acquired on Halloween. However, it then became apparent that Sherman was innocent when more razor blades were found in candy. After Sherman killed his older sister in the form of the latest iteration of the Candyman, William became madly obsessed with resurrecting the urban legend so he could use the wrathful spirit as a beacon of justice for the black community.
After sacrificing her life for an infant Anthony McCoy, Helen Lyle became part of the Hive after her death and murdered her cheating husband and presumably set up his young lover as the culprit. However, from there, she was not known to have killed anyone else, though her story had become demonized over the years.
When a now grown-up Anthony arrived to Cabrini Green to conduct research into the urban legend, the adult William tells him about the story of Sherman Fields to further groom Anthony into becoming the next Candyman. After he gets stung by a bee that causes his hand to rot, Burke kidnaps him and severs his right hand and replaces it with a hook. He then calls the police to claim that he spotted the "Say My Name" killer so that Anthony would be killed by the cops, completing his transformation.
Despite Brianna killing Burke, the mad man succeeds posthumously when the racist cops shoot and kill a defenseless Anthony and try to coerce her to memorize a fabricated version of events where the officers were forced to shoot Anthony in a provoked attack or she'll be sent to jail on false charges. Instead, she summons Candyman who slaughters all of the police officers. The original Candyman's face materializes over Anthony's and tells Brianna to tell everyone of his return.
Goal[]
| “ | (Anthony: So...he's real?) Bell was real. Samuel, Sherman, Daniel Robitaille, they're all real. Candyman is how we deal with the fact that these things happened. That they're STILL happening!! | „ |
| ~ William Burke emphasizing to Anthony that the Hive is a manifestation of generational Black suffering. |
With each passing generation, every "Candyman" represents a manifestation of the brutalities, horrors and disenfranchisement of the African American community in their corresponding eras. As with each generation of Black people ( all innocent men of varying ages) fall victims to unjustified deaths involving racial brutality, Candyman is now modernly reinvented to said era.
As the laundromat owner William Burke tells Anthony McCoy, that “Candyman is the whole damn hive,” meaning he’s not one single entity in the urban legend, but multiple departed souls who are taking the same title, he’s seen to us as the supernatural aggregation of suppressed traumas throughout Black history and the perpetual violence against the community as a growing sect of vengeful ghosts.
With each death at the hands of racial violence of every form, that victim becomes reborn as a new incarnation of Candyman to butcher those responsible for that person's death as a means to sow terror and vengeance in the hopes of ending the cycle of bigotry. Which his “Say My Name” is most notably his continual slogan, which is fewer inviting people to get themselves killed than encouraging them to tell the story of the systemic racism and brutalities Black people have endured for countless decades, with each Candyman incarnation asking their victims and community to keep the name and brutal story of Candyman alive so as to not forget the injustices faced by Black people in America.
Members[]
- Daniel Robitaille (founder and leader)
- Anthony Crawford
- George Stinney
- Sherman Fields
- James Byrd Jr.
- Helen Lyle
- Anthony McCoy
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Helen Lyle is the only known female member of the Candyman Hive.
- She is also the only Caucasian member of the Candyman Hive, whereas the other members are African-American.
- Half of the members of the Hive are based on real-life victims of racial violence throughout history, such as Anthony Crawford (who was lynched in 1916 after an altercation over the price of the local cottonseed), George Stinney (a teenage boy who was executed in 1948 under the false accusation of murdering two white girls) and James Byrd Jr. (who was murdered by three white supremacists in Texas, 1998).