Practical Magic Family Tree Explained — The Owens Women, the Curse and Who Is Related to Whom

The Owens family tree runs across four Alice Hoffman novels and two films, and it isn’t always obvious how any given character connects to any other. Some links — Sally and Gillian as sisters, Antonia and Kylie as Sally’s daughters — are stated outright, on screen or in official synopses. Others, especially in the centuries-long gap between Maria Owens in the 1600s and the family Hoffman actually writes about, are never fully spelled out. Here’s what’s confirmed, generation by generation, and where the record genuinely goes quiet.

Maria Owens — Where the Family Line Starts

Everything traces back to Maria Owens, the subject of Hoffman’s prequel novel Magic Lessons. Raised in rural England by a woman named Hannah Owens after being abandoned as an infant, Maria learned what the novel calls the “Nameless Arts” before following a man who’d betrayed her to Salem, Massachusetts — where she was accused of witchcraft and invoked the curse that follows her descendants ever after.

Simon & Schuster’s official synopsis for Magic Lessons confirms Maria had a daughter, Faith, who “has her mother’s gift” and is “born with a half-moon shaped birthmark.” Faith is the first confirmed link in the Owens bloodline after Maria herself.

The Centuries In Between

This is the honest gap in the family tree: Hoffman’s official synopses describe Maria as “the matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic,” but none of the publisher or author material spells out the specific generations connecting Faith Owens in 1600s Salem to the family Hoffman actually writes about, centuries later, in 1960s New York. Roughly three hundred years and an unknown number of Owens women separate them. Treat any claim of a fully mapped, generation-by-generation chain across that gap as speculation — it isn’t something Hoffman or her publisher has put on the record.

Susanna Owens and Her Three Children

The recorded thread picks back up with Susanna Owens, raising three children in New York City as the 1960s begin — the setting of The Rules of Magic. Hoffman’s own site describes them directly: Franny, pale-skinned with “blood red hair”; Jet, “shy and beautiful” with the ability to read other people’s thoughts; and Vincent, charismatic and “looking for trouble” from the moment he could walk. Susanna enforces a strict set of rules meant to keep her children safe from the family curse — no walking in the moonlight, no candles, and above all, never fall in love.

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as Sally and Gillian Owens, raised by their aunts Franny and Jet. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Hoffman’s site is explicit about where this generation ends up: “The two beautiful sisters will grow up to be the memorable aunts in Practical Magic” — meaning Franny and Jet are the elderly Aunt Frances and Aunt Jet who raise Sally and Gillian in the original film. Vincent’s own path is described more vaguely, as creating “an unexpected legacy” for the family — the novels develop that further than the films do.

Sally and Gillian — And the Unconfirmed Link to Franny and Jet

Here’s where the family tree gets genuinely uncertain, and worth being upfront about rather than papering over: neither Hoffman’s official materials nor Warner Bros.’ film synopses spell out, on the page, exactly how Sally and Gillian’s parents relate to Franny, Jet and Vincent. What’s consistently confirmed, across both the books and the films, is only the functional relationship — Franny and Jet are described as Sally and Gillian’s aunts, full stop, without the intervening generation ever being dramatized on screen.

Wikipedia’s plot summary of the 1998 film names Sally and Gillian’s parents as Jack and Regina, and states they “succumb to the Owens curse” — Jack’s death is the curse claiming another man who loved an Owens woman, and Regina, per multiple outlets covering the film, dies afterward of grief rather than the curse directly. That would place Regina as the Owens-blood parent, consistent with the family’s surname passing down through its women across the rest of the franchise. But no official source spells out whether Regina was Franny, Jet and Vincent’s sister, a niece, or another relative entirely — so treat “aunts” as the confirmed relationship, and anything more specific about exactly how as unconfirmed.

Sally and Gillian themselves are unambiguous: sisters, raised together by Franny and Jet after Jack and Regina’s deaths, and the central characters of both the original 1998 film and Hoffman’s original 1995 novel.

Sally’s Daughters — Antonia and Kylie

The next confirmed generation belongs to Sally. The Book of Magic’s official synopsis names Antonia and Kylie Owens as part of “three generations of the Owens women” confronting the family curse together, alongside Franny and Jet. The 2026 sequel film casts Maisie Williams as Antonia and Joey King as Kylie — both recast from child actors who appeared briefly in the 1998 original — confirming the same two characters carry over into film continuity as adults.

Whether Gillian has children of her own is not something the source material confirms one way or the other in what’s been made public so far.

The “Long-Lost Brother”

The Book of Magic’s official synopsis includes one more detail worth flagging rather than guessing about: alongside “three generations of the Owens women,” the book’s plot is set in motion partly by “one long-lost brother.” Hoffman’s own site doesn’t name him or specify which generation he belongs to. Given how the rest of the family tree is structured, he could plausibly connect to Vincent’s branch of the family, to Sally and Gillian’s generation, or to Antonia and Kylie’s — but none of that is stated anywhere on the record. Anything more specific than “an unnamed brother exists somewhere in the family, per the Book of Magic synopsis” is speculation this article isn’t going to manufacture.

The Owens Family Tree — What’s Actually Confirmed

• Maria Owens (1600s, Salem) — invokes the family curse
• → Faith Owens — Maria’s daughter, confirmed in Magic Lessons
• → [a few centuries of Owens women not detailed in official material]
• → Susanna Owens (1960s, New York City) — mother of Franny, Jet and Vincent
• → Franny, Jet and Vincent Owens — siblings; Franny and Jet become “the aunts” of Practical Magic
• → Sally and Gillian Owens — sisters, raised by Franny and Jet after parents Jack and Regina die; the exact generational link to Franny, Jet and Vincent is not spelled out on the record
• → Antonia and Kylie Owens — Sally’s daughters, confirmed in The Book of Magic
• (An unnamed “long-lost brother” also appears in The Book of Magic’s synopsis, generation unconfirmed.)

For the curse itself — why Maria cast it, what it actually does, and what Practical Magic 2 has confirmed about its current status — our full Owens family curse explainer covers that separately. If you’re deciding how to approach Hoffman’s four novels, our reading order guide breaks down publication order versus the family’s actual chronological order.