How Halloween Ends could set up another Halloween movie
Halloween Ends is now available to watch on Netflix UK, as it brings the rebooted Halloween trilogy to a divisive end.
The movie followed the events of Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills (2021), as iconic final girl Laurie Strode (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) faces serial killer Michael Myers for the last time.
This is set to be Lee Curtis's final outing, whatever happens next. She confirmed as much back in July 2021, and talking to Digital Spy, she compared the new movie to a break-up.
Following the movie's release, writer-director David Gordon Green confirmed that it's the last time we'll see Laurie. "I do feel confident we are saying goodbye to Jamie playing Laurie in the universe," he told EW.
"At some point someone will maybe bring a new Laurie into something, some twist will happen, and the mythology will continue. But I do feel like this is the last time we're going to see her nervous smile and those fun enlightening attributes of Laurie Strode."
But could this really be the end of the entire Halloween franchise? Let's delve into the brutal ending of Halloween Ends to speculate on what, if anything, could come next.
Major spoilers are ahead.
Halloween Ends ending explained: Does Laurie die?
The new movie takes place four years after the events of Halloween Kills and since then, nobody in Haddonfield has seen Michael Myers. Their new pariah is Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) who, one year earlier, was accused of killing a boy he was babysitting.
Corey comes into the lives of Laurie, when she stands up for him against some bullies, and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) who he starts to get romantically involved with. Unfortunately for them, Corey also comes into contact with Michael Myers in the sewers after another altercation with the bullies.
Michael goes to kill Corey, but then mysteriously stops. Something changes in Corey after that incident though and he goes on a killing spree, sometimes with Michael and sometimes on his own.
Laurie starts to suspect Corey isn't who he's pretending to be and believes that she sees "Michael's eyes in Corey". Halloween night comes and after Corey takes Michael's mask from him (The Shape is severely weakened after the events of Kills), he amps up his killing spree – with Laurie his final target.
She outwits Corey though and shoots him, but not fatally. Corey then stabs himself in the neck, framing Laurie for his murder which would put an irreparable rift between her and Allyson. Michael comes back and finishes the job on Corey, before the final showdown begins.
Laurie gets the better of Michael and pins him to her kitchen table with the fridge. At one point, it looks like the two will go out together as Michael starts to strangle Laurie ("do it," she tells him) after she cuts his neck. Allyson comes home in time to stop Michael and he bleeds out.
However, Laurie knows that the town of Haddonfield needs more than to be told Michael is dead. She straps his corpse to her car and parades him through the town to the junkyard, feeding Michael's corpse into the metal grinder to finish him once and for all.
(This sequence was actually a last-minute addition to the movie as Green searched for "something more grand" to cap the trilogy.)
We then see Laurie finish her memoir and potentially start up a romance with Deputy Frank Hawkins (Will Patton), while Allyson leaves Haddonfield. And after everything she's been through, you can't blame her.
Is this the end of the Halloween franchise?
It certainly feels like a pretty definitive ending. Laurie manages to survive, but Michael is basically mush and even The Shape – who has been decapitated before, don't forget – might struggle to piece himself back together.
What's important to remember though is that this trilogy already rewrote canon by erasing every sequel since Halloween. Nothing rules out there being another direct sequel to the first Halloween movie that then spins the series off into a different timeline.
If we're being cynical, we'd say the chances of another Halloween movie mostly depend on the success of Halloween Ends. It's what creator John Carpenter was saying already in August 2022: "If the movie makes money, I don't believe it's the end. There's a way of when a movie makes money, it seems to resurrect the next one."
Could it really be the final time we see Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode though? That one feels more likely. "I would say, given what I know about [Halloween Ends], I think it will be the last time that I will play her," she said in July 2021.
Laurie has been killed off before and returned, so you can never say never especially as she survived this trilogy. Carrying on this timeline though seems unlikely, but not entirely impossible.
While Ends doesn't answer anything about the supernatural element of Michael Myers, it introduces the concept of Michael's evil infecting others. It's likely that when Corey looked into Michael's eyes on their first encounter, something changed within him that sparked his murderous side.
Michael might be very dead in this timeline, but who's to say there's not somebody else that Michael came across that he 'infected'. Pop a William Shatner mask on them and, voila, Haddonfield has another Michael Myers.
A line in Laurie's closing voiceover (the ending of the memoir she's writing) could prove to be telling if we return to this timeline. "Evil doesn't die. It changes shape," she says in a nod to Michael's other moniker.
A new killer might not be the Michael Myers, but it'll be his evil spirit. Some fans have even theorised that his spirit has gone into Laurie, which is why she keeps his mask around as we see in the final sequence.
The cleaner approach if there was to be a 14th Halloween movie would be to just reset the timeline again. This trilogy would just be its own timeline, and a new branch begun either from the original movie or some other point in the timeline.
Whether that happens remains to be seen, but we should all know by now that it's hard to properly kill off Michael Myers.
Halloween Ends is available to watch on Netflix UK.
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