Halloween Ends: Where Can the Franchise Go From Here?

This article contains Halloween Ends spoilers.

Evil has the same face it’s had for the past 44 years—that’s the motto of David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends. Four years after he brought the seminal slasher back to our screens for the confusingly titled Halloween (2018), the director is back to round out his trilogy with Halloween Ends. While the name suggests Michael Myers will be put in the ground for good, we know that’s not how this franchise usually goes.

Jamie Lee Curtis is once again brandishing her butcher knife as final girl Laurie Strode while also doing a great job of marketing Halloween Kills as both her and Michael’s last tango. However, with Halloween (1978) director John Carpenter telling the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “If the movie makes money, I don’t believe it’s the end,” fans are curious to know if the corn syrup will keep flowing. Now that the credits have rolled on Halloween Ends, let’s see whether it’s really the end of the road…. Or if all roads lead back to Haddonfield.

Curtis previously told Digital Spy that Halloween Ends would make people angry from the start, and it sure has. The blood-soaked finale sees a battle 44 years in the making, and even though it means Halloween Ends lives up to the promise of ending Laurie and Michael’s fight, the “ends” suffix simply refers to this being the end of their story. Green definitely ends things on a pretty definitive note in that regard. After Laurie and Michael have their final showdown in her kitchen, she’s saved by granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) while the pair watch the life drain from an unmasked Michael. 

Sticking a final nail in Michael’s proverbial coffin, his body is then driven through the streets of Haddonfield to show his reign of terror is over. As the crowds gather at the scrapyard, Laurie shoves Michael’s body in an industrial metal cutter, and he’s (physically) gone for good. Laurie finishes her manuscript, finally looks ready to settle with Deputy Hawkins (Will Patton), and accepts Allyson has left town to start afresh. Halloween Ends has no post-credit scene, but instead, there’s an ominous shot that shows Laurie has kept his mask. 

So is that the real end of Halloween?

A New Shape Emerges

If Halloween Ends isn’t the end, there’s potential for Allyson’s story to continue in another film if she were stalked by her own personal boogeyman. Consider that Ends split the kills between Michael and Rohan Campbell’s Corey Cunningham. It’s implied that Allyson’s boyfriend has been possessed by the evil of Myers, which nearly fits Laurie’s closing warning of “evil doesn’t die, it changes shape.” And even after being shot by Laurie and stabbing himself in the throat, it was impressive how the next generation of “Shape” kept going until Michael additionally snapped his neck. Could Corey’s similar abilities to dodge death make him an ideal candidate to become the “next” Michael Myers? He didn’t go in the metal shredder. 

If we want to continue the reboot timeline but not rely on Corey as Michael Myers II, now might also be the time to revisit some of the many cancelled Halloween movies that never came to pass. Rob Zombie’s Halloween 3D or a Halloween 666 that took Tommy Doyle to hell with a VR headset would never happen, but others could still work. In 2021, screenwriter Daniel Farrands told Bloody Disgusting how a pitch for a Halloween H2O sequel (called Halloween 8: Lord of the Dead) would’ve ended with a shock twist where Michael’s mask was pulled off to reveal Laurie underneath.

It might feel like a rehash of Halloween 4’s climax with Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) or the alternate ending of Rob Zombie’s Halloween II where Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) succumbed to the evil of Michael, but having rooted for Curtis’ Laurie for decades, it would be one for the history books if she came back as the killer. Although Curtis has repeatedly said she’s done, imagine Michael being “back from the dead” in a Halloween Ends sequel, only to have Laurie revealed at the end. It would make Halloween more like a Scream movie, but with Ends implying Laurie has also been brushed with Michael’s evil like Corey, it’s not impossible to pull off. 

The ‘Curse’ Of Michael Myers

But if we were to leave the Strodes behind, the OG Halloween was famously pitched as an anthology series revolving around different events on Oct. 31. It was an idea that Carpenter and co-creator Debra Hill finally got their way on in 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch. 

Despite Season of the Witch being panned upon release, it’s since developed a cult following and fared much better than most of the later Halloween movies with horror aficionados. It’s become enough of a cult classic to be homaged in Halloween Kills with the Silver Shamrock masks, however, and in Halloween Ends by the threequel adopting Season of the Witch’s blue title font. Granted, the producers flipped back to the Myers arc for Halloween 4 almost 40 years ago because of audiences rejecting a Myers-less sequel. 

Horror anthologies are all the rage these days, however. The criminally underrated Trick ‘r Treat gave us several spooky stories set over one night, while the unnerving Art the Clown of the Terrifier movies made his debut in the All Hallow’s Eve anthology. Halloween Ends feels like it should’ve copied 1995’s Halloween 6 and had The Curse of Michael Myers attached to it, with it quickly skipping over the various horrors that afflicted the town since Myers returned in 2018. 

From suicides to murders, we also see a billboard for a missing girl before the bullies threw Corey off a viaduct. The idea that Haddonfield is itself cursed—like the town of Derry in It—could work as a TV series that has ties to the Halloween name without focusing on Laurie and Michael. Look out for Halloween: Haddonfield on Peacock in the near future. The question is, would critics be willing to take a punt on a Halloween outing without the man himself… again?

Time To Start Anew

No matter what, it’s likely this is the last Halloween movie Green and Blumhouse will deliver. The former only planned a trilogy, while the latter reiterated to Screen Rant that it was a three-picture deal before the rights revert to