2022’s Halloween Ends arrives on Netflix this week, but is Michael Myers really dead at the end of the movie? Read on for all the details.
The film was the final in a trilogy of sequels to John Carpenter’s highly influential 1978 slasher, following on from 2018’s Halloween and 2021’s Halloween Kills.
David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Joe) directed all three films, which saw Jamie Lee Curtis return to the franchise in her role of Laurie Strode, the high school student targeted by serial killer Myers in the original film.
Halloween Ends is set four years after the events of Halloween Kills and finds Strode attempting to move past her trauma while living with her granddaughter Allyson. However, 21-year-old Corey, who has his own history with Myers, becomes involved with Allyson, and by extension, with Strode.
In a four-star review of the film, NME wrote: “Less concerned with making a slick modern horror than with doing something genuinely interesting with the franchise – Green’s trilogy makes much more sense when you can see the whole picture. There’s a lot of history to cover here, and a lot of loose threads to tie, but Halloween Ends finally feels like a fitting way to end the saga. For now, at least…”
In 2022, Jamie Lee Curtis spoke to NME about the impact of the sequel trilogy on her life. “At 64, I have an entire career,” she said. “Now I’m a producer. I’m a writer, I’m a director, I’m an active boss, I’m a creative partner. I can collaborate with artists in a way that I’ve always dreamed of. I never expected to be making the movies that I’m making now.”
“I’m looking at this as a decade of creativity, 60 to 70, that I never expected. I always knew I was an incredible collaborator, but all of a sudden my life has exploded creatively.”
Halloween Ends ending: is Michael Myers really dead?
At the finale of the film, Laurie Strode and Michael Myers face off one final time in her kitchen. Laurie pins him to the kitchen table and slits his throat and wrists and he bleeds out.
Laurie and her granddaughter Allyson take Myers’ body to the junkyard and throw it into an industrial shredder, with local people of Haddonfield there to witness it.
It would appear incontrovertible, then, that Michael Myers is in fact dead at the end of the film.
So will there be another Halloween film?
Shortly ahead of the film’s release, Carpenter revealed that he thought Halloween Ends might not be the final film in the franchise.
“If a movie makes enough money, you can be assured that it will [get a sequel]” he said. “I will have to see how much money it makes!”
In a separate interview around the same time, he made a similar sentiment: “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.”
With Myers apparently dead for good, any further films in the franchise would either have to be flashbacks to earlier points in the timeline or follow a new villain – or in the most far-fetched scenario, devise a situation where Myers somehow lived on beyond the definitive final act of Halloween Ends.