Halloween Ends Nearly Included Major Season of the Witch Reference

Halloween Ends was released last week, and it’s the latest movie in the franchise to divide fans. Not only does the movie have a franchise-low CinemaScore, but it is up on Rotten Tomatoes with a 39% critics score and a 57% audience score. Long before David Gordon Green’s trilogy, one of the first divisive movies of the franchise was Halloween III: Season of the Witch. The movie has gained a huge cult following over the years, but many fans don’t like that it’s the only movie of the bunch that isn’t about Michael Myers. However, Green has paid tribute to the movie a couple of times. The iconic masks from Season of the Witch were spotted in Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends used the same blue opening credits font. Recently, the director told MovieMaker that Ends almost had a much bigger connection to Season of the Witch. 

“There was an ending I wrote, that we never filmed, and it takes place at Silver Shamrock factory as it was spitting out witch, skeleton, and jack-o-lanterns masks… and then it started spitting out Michael Myers masks. I had a temptation to go there, but at the end of the day, I thought that’s just fan service for people who know what Silver Shamrock is. It was in every draft of the script ever published [laughs] but we never filmed it,” Green revealed. 

Were the Makers of Halloween III Concerned About Not Using Michael Myers? 

ComicBook.com had the chance to chat with Season of the Witch star Tom Atkins about the movie back in 2019, and we asked if there was ever any concern about not including Michael.

“You know, there wasn’t,” Atkins shared. “There wasn’t any of that. I don’t think Michael Myers ever came up in any of our discussions about the film. And I met with [director] Tommy [Lee Wallace] a couple of times. With John [Carpenter], we just got right into it. But Tommy and I had a couple of meetings talking about the film. And he had me come in for him and Debra [Hill], and he had me come in with Stacey Nelkin, when they were down to about three young girls to choose from, to play that role. And he said, ‘Would you come in and read with them?’ And I said, ‘Sure. Hell, yeah.’

Atkins continued, “So I went over and met with the three. And as soon as she walked out of the room, we all said, ‘Whoa, she’s it. There you go.’ She was just precious. But we never talked about Michael Myers, honestly. We just made the best movie we could from what we had. And I thought it was a terrific story.”

Halloween Ends is now streaming on Peacock.