How Halloween Ends Changed the Ending

Warning: this story contains Halloween Ends spoilers. Michael Myers is dead. Long live Laurie Strode. More than 40 years after the Shape stalked the streets of Haddonfield in John Carpenter’s 1978 original Halloween, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) ended the boogeyman’s reign of terror when she stabbed, slashed, and finally slit the wrists of Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney). With Michael dead, the boogeyman’s body was disposed of after a late-night Halloween procession through the terrorized town of Haddonfield. At the salvage yard where evil took new shape with Michael Myers protégé Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a bloodied but triumphant Laurie put Michael’s corpse through a car crusher. As it turns out, you can kill the boogeyman.

But that was not always the intended ending for Halloween Ends. 

How the Halloween Ends Movie Ending Changed

“We went through a lot of endings,” director David Gordon Green told EW of closing out his trilogy finale after 2018’s Halloween and 2021’s Halloween Kills. “Some were really bleak, and some were less bleak. The version we ended up with, I think, is optimistic, hopeful. After Kills came out with a bleak ending, I didn’t want to do that again. I wanted to have some note of satisfaction.”

Like Kills — which left off with Michael murdering Laurie’s daughter, Karen Strode (Judy Greer), in the same bedroom where he killed sister Judith Myers decades earlier — changes were made to the original ending. 

In one version, there was no “funeral” for Michael Myers.

“I screen movies a lot, from the very first assembly,” Green said, revealing the cathartic procession was a later addition following test screenings. “I want to watch the audience as much as I’m watching the movie. I’m ping-ponging back and forth, trying to see when they’re engaged and when they’re not.”

While Halloween Ends was always going to lead to a climactic final showdown between Laurie and Michael, the kitchen fight was shot in pieces during principal photography.

“We had spectacular fights that have been in it from the first draft,” Green noted. “When you get into principal photography on the film, then you have the stunt team, and you’re trying new things, and then you shut it down, and you go shoot it again at the end of the movie. The big showdown of the film we did in different increments. We’d assemble it while doing something else, come back to it, review the footage, and do some more.”

The director added: “I wanted it to be emotional. I didn’t want it to just be a brawl — I wanted it to have some story points. So I’m sure you could look through it with a microscope and find a lot of continuity errors from returning to that set multiple times.”

Halloween Ends Ending Scene

Like the Halloween Ends twist that was added just weeks before the film started shooting, the ending scene was reworked to include the Haddonfield procession and the destruction of Michael’s corpse. 

“We were trying to do a little bit more of a modest, intimate ending. Kills was big and expansive and super noisy and aggressive, almost like an action movie at points, and I wanted this to return to the simple dramatic roots,” Green revealed. “But then there were times when I thought it just didn’t play big enough and I wanted some scope to it. We wanted something more grand, and [that became] the procession sequence. So the actual ending of the movie we came up with this summer, like two months ago, after we screened it a few times.”

As for whether it was ever fated that Laurie dies in Halloween Ends, Green said: “I’ve come too far with Laurie Strode, and I want to believe in her — I want to believe in her future.” 

Halloween Ends is now playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock. See how to watch Halloween Ends online.