Halloween Kills Script Reveals Original Ending Cut From the Theatrical Version

Here’s how Halloween Kills ends in the original script and the cut call setting up the final showdown between Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) in Halloween Ends. Spoiler warning for Halloween Kills, now playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock. When Strode women Karen (Judy Greer) and Allyson (Andi Matichak) join a grown-up Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) and a vigilante mob on Haddonfield’s hunt for the boogeyman, an injured Laurie recovers from surgery after her 40-years-later — and near-fatal — encounter with Michael in 2018’s Halloween. 

How Halloween Kills Ends

Halloween Kills ends where The Shape started: in the bedroom of the old Myers home where a six-year-old Michael murdered his older sister, Judith Myers, on Halloween night 1963. This time Michael’s victim is Karen, Laurie’s daughter, killed by a vicious attack in the same spot where Judith died decades earlier. 

After Michael kills Karen, a cut to Laurie looking out at the flashing red and blue police lights at Haddonfield Hospital, far from the horror and carnage happening at the Myers family home where Allyson and Karen thought Haddonfield ended a four-decade reign of terror. But you can’t kill the boogeyman. 

The film ends on the burned and bloodied mask of Michael Myers staring out Judith’s window, cutting to black and the Halloween Kills title card — teasing an inevitable confrontation when Halloween Ends in 2022. 

The Halloween Kills Ending You Didn’t See 

But Kills was scripted to end with Laurie learning of Karen’s death and wielding the knife Allyson left by her bedside earlier in the movie, ready for a final fight to the death with Michael. Despite the mob’s mantra that “evil dies tonight” in Halloween Kills, evil won’t die until Laurie and Michael meet again for the last time in Halloween Ends. 

On the final page of the Kills script written by director David Gordon Green and co-writers Danny McBride and Scott Teems, Michael murders Karen, and her corpse eerily lies in the exact same spot where Judith Myers died. 

Michael answers Karen’s ringing phone from an “Unknown Caller,” revealed to be Laurie calling from a hospital wall-mounted telephone. “Nothing but breathing is heard from the other end of the line,” reads an excerpt from the screenplay. “Laurie’s face says it all. DREAD.”

Laurie knows what happened: He came home. Her daughter is dead. But there’s no time to mourn: after a beat, Laurie says her daughter’s name. The Shape breathes into the other end of the line. 

The phone dangles as Laurie disappears into the bustling crowd at the hospital, Halloween Kills ending on a freeze frame of the bloody knife. 

The Cut Halloween Kills Extended Ending Explained

This could be the extended ending Green recently revealed will be available on the home media release of Halloween Kills. 

“This is the director’s cut through and through, but there’s an additional scene that we filmed that was scripted,” Green told Collider of the theatrical ending of Kills. “And actually I think is a pretty brilliant scene. So we’re going to do an extended version on the DVD, just so people can see an extended ending that’s different and cool.”

Halloween Ends

The ending was cut short to better lead into Halloween Ends, the final chapter of Green’s direct sequel trilogy to John Carpenter’s 1978 original Halloween. Unlike 2018’s Halloween and its 2021 sequel Kills, both taking place 40 years later on Halloween night 2018, Ends is now set at the time of release: October 2022. 

“We ended up lifting it when I became more confident of where we’re going to pick up in the next movie, it felt it didn’t feel authentic to where we’re going to go,” Green explained. “I think it was cool in its own right as watching a one-off movie, but knowing where we’re going to exactly where we’re going to pick up — which you’ll know in a year — it wasn’t the right look in the eye that we needed to give the audience.”

Halloween Kills is now playing in theaters and streaming only on Peacock. (If you haven’t signed up for Peacock yet, you can try it out here.) Halloween Ends on October 14, 2022.

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