Halloween Kills director on how that shocking ending will affect Laurie Strode in Halloween Ends

Halloween Kills
(Image credit: Universal Pictures)

Halloween Kills is here, and it sees Michael Myers on another brutal rampage through Haddonfield. This time, though, the people of the town are fighting back, with Tommy (Anthony Michael Hall) leading a furious mob on the hunt for The Shape. Major spoilers ahead!

While Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, she spends the movie in hospital, recovering from a nasty injury Michael inflicted in 2018's Halloween. That leaves her daughter Karen Strode (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson Strode (Andi Matichak) to confront The Shape.

When Allyson is on the wrong end of Michael's knife at the Myers House, Karen saves her, and lures The Boogeyman outside after unmasking him. It's a trap for Michael, with the mob waiting for him. The townsfolk seem to put him down for good, but he gets right back up again and continues the slaughter. Karen makes the fatal mistake of thinking The Shape has been defeated, and goes to look from the window of Judith Myer's bedroom – right at the end of the movie, Michael appears, and stabs her to death.

"I was writing with Danny McBride and Scott Teems, and as we were writing it, that just happened," director David Gordon Green tells GamesRadar+ of the decision to kill Karen. "And then we stopped writing."

But how will that affect Laurie and her emotional state in the upcoming Halloween Ends?

"Well, if you look at where Laurie Strode went from 1978 over the next 40 years, we found the person in a very different state than we'd left her," Green explains. "And the most enjoyable characters to write and watch are the ones that evolve and go through change. There'll be a lot of unexpected character evolution in the next one, and that's because processing grief and tragedy and a massacre like this can only go in any number of infinite directions. And so we just get to pick one and take that journey with her."

Halloween Kills is smashing the box office in US theaters now, and is also available on Peacock – and is out in UK cinemas. Check out the rest of our interview with Green here, and our chat with producer Jason Blum. If you're all caught up on the movie, you can also see our guide to the ending.

Molly Edwards
Entertainment Writer

I'm an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.