Is Laurie Strode the sister of Michael Myers?

In hindsight, the 1978 film “Halloween” was always destined to have a sequel. Co-writer/director John Carpenter and co-writer/producer Debra Hill even included a particularly prophetic line of dialogue into their story about a supernaturally charged maniac, Michael Myers, terrorizing his hometown on Halloween night: “You can’t kill the boogeyman.” Thanks to the film’s massive critical, commercial and cultural success, “Halloween II” has practically become a given.

While “Halloween” concludes by confirming that Myers has not actually been killed off yet, the more difficult question for Carpenter and Hill concerns what to do with the other surviving supporting characters. Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) was established as Van Helsing to Myers’ Dracula, so his return was fairly natural. The biggest issue was bringing back star Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, the babysitter who unfortunately crossed Myers’ path and became the focus of All Hallows’ Eve’s rampage. Not wanting to kill off the character and lose Curtis while her star in Hollywood was on the rise, but also not wanting to use a post-serendipity device to explain why Myers was still pursuing one girl in particular, Carpenter famously decided to retroactively make Laurie Michael’s secret sister.

This (allegedly drunken) decision led to a lot of other decisions “Halloween” franchise lore.leaving the 12 other series/remakes/reboot films that followed having to choose whether or not Laurie and Michael have a blood connection as well as what that connection means. Thus, the answer to whether or not Laurie Strode is Michael Myers’ sister is not just a simple “yes” or “no,” but a vague “eh, it depends.” What follows is your handy guide to the Myers family tree, at least so you know where evil lurks tonight!

For the majority of the “Halloween” movies, Laurie Strode is actually Michael Myers’ sister, with the two seen as blood related from the second, 1981’s “Halloween II,” to the eighth, 2002’s “Halloween Resurrection.” It is now clear that the 1982 film “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” is a standalone sequel from the Michael Myers film continuity). However, throughout this series of films, Laurie only appears in three installments. “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers”, “Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers” and “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers” feature Michael pursuing Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris in “4” and “5”); J.C. Brandy in “Curse”), Laurie’s daughter who was adopted by the Carruthers family after Laurie died in a car accident.

Jimmy served a dual purpose in “Halloween 4”, giving the revived Michael a new family purpose to return to Haddonfield for and possibly taking the series off in a new direction as young Jimmy appears to inherit her uncle’s evil (more on that in a bit). When this new direction was abandoned in favor of Michael himself returning over and over again, Jamie remained in the role of the moving target of the slasher and was replaced by herself in musical chairs “Curse” style by giving birth to her own child (which Michael may or may not have conceived – don’t ask ) who was adopted by the Strode family’s youngest biological daughter, Kara (Marianne Hagan), Laurie’s cousin.

In “Halloween: H20,” the series either splits continuity for the first time (well, second, counting “Halloween III”) by continuing directly from “Halloween II,” or, if you squint, Michael literally breaks away from continuity to pursue the Doctor The now deceased Loomis and the Lloyd lineage with the discovery that Lori faked her death and has been living in hiding in California with her now teenage son. After the fateful match between estranged brother and sister ends tragically for Laurie, the woman loses the years-long struggle with the evil she is connected to. Michael claims her life and then returns to his abandoned house in Haddonfield to chop up some college students filming a live show (the less said about “Resurrection” the better).

When Rob Zombie was tapped to write and direct A remake of the original “Halloween” movie in 2007it could have gone in any number of directions with the franchise and its characters. While some say he went too far and others say he didn’t stray too far from Carpenter’s film, Zombie chose to stay very true to the show’s mythology by not only including Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor Compton, the only other actor). The actress is alongside Curtis to play the character) but makes her relationship with Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) deeper than just being his biological sister. While the original “Halloween” timeline showed Michael pursuing Laurie due to an evil motive that the figure had to destroy his family, Zombie’s “Halloween” had Michael searching for Laurie as part of his twisted desire to bring his perfect family back together. Zombie attempts to chronicle Michael’s madness in “Halloween” and “Halloween II,” portraying his psychosis as something that allows him to perceive the world in a surreal way that is very different from others.

In Zombie’s “Halloween II”, it is revealed that this madness is hereditary, as Laurie finds herself succumbing to the same psychosis as her brother, thanks to her traumatic experience in the first film leading up to it. On paper, this might seem like Zombie is taking the concept of the mysterious Evil of Carpenter and Hill too literally. It also feels like Zombie picks up that dropped plot involving Jamie inheriting the evil from “Halloween 4.” However, Michael and Laurie’s temptation to rage in zombie movies is depicted as something supernatural here, a power they exploit, as both Michael and Laurie suffer visions involving a white horse (which may or may not be the pale horse of humans). Bible fame). However, the relationship between Laurie and Michael is at its strongest in the two Zombie films. Where Laurie as a sister in the original continuity is a good person in metaphysical opposition to Michael’s evil, Laurie and Michael in the zombie films are parts of a whole, people doomed by their blood to a dark fate.

Like I said before, John Carpenter wasn’t a fan of making Laurie and Michael literally linked to each other, so when David Gordon Green was handed the reins of the series in 2018, he decided to follow Carpenter’s suggestion and separate Laurie and Michael. By resetting continuity back to the original film. Although this means that the rest of the series is no longer canon for 2018’s “Halloween,” “Halloween Kills,” and “Halloween Ends,” it doesn’t necessarily mean that Laurie and Michael have no connection at all. The main theme of the 2018 film “Halloween” involves a group of characters who insist – either from the universe or from Michael (James Goode Courtney) himself – to explain Myers’ actions. The craziest of these people, Myers’ new doctor Sartain (Halock Bilginer), arranges for Michael to escape from custody in order to prove his theory that Michael and Laurie (Curtis, Return to the role for the last time) In fact they share a kind of primitive hunter-prey relationship.

Being a “Halloween”, Sartain’s hypothesis is inconclusive. Michael Lowry’s stalking can still be explained as random chance. However, Green and his collaborators make their “Halloween” trilogy the thematic summation of the franchise to date, as they explore the possible origins of good and evil, their recurrence, and their relationship to each other through the people living on the Haddonfield battlefield. So Lori and Michael share a connection, even though it doesn’t translate literally through their blood. There is a sense that just as Michael represents all things evil, Laurie and her family represent good, and the two elemental forces are destined to fight for control of the spirit. Be it the soul of the city or the person. Eliminating Laurie’s brotherhood to Michael makes this reference cleaner and stronger, which is why it’s best left out of Green’s trilogy.

What’s even more interesting is that all of these shifting relationships between Michael and his prey make the original 1978 “Halloween” film more mysterious, not less. While most horror retrospectives explain a lot about the monster’s origins and motivations, “Halloween” remains shrouded in mystery thanks to The “choose your own adventure” nature of the sequels’ shifting continuity. Thus, one might watch “Halloween” with the belief that Michael escapes from Smith’s Grove Asylum once his secret sister Lori is the same age as his sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) when he killed her as a boy. This mentality makes Michael’s pursuit of Laurie and her friends all the more apparent, as The Sheep follows his own deadly fate with his brother.

However, you can also view “Halloween” as the story of a madman who accidentally encounters Laurie when she is handed the key to the abandoned house he has been living in, making her prey in the way a tiger or lion attaches itself to prey. In their natural environments. This whole relationship could be pure coincidence or bad luck, or it could point to a strange kind of racial fate that neither party knew they were headed toward. However, just as there is no definitive “Halloween” continuity, just as there is no way to permanently kill off the Boogeyman, there is no clear answer as to whether Laurie and Michael are brother and sister. So when it comes to Halloween, just like trick-or-treating, the answer is up to you.