In retrospect, 1978's Halloween was always destined for a sequel. Co-writer/director John Carpenter and co-writer/producer Debra Hill even included a particularly prophetic line of dialogue in their tale of a supernaturally charged maniac, Michael Myers, who terrorizes his hometown on Halloween night: "You can't kill babaji”. Thanks to the film's massive critical, commercial and cultural success, Halloween II was practically a given.

While "Halloween" ends with the claim that Myers hasn't really been killed yet, a more complicated question for Carpenter and Hill concerned what to do with the other surviving supporting characters. Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Plains) was established as Van Helsing to Myers' Dracula, so his return was quite natural. A bigger problem revolved around the return of star Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, the babysitter who unfortunately crosses Myers' path and becomes the focus of his rampage in Eve of All Relics. Not wanting to kill off the character and lose Curtis while her star in Hollywood was rising, but also not wanting to throw himself into the mind after coincidence to explain why Myers continued to pursue one girl in particular, Carpenter famously decided to retroactively make the secret sister of Lori Michael.

That one (allegedly drunken) decision led to much of the rest of "Halloween" franchise fame.leaving the other 12 sequels/remakes/reboots that followed had to choose whether or not Lori and Michael were related by blood, and what that relationship meant. So the answer to whether or not Laurie Strode is Michael Myers' sister is not a simple yes or no, but an ambiguous "eh, it depends." What follows is your handy guide to the Myers family tree, at least so you know where Evil lies tonight!

For most of the Halloween franchise, Laurie Strode is actually Michael Myers' sister, as the two are considered blood-related from the second installment, 1981's Halloween II, to the eighth installment, Halloween Resurrection. since 2002. (It should be clear by now that Halloween III: The Witch Season 1982 is a standalone sequel out of continuity with the Michael Myers films). However, during this film series, 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 chasing Jamie Lloyd (Daniel Harris in "4" and "5"; JC Brandy in "The Curse"), who is Laurie's daughter who was adopted by the Carruthers family after Laurie allegedly died in a traffic accident.

Jamie served a dual purpose in Halloween 4, giving a revived Michael a new family purpose to return to Haddonfield and potentially take the series in a new direction with young Jamie seemingly inheriting her uncle's evil (more on that in a little). When that new direction was abandoned in favor of Michael himself returning time and time again, Jamie was left as a moving target for the cutter and herself replaced in Curse musical chairs style by having a baby of her own (who can or may not have been conceived by Michael - don't ask) who becomes adopted by the youngest biological daughter of the Strode family, Kara (Marianna Hagan), Lori's cousin.

With "Halloween: H20," the series either splits continuity for the first time (well, second, counting "Halloween III") following directly from "Halloween II," or, if you're squinting, directs Michael quite literally to continue. to target the now-deceased Dr. Loomis and Lloyd's bloodline with the discovery that Laurie faked her death and was living in hiding in California with her now-teenage son. After a fateful rematch between estranged brother and sister ends tragically for Lori, the woman loses her long-standing battle with the Evil she's connected to. Michael demands her life, then returns to his abandoned home in Haddonfield to cut some college kids taping a live show (the less said about Resurrection, the better).

When Rob Zombie was tapped to write and direct a remake of the original 2007 Halloweenhe could have gone in any number of directions with the franchise and its characters. While some say it went too far and others say it didn't stray far enough from Carpenter's film, Zombie chose to stay very true to the show's mythos by not only including Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton, the only other actress besides Curtis to play the character), but her relationship with Michael Myers (Tyler Maine) makes her deeper than just being his biological sister. Where the original Halloween timeline featured Michael chasing Lori out of some evil impulse that Shape had to destroy his family, Zombie's Halloween has Michael searching for Lori as part of his his own twisted desire to reunite his idealized family. 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 completely different, surreal way than others.

In Zombie's Halloween II, this insanity is revealed to be hereditary, as Lori finds herself succumbing to the same psychosis her brother suffers from, thanks to her traumatic experiences in the first film that caused it. On paper, that might sound like Zombie makes Carpenter and Hill's ambiguous concept of Evil too literal. It also feels like Zombie picks up that dropped plot involving Jamie's legacy of evil from Halloween 4. However, Michael and Lori's seduction by anger in the Zombie films is portrayed as something more supernatural here, a strength they have tapped into, as both Michael and Lori suffer from visions involving a white horse (which may or may not be the pale horse of biblical fame ). In any case, the relationship between Lori and Michael is the strongest in the two Zombie films. Where Lori as a sister in the original continuity is someone good in metaphysical opposition to Michael's evil, Lori and Michael in the Zombie films are parts of a whole, people condemned by their blood to a dark fate.

As I said before, John Carpenter wasn't a fan of Lori and Michael being literally linked to each other, so when David Gordon Green was handed the reins of the franchise in 2018, he decided to follow Carpenter's suggestion and have them separated Lori and Michael. by resetting the continuity to the original film. While this means the rest of the series is no longer canon for Halloween 2018, Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends, it doesn't necessarily mean Lori and Michael don't have a relationship at all. The main theme of "Halloween" 2018 involves a group of characters who insist - either from the universe or from Michael himself (James Jude Courtney) - that there is an explanation for Myers' actions. The most sensible of these men, Myers' new doctor, Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), arranges Michael's escape from custody in order to prove his theory that Michael and Lori (Curtis, returned to the role one last time) actually share some type of primal, hunter-prey relationship.

Being "Halloween", Sartain's hypothesis is inconclusive; Michael's search for Laurie can still be explained as chance. However, Greene and his collaborators make their Halloween trilogy a thematic summation of the franchise so far, exploring the potential origins of good and evil, their recurrence, and their relationship to each other through the people who inhabit the Haddonfield battlefield. Therefore, Lori and Michael share a bond, even though it is not literally through their blood. There is a sense that just as Michael represents all evil, Laurie and her family represent Good, and the two elemental forces are destined to battle for soul dominance. whether it is the soul of the city or the person. Getting rid of Laurie's sisterhood with Michael only makes this allusion purer and stronger, and is therefore best left out of Greene's trilogy.

Most interestingly, all these shifting relationships between Michael and his prey make the original 1978 Halloween more ambiguous, not less. Where the majority of horror sequels retroactively explain too much about the monster's origins and motives, "Halloween" continues to be shrouded in mystery thanks to the "choose your own adventure" nature of the shifting continuity of the sequels. So one can watch Halloween believing that Michael escapes Smith Grove Sanitarium after his secret sister Lori is the same age his sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) was when he killed her as a boy. This line of thinking makes Michael's stalking of Laurie and her friends that much more pronounced, with Form following his deadly fate with his sibling.

However, you can also see "Halloween" as the story of a maniac who stumbles across Laurie when he delivers the key to the abandoned house he used to live in, marking it as prey the way a tiger or lion locks onto prey. in their natural habitats. This relationship could be coincidental or bad luck, or it could point to a strange elemental destiny that neither person knew they were heading towards. In any case, just as there is no definitive "Halloween" continuity, just as there is no way to permanently kill the bogeyman, there is no clear answer as to whether Laurie and Michael are brother and sister. So when it comes to Halloween, just like the question of trick or treating, the answer is up to you.