Halloween Ends Is Bringing Back One Of The Few Survivors From Halloween Kills

You can't kill the boogeyman, but you'll have a tough time bumping off legacy characters, too. Kyle Richards will be returning to the role of Lindsey Wallace in "Halloween Ends," David Gordon Green's final installment in his new "Halloween" trilogy. Variety reports that the actor, whose character survived a brutal attack by The Shape, a.k.a. Michael Myers, in this year's "Halloween Kills," closed talks for her appearance in "Halloween Ends," which begins production in January with an October 2022 release date.

Richards originally starred in John Carpenter's 1978 original film, "Halloween," as a child; Lindsey Wallace and Tommy Doyle were under the charge of colossally unlucky babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) on a fateful Samhain night in '78. Now, Richards reunites with Curtis to take on the Haddonfield menace once more and from what "Kills" tells us, they've got plenty of back-up. Amid Myers' festival of pain are first responders, snarky children, and an assortment of unready locals, but Wallace is one of the few and the proud to come out of the ordeal without a toe tag. Richards' appearance in "Halloween Kills" was so lauded that, Variety reports, the filmmakers tweaked the "Halloween Ends" script to develop her arc further. Plot details for the upcoming trilogy closer are under wraps, but Blumhouse Productions founder Jason Blum is excited for the evolution. He tells Variety:

We are thrilled that Kyle will be reprising her role in 'Halloween Ends.' The return of iconic characters in 'Halloween Kills' was really important to David Gordon Green, and he took great pains to bring back the original actors when he could.

Blumhouse's recent "Halloween" revival trilogy, from its beginning, has made much of the fact that they were doing away with much of the canon that characterized the nine sequels between Carpenter's '78 original and David Gordon Green's 2018 recalibration. Gone is the sibling connection between Michael and Laurie, originally mentioned in Rick Rosenthal's "Halloween II" (1981). Gone is the Vulcan mind-meld connection between Michael and his niece, as seen in "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers." Outside of the odd throwback nod, the David Gordon Green-helmed films disregard most of the continuity because it was too messy.

Instead, Green, co-writer Danny McBride, producer/franchise custodian Malek Akkad and the House of Blum turn to the original to create new lore from core and peripheral '78 characters. "Halloween Kills" sees the return of Dr. Loomis (previously played by the late, great Donald Pleasence) via fantastic practical effects work, while much of the movie deals with the fallout from the inaction of a young officer who responded to the stabbing of Michael's sister Judith. With the return and expansion of legacy characters like Wallace and Tommy Doyle (now played by Anthony Michael Hall), the new films have effectively substituted one lore structure for another. It's almost as if a mythic figure requires a mythos beyond himself — and if you want more sequels, you must expand the lore and its players. If Lindsey Wallace had her way, though, the story surely would have began and ended in 1978.

"Halloween Ends" is due to be released on October 14, 2022.