Why Halloween Has Never Revealed The Father Of Laurie's Children
Across three timelines, the Halloween franchise has introduced three children for famous final girl Laurie Strode, but none of their fathers have ever merited a mention in the movies. Beginning in 1978, the Halloween series was once a paragon of slasher movie simplicity. The original John Carpenter horror movie saw star Jamie Lee Curtis play Laurie Strode, an unfortunate small town babysitter targeted by a masked murderer named Michael Myers.
Without much in the way of a backstory beyond his childhood killing of his sister, Myers was essentially the boogeyman in the original Halloween. He was an unthinking, unfeeling killing machine who cut a bloody swathe through Laurie’s friends before being temporarily felled by the final girl, only to escape death and capture Halloween’s famous ending. However, in the decades since, various iterations of the Halloween franchise have expanded on Michael’s story, Laurie’s character, and their relationship to each other.
As proven by the relentless fan service of Halloween Kills, the Halloween movies now rely on viewers knowing and caring about the lore of the series as it reaches its thirteenth installment. However, despite the Halloween franchise giving Laurie three children—Jamie, John, and Karen—across three timelines, for some reason, the franchise has always kept the fathers of these children a mystery. Ultimately, this doesn't matter much since the respective fathers have no role to play in the narrative, but it is an odd recurring habit across three timelines. However, there is a reason for each timeline to keep the enigma unsolved, and it is slightly different in 2018’s Halloween reboot, 1998’s Halloween: H20, and 1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.
With Jamie Lee Curtis no longer interested in the franchise (for now) and the ambitious anthology horror experiment Halloween 3: Season of the Witch being unfairly written off as a failure, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers needed a replacement for Laurie Strode. The fact that Curtis’ character was unceremoniously killed off between movies in this Halloween timeline proves that the franchise only made Jamie Lloyd her daughter to provide some tenuous canon connection between the movies. As a result, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers never focused on the identity of Jamie’s father because casting anyone as the unseen father would have drawn the attention of viewers to Laurie’s absence.
A character playing Jamie’s father and Laurie’s love interest would have forced Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers to focus more on the absence of Curtis’ iconic character. In contrast, getting rid of both of Jamie’s parents meant the sequel could connect Jamie with the earlier Halloween movies without actively reminding viewers that their original star was not returning. The critical failure of the fourth and fifth Halloween movies (despite their higher body counts) soon proved that viewers were not so easily fooled and did not care for the attempt to replace Laurie while simultaneously trying to downplay her importance. However, thanks to Halloween 2’s Jimmy, this timeline at least provided a likely candidate for Jamie's father, which is more than the next iteration of the series managed.
While reboots that retcon earlier movies are nothing new nowadays, back in 1998, it was a little more unusual for a sequel to outright ignore earlier installments in a franchise. As a result, when Halloween: H20 ignored everything that happened in the series after Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and soft-rebooted the series, the fact that the sequel replaced Jamie with Josh Hartnett’s John was not a major shock. Equally, ignoring the identity of John’s father was understandable as, like Scream series heroine Sidney dropping her Scream 3 love interest before the next sequel without any explanation, the trauma suffered by his famous final girl mother explains why John’s father didn’t stick around.
Admittedly, this is not an entirely convincing explanation, as 2018’s Halloween reboot did a better job of depicting Laurie’s PTSD from the events of the earlier movies and still managed to provide a likely candidate for her offspring’s parentage. That said, though, Halloween: H20’s casual dismissal of John’s father does deepen the bond between Hartnett’s character and his mother as he has no one else to rely on when Michael does return. This gives the sequel an urgency that would have been absent if John had a pair of parents to rely on, and aids the otherwise uneven Halloween: H20 in establishing stakes and tension as it seems unlikely that both generations of Strodes will survive until the end credits.
2021's Halloween Kills killed off Karen, Laurie’s daughter (or so it seemed), but the movie and its 2018 predecessor Halloween never revealed who her father was. However, Halloween Kills did almost seem to tease that deputy Hawkins was Karen's father judging by his interactions with Laurie in hospital, and if Karen is dead, this would give both Hawkins and Laurie all the more reason to team up and take down Michael in the final outing Halloween Ends. Given how many callbacks and references Halloween Kills made to earlier movies in the series, it seems unlikely that the reboot trilogy is simply leaving the identity of Karen’s father a mystery to make her relationship with Laurie more central to the drama (particularly now that she is seemingly dead).
What seems far more likely is that Halloween Kills is setting up the revelation of Karen’s father, whether or not she survived the sequel. The unintentionally funny Halloween Kills did not impress every fan of the franchise, but it does appear to be maximizing audience investment in the final chapter of the series by offing recurring characters and important figures to make Laurie’s vendetta against Michael all the more compelling. As such, revealing that Hawkins is Karen’s father and Laurie’s old love interest before Michael kills him in Halloween Ends would not only finally explain who the father of Laurie’s kids is, but also give a devastating blow that could strengthen Laurie's desire for revenge on her tormentor. In the process, the sequel could become the first in the Halloween series to give Laurie's kids a father, albeit a little too late.
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