Why did Michael Myers kill his sister in Halloween? When we talk about iconic slashers, the boogeymen of Haddonfield has to be in the conversation. For years, we’ve seen Michael Myers haunt the big screen, stabbing teens left, right, and center and stalking Laurie Strode relentlessly. However, despite decades in Hollywood, many are still confused about this killer’s backstory.
Halloween is one of the best horror movies ever made, and its success is partly due to Michael Myers‘s cold killing attitude. However, whenever you watch all the Halloween movies in order, you are reminded that Michael wasn’t always the monster we all know him as today. In fact, he used to be a kid like we all were. The only difference is that, as a six-year-old kid, Michael Myers decided to stab his sister, Judith Myers, with a kitchen knife one Halloween. But why?
What made Michael kill his sister and kickstart his journey to being one of the best slasher movie villains in history? Well, below, we’ve examined all the timelines and Myers facts to give you all the information you need about why Michael Myers killed his sister in Halloween. Warning: minor franchise spoilers ahead!
Why did Michael Myers want to kill his sister in Halloween?
The reason for Michael Myers killing his sister back when he was a kid really depends on which Halloween timeline you are talking about, because there are some wildly different lore factors to consider. Depending on what kind of Halloween movie fan you are, Michael’s sister killing ways are either due to supernatural curses or (our personal favorite) because he is simply pure evil – with no rhyme or reason for his murderous actions.
So, let’s break down both of these possibilities. Starting with the most popular theory to Michael Myers’s backstory, which has been largely the same across the majority of timelines, reboots, and retcons, the reason for his killing spree as a child is because he is a pure evil psychopath. He has no real reason for killing his sister; she is just another one of his victims, and he simply wants to murder her.
So yeah, it wasn’t because she was a sexually active teen, and it wasn’t because she didn’t take him trick or treating. Michael simply had the impulse to stab her, so he did. As Dr Loomis mentions in the first Halloween movie, Michael is simply evil, a being that is fascinating but one that typical folks will never understand.
We just have to remember Loomis’ iconic scene where he describes Michael’s eyes to grasp how devoid of humanity Michael is: “This blank, pale emotionless face. Blackest eyes. The devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply evil.”
If you are a fan of the ’80s movie Halloween 2 or the H2O timeline, Michael’s reasoning for killing his sister and targeting Laurie Strode (who, in the worst franchise move ever, was revealed to be his long-lost sister as well) is due to some obsession with offing his family. But, even in those timelines, Michael is still primarily a straightforward serial killer without a clear purpose besides stabbing everyone in his way.
Did Michael Myers kill his sister because of a curse?
When we look at the first Halloween timeline, which consisted of five movies, up until Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Michael killed his sister due to the Cult of Thorn. The Cult of Thorn put a curse on the young boy, which triggered the famed sister-killing event.
However, this timeline has been retconned since David Gordon Green’s new trilogy. So, Michael’s supernatural reasonings aren’t exactly canon anymore. If you are still curious to know about the Cult of Thorn, don’t worry; we have all the non-canon lore here for you.
It turns out that (in one Halloween timeline, anyway) the Myers family is descended from an ancient druidic tribe. In this fictional family’s druid history, there are mentions of a demon called Thorn, who is responsible for killing thousands of innocent folks. To appease the demon, a ritual must take place where a family member is cursed and doomed to kill their next of kin.
These family murders act as blood sacrifices for the demon, therefore saving the rest of the tribe from Thorn’s wrath. So, Michael, when he was six, unfortunately, was chosen as a killing spree vessel to save the other druids and then went about murdering his entire family and all the Haddonfield residents who got in his way, too.
But as we mentioned above, Thorn has been retconned due to the new Halloween movies, which basically cleared all the Halloween sequels off of the canon timeline when it was released back in 2018. Personally, we believe that Halloween 2018 retconning the franchise was a good idea since a lot of these supernatural details got messy. But hey, if you like the Cult of Thorn timeline, we don’t judge here, either.
So those are all the reasons why Michael Myers killed his sister in Halloween. For more on the slasher franchises, you can read our Halloween Ends review and check out our guides on how to watch all the Hellraiser movies in order and the true story behind Halloween.