The Real Reason Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie And Michael Myers Are Related In Halloween

One of the threads running through many of the golden age slasher movies is a strange fascination with familial ties. The "Friday the 13th" franchise, for instance, sees Pamela Voorhees begin as the villain only to make way for her son Jason to take over. Later films introduce Jason's half-sister, great-niece, and nephew-in-law as characters across subsequent films. "Halloween" presents a particularly notorious example of this trend, wherein Michael Myers initially targets Laurie Strode simply because her father is trying to sell Michael's childhood home, and he then becomes obsessed with her. 

However, "Halloween II" decided to present the shocking revelation that Laurie Strode has a relationship to Michael Myers — they are actually sister and brother. The sibling connection becomes a major element of their adversarial dynamic from that point on and carries over into Rob Zombie's reboot of the franchise in 2007. However, when 2018's "Halloween" decided to not only return to the pre-Zombie canon of the franchise but only acknowledge the original 1978 film, the family link between Laurie and Michael was dropped for the new movie and its two sequels. 

So how did the change from strangers to siblings even happen in the first place? It turns out that it was essentially an afterthought mindlessly thrown into a hastily constructed scene that was needed to make "Halloween II" longer. 

As John Carpenter explained to The Daily Beast, movies used to need to be a certain length when they were shown on regular broadcast television, and "Halloween II" wasn't long enough. In order to proceed with the deal with NBC to later air the movie on the network, Carpenter was asked to add a scene so that it would reach the required length. Not sure what to do — and, as he theorized, likely fueled by a mix of exhaustion and alcohol — he quickly came up with a scene that revealed that Laurie Strode and Michael Myers were actually long-lost siblings.

Carpenter said, "I was absolutely stuck. I didn't know what to do. I mean, the movie is the movie — I don't want to touch it. But everybody will be happy with me, and they'll make money, and that's great. So I had to come up with something." As for how he actually feels about the sibling twist, the ever-outspoken Carpenter didn't mince words. "A terrible, stupid idea! But that's what we did."