As with most slasher icons, Halloween‘s Michael Myers has “died” quite a few times over the years. Pulling from the eleven released films from the franchise, including the Rob Zombie reboots, ScreenRant have put together a handy round-up of the many ways that “The Shape” has been dispatched, only to return for sequels. Across the series, Michael has apparently been offed on about nine occasions, although the majority of these have later been revealed to only be temporary setbacks for his killing spree.
Of course, the antagonists of the horror genre rarely die for good, and usually find some way to be resurrected or recover and continue their rampages. For Halloween, then, Myers’ first seeming demise comes at the climax of the 1978 film, whereby Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode manages to stab him in the chest as he closes in on her. This isn’t enough, however, as Michael gets back up to strangle her, only for Dr. Loomis to appear and shoot him six times, and with enough force to send the killer over a balcony and onto the ground below.
While the stabbing and gun wounds would be enough to finish off most people, Michael’s body quickly disappears from the ground, setting up the hospital-bound events of Halloween II. This extinction appears more final, as he’s hit by gunfire multiple times, including in the eyes, and then engulfed in flames. After Halloween III: Season of the Witch switched focus from his character, Michael returns in the fourth entry in the series, wherein he’s again hit by a lot of bullets, falls into a mine shaft and has dynamite thrown onto him.
Unsurprisingly, Myers is recovered for the fifth movie and manages to avoid even a partial death scene, returning in part six to be tranquilized and beaten with a metal pipe. Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, meanwhile, discards much of the continuity of the previous two films and offers what was, at least temporarily, a conclusion for the series when Laurie decapitates him with an axe.
Michael returns again in Halloween: Resurrection, however, and has to suffer the indignity of a kung fu battle with Busta Rhymes, before being electrocuted and set on fire once more. By the time of Rob Zombie’s remakes, we finally get what’s implied to be a permanent death for Myers, who survives a similar fate as the 1978 original movie, before succumbing to multiple knife wounds or being gunned down by the police, depending on the cut you watch.
Finally, in the 2018 Halloween, the Strodes believe they’ve killed the Michael from the first Carpenter picture by trapping him in a basement and leaving him to a fire. An already-released teaser for the delayed Halloween Kills, though, shows that he has, somewhat unshockingly, escaped his fate again.
Of course, we’d expect that 2022’s Halloween Ends will offer another “final” ending for the character, although it’s unlikely that he’ll ever be truly gone as long as there are opportunities for reboots.