Halloween: What Happened To Laurie Strode’s Son, John

Halloween H2O introduced a new family member for the franchise’s hero and Final Girl, but what happened to Laurie Strode’s son, John? Halloween follows the story of Michael Myers, who, after killing his sister when he was six years old, was sent to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. Fifteen years later, Michael escaped and returned to Haddonfield, Illinois, where he began stalking Laurie. As the franchise evolved, Laurie had a daughter, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), introduced in 1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. After Laurie’s death, Jamie becomes the new protagonist, but her timeline ends up retconned.

The first Halloween retcon happened in 1998 with Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. The new Halloween timeline brings Laurie back and leaves Jamie Lloyd aside. Halloween H20 ignored all the movies after Halloween 2. Laurie and Michael are still siblings, and it’s explained that Laurie faked her death so she could hide from Michael and live a normal life, which she did for many years under the alias Keri Tate. Instead of a daughter, Laurie Strode had a son named John.

Who Is Laurie Strode’s Son John?

Josh Hartnett Played John In Halloween H2O

After going into hiding, Laurie Strode became a teacher and had a son, John (Josh Hartnett), who attended her school. Michael Myers finds out all about her new life, where she lives, and her son John, and he comes after her, killing John’s friends in the process. Ultimately, Laurie manages to get John and his girlfriend, Molly (Michelle Williams), to safety and decides to get rid of Michael on her own.

She steals the coroner’s van his body was supposedly in and decapitates him. However, the sequel, Halloween: Resurrection, reveals that it wasn’t Michael’s body but someone else. Laurie ends up in a psychiatric hospital, where the real Michael Myers finally kills her. Halloween: Resurrection gave some closure to Laurie’s arc, but it failed to follow up with her son, who didn’t show up in the movie. The David Gordon Green Halloween movies also feature Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie, but John doesn’t show up there either.

John Only Appears In One Of Many Halloween Timelines

There Are Five Halloween Timelines

Halloween: Resurrection focused on a new group of victims unrelated to Laurie Strode and the rest of her family. Originally, John was supposed to return in the Resurrection sequel to avenge his mother’s death. However, the critical backlash and low box office numbers of Halloween Resurrection killed those plans, with the next installment in the franchise being Rob Zombie’s Halloween reboot in 2007. Resurrection never mentions John’s fate; Michael instead goes after a group of strangers. Laurie presumably sent John far away from Haddonfield so he could go on without his uncle pursuing him.

When the 2018 Halloween movie arrived, many fans hoped to see John or, at least, expected an explanation of what happened to him. However, the 2018 movie completely ignores all Halloween sequels, meaning neither Jamie Lloyd nor John existed. The same goes for its subsequent entries in the reboot trilogy: Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. John’s fate is one of the most significant loose threads the Halloween retcons have left. Ultimately, it’s up to fans to decide what they think John’s fate was in the H20/Resurrection timeline.

All in all, there are five different timelines in the Halloween movie franchise, and the only thing any of them have in common is Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. All family relations and even mythology change drastically between them. The version with Laurie Strode’s son John includes the first two movies and H2O. To an extent, it also includes Resurrection, even though that movie never mentions him. The first movie also ties into the universe with Jamie Lloyd, in which John never existed.

Another Michael Myers timeline is the Rob Zombie reboot, which has nothing to do with any other movie outside those two releases. The fourth is Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which has nothing to do with Michael Myers or Laurie Strode.

Finally, there is the most recent trilogy. This also includes the first movie, which leads to Jamie Lloyd in one timeline and John Strode in another. However, neither of them exists in this one. Instead, it ignores everything but the first movie, and now she has a daughter named Karen Nelson (Judy Greer) and a granddaughter named Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak). Each timeline has Laurie Strode making different life decisions, and each has different kids, a trend that might continue.

Will John Ever Return For A Halloween Movie?

John Will Likely Never Be Back

There is almost no chance that John Strode will ever return to the Halloween franchise. Jaime Lloyd was a much more important character, and once her story began to fail at the box office, she disappeared and never returned. John’s story was dead on arrival, and the franchise never even mentioned him again. Each time the franchise reboots, it brings something new to the table, and Halloween has never been a horror series that wants to rehash too much that didn’t work, to begin with.

That said, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends did something interesting. They brought back characters from the first movie and had them play into the storyline. This inclusion shows that the franchise is unafraid to look into the past. But those returns were from the first movie. When it comes to the films that failed, from Jamie’s movies to the one with John to Resurrection and even to Season of the Witch, the chance of seeing any of those storylines again is not likely to happen when the Halloween franchise reboots.