New Halloween Theory Says Dr. Loomis Made Michael Myers A Killer

It’s a tricky time to be a Halloween fan right now, with a great teaser for Halloween Kills coming out last week, but the sequel now delayed until 2021. In the meantime, there’s always room for theories about the original movies, which keep finding new potential twists in what was arguably a pretty straightforward story. In fact, ScreenRant have now picked up on an old theory that argues Dr. Samuel Loomis is actually responsible for making Michael Myers into a killer.

While the Rob Zombie Halloween movies went to great lengths to explore Michael’s childhood and time in an institution, as well as Loomis’ later exploitation of his role as his psychiatrist, we get relatively little exposition in John Carpenter’s 1978 film. Michael kills as a child, and we then catch up with him escaping Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, and Dr. Loomis explaining that, despite his best efforts, he wasn’t able to get through to the now adult Myers.

Alternate versions of Halloween show more scenes between Loomis and Michael at Smith’s Grove, which mostly reaffirm the doctor’s belief that the patient is a lost cause. However, this fan theory about Loomis and Michael goes deeper by claiming that the child version of Myers we see doesn’t quite match up with the emotionless figure we later get.

On this basis, the theory goes that Loomis conditioned Michael to believe he was the personification of evil, and kept reinforcing the message until the child became it. In addition, Loomis was responsible for releasing Michael to Haddonfield, and is actually pulling the strings to manipulate the killings on Halloween night. It’s a bit of a stretch, really, and one that detracts from one of the best parts of Halloween, that Michael Myers is more like a force of nature than a character able to be shaped by Loomis.

Given that there hasn’t been much evidence to support this theory in the sequels, we’d have to say that positioning Loomis as the “real” villain of the Halloween franchise is pretty weak stuff. Still, it’s fun to throw out these kinds of theories, which have variously included how Michael is seemingly impervious to pain, and that he’s actually a cyborg.