Only John Carpenter knows who’s the Thing at the end of The Thing

“I know who’s the Thing and who’s not in the very end.”

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  October 11, 2023 | 11:24pm
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Only John Carpenter knows who’s the Thing at the end of The Thing
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Don’t get it twisted: John Carpenter knows who is the Thing at the end of The Thing, and he’s not telling.

The Thing ends on one of the great open-ended conclusions in movie history when the director fades out on the two survivors of the alien’s shape-shifting, rib-cracking, goopy-as-all-hell attack in the icy tundra of Antarctica. Like 1982’s other beloved sci-fi movie with an inconclusive finale regarding who is and who is not a human, Blade Runner, everyone has a theory on what happened once the credits roll. Well, it’s time to put away childish things like plot tidiness because John Carpenter is here to chew bubblegum and debunk theories—and he’s all out of bubblegum.

The most prominent theory is the “Eye Gleam,” an idea popularized by Thing cinematography Dean Cudney. Again, similar to Blade Runner, the theory posits that a specific light is visible in the eyes of bodies inhabited by the Thing. At the end of the film, the character Childs (Keith David) has an eye gleam and MacReady (Kurt Russell) does not. Hence, Childs is the Thing if one follows Cudney’s logic, but, according to John Carpenter, Cudney’s “full of shit,” man. Only Carpenter knows the truth.

“He has no clue,“ Carpenter told ComicBook.com. “Yes, I know. I know who’s the Thing and who’s not in the very end.”

“[Dean Cundey] doesn’t know. He has no idea. He puts the lights up. He puts the lights up, and we were in the snow. He has no clue. You tell him that. Tell him he’s full of shit.”

As for whether he’s willing to share the answer with us, that’s a “Nope.” John Carpenter, who is promoting his Peacock series John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams, “cannot tell” the interviewer who the Thing is. “Sorry.”

We’re going to go out on a limb here and say that it’s a good thing that Carpenter keeps this to himself. At the very least, we know he’s not the Thing, so there’s nothing to worry about, right?

 
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