John Carpenter Says The Thing Contains “Hint” That Solves Ending

Horror legend John Carpenter is once again stoking the flames of fan speculation surrounding the intentionally ambiguous ending of his 1982 sci-fi/horror masterpiece, The Thing (now available from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment).

During a recent Q&A at The Academy of Motion Pictures moderated by Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon Ho (Parasite, Mickey 17), Carpenter revealed that The Thing contains “a major hint” halfway through its runtime that solves the age-old mystery of whether Childs (Keith David) or MacReady (Kurt Russell) were assimilated by the shapeshifting alien. Filmmaker and Post Mortem podcast producer Joe Russo — no relation to the Marvel Cinematic Universe Russos — has a fascinating X (formerly Twitter) thread on what that hint could be.

John Carpenter teases “major hint” that solves The Thing‘s ambiguous ending

“I can tell you who was the Thing. But you need to send an amount of money in an envelope to my house, and then I’d consider it,” Carpenter said to much laughter from the audience. He then immediately backpedaled, stating: “I can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you, I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

There is, of course, every possibility that the mostly-retired director known for his wickedly dark sense of humor is just messing with fans, who continue to deconstruct every element of The Thing more than four decades after its release. Nevertheless, that’s the genius and enduring nature of the piece: the way in which it opens the floor for endless debate and analysis. We’ll never truly know whether the last two men standing were human or not, and asking the surviving cast members won’t get you anywhere.

“They had no clue,” Carpenter added during The Academy Q&A, which accompanied a 4K screening of the classic movie. “But they had to play it human, you see? The creature initiates perfectly. It could be one of us, it could be somebody in the audience — and there’s no way of telling. So I knew, they didn’t know.”

It’s the very same stance Carpenter took with SYFY WIRE a few years back when we caught up with him over the phone in honor of The Thing‘s 40th anniversary. “I just feel like it’s a secret that must be kept,” he told us. “The gods came down and swore me to secrecy.”

And if you’re going to bring up the gasoline in the whiskey bottle hypothesis, think again. While Carpenter admits the creativity on the part of audiences, the number of theories that have cropped up around the ending are bogus. “I appreciate them, but they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” he said during our phone conversation. “There are some hilarious ones. Everybody says, ‘Well, he took a drink, so he must be contaminated.’ Blah, blah, blah. On and on. I’m not speaking about it anymore.”

We couldn’t agree more, John.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is now available to own from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment alongside the 2011 prequel and 1951’s The Thing from Another World.