10 Unanswered Questions From Famous Movies That Are Still Killing Us
3. Who Was The Thing? - The Thing
There have been many names that have become synonymous with the horror genre over the years, but arguably none more so than John Carpenter. Arguably the best of his directorial efforts came in 1982 with The Thing, an outing that, while reviled in its day, has since become appreciated as a true masterpiece - one with a deliciously ambiguous climax at that.
A story following a shapeshifting, murderous alien that can take the form of anyone around it naturally breeds mystery. When all was said and done, just MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David) remained, neither being able to say for certain whether the other was truly the man they knew or not. Agreeing on a truce of sorts, in the deadly freezing temperatures of the Arctic, the pair share a bottle of Scotch and the film ends without ever confirming which, if any, of the men are in reality the Thing.
With an ending as wildly devastating as this, fan theories are inevitable. While the point of The Thing's ending pretty explicitly hinges on not knowing who the monster really is, cementing its themes of paranoia and destruction, that hasn't stopped those from trying to figure out if it's MacReady or Childs. Some of these explanations seem pretty damn compelling, and with only a finite number of potential outcomes, some are bound to be right. The problem is that there is just no way to know which.
Carpenter spoke about the The Thing's ending as recently as October 2023, and went on record to say that there is a definite answer, but that he knows the truth of the mystery. However, you can bet your bottom dollar he won't be revealing it any time soon, even after all this time.