Warning: Contains major spoilers for The Strangers: Chapter 2The latest entry in the unsettling slasher franchise, The Strangers: Chapter 2, continues the narrative that began with its predecessor, and teased what’s coming in the final chapter with its post-credits scene. Starring Madelaine Petsch once again as Maya, a victim of the three masked killers that managed to survive her first encounter finds herself immediately stalked by them again.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 debuted with overwhelmingly negative reviews despite executing reshoots based on audience feedback from the disappointing first chapter, which released in 2024. The third chapter has no set release date yet, but it seems likely that it will slot into September or October 2026 given that all three movies were shot back-to-back.
Some backstory for The Strangers is revealed in Chapter 2, although the greater plot doesn’t advance much. However, the post-credits scene does promise something more substantial in the next chapter. Whether there will be any audience interest left for the third entry is the real question, but for those who stick around, there may be a pleasant surprise in the works.
The Strangers: Chapter 2’s Post-Credits Scene Is A Trailer For Chapter 3
In lieu of providing a single scene that leads into the next chapter, as The Strangers: Chapter 1 did, Chapter 2 offers a series of scenes clipped together in a sort of mini-trailer. This is an uncommon but not entirely rare practice for numbered sequels, especially in instances like this when the next sequel is already filmed. Kevin Costner did the same with his Horizon: An American Saga series just last year.
|
The Strangers: Chapter 2 – Key Review Scores |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
RT Tomatometer |
Metacritic Metascore |
IMDB Score |
Letterboxd Score |
|
14% |
27/100 |
5.0/10 |
2.4/5 |
The scenes reveal that after managing to kill Pin-Up Girl, who was revealed to be the Carol’s Diner waitress Shelly, Maya continues to try to escape the town of Venus and the surrounding woods on foot, but is unsuccessful at making it out of town. She is shown interacting with the town’s ultra-creepy and suspicious-looking sheriff (played with trademark menace by Richard Brake), telling him she “knows where they are.”
The other key standout scene is of Maya standing at a standard Strangers murder site with Scarecrow and Dollface, having donned the Pin-Up Girl mask herself. No additional context is given aside from that brief shot.
It could be as simple and misleading as a dream or vision that Maya has, perhaps due to guilt for her own self-defense murder of Shelly. It’s also possible that she finishes the series indoctrinated into the ritualistic cult that radiates outwards from Shelly, and seems to implicate the townspeople of Venus in either helping her and her accomplices continue to murder people, or at the very least being aware of it.
That would at least provide some semblance of forward progress for the franchise, which is stuck in neutral after The Strangers: Chapter 2‘s grueling repetition and lack of originality. Seeing Maya cave and join the very lunatics that killed her fiancé and tormented her is at least mildly more interesting than watching her run, hide, and repeat.
- Release Date
-
September 26, 2025
- Runtime
-
96 Minutes
- Director
-
Renny Harlin
-
-
Richard Brake
Sheriff Rotter
-
-
Brooke Lena Johnson
Nurse Danica