AlthoughSmile 2’s ending seems to doom the franchise’s future, bothSmileand its sequel secretly offer an explanation that justifies the movie’s big twist.Smile 2’s twist endingis wildly audacious, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is good for theSmilefranchise as a whole. LikeSmile’s ending, Smile 2’s closing scene reveals that a significant chunk of the story took place in the shattered mind of its disturbed heroine. However, where only ten minutes ofSmiletakes place in the heroine’s head,Smile 2’s ending is much more ambitious and ambiguous.
7 Ways Smile 2 Sets Up Smile 3
Smile 2 brings audiences back to the terrifying world of the Entity through pop star Skye Riley, yet it also plants the seeds for another sequel.
WhenSmile 2’s singer heroine Skye Rileyrealizes she is onstage and has been hallucinating all the events that preceded her concert, viewers are left somewhat lost. It is clear, judging by the presence of Skye’s cheering mother, that Skye didn’t kill her mother while under the demon’s influence. It is also clear that she never escaped to a dirty, disused pizza restaurant where Morris promised to perform a risky procedure to temporarily stop her heart, but it is less clearwhetherSmile 2’s Morris was even realin the first place.
Smile and Smile 2’s Victims Suffer From Survivor’s Guilt
None of these specific details matter to Skye who, overwhelmed by the demon’s powers, ends up violently taking her own life after she succumbs to the entity. TheSmilefranchise’s demonic entity absorbs her just as it absorbed Rose inSmile’s ending and the sequel closes on the grisly revelation that Skye has jammed her microphone into her eye socket, killing her instantly. This would seemingly mean thatSmile 2’s twist endingpasses the curse onto the thousands of concert attendees, meaning the next sequel in the series will need to follow dozens of new victims.
Exposing countless victims to the curse at the same time meansSmile 3will have a hard time finding one main character to focus on.
This is what derailed theRingfranchise, whose 2017 rebootRingsended with its cursed videotape going viral. While it is a fun twist, exposing countless victims to the curse at the same time meansSmile 3will have a hard time finding one main character to focus on. Fortunately, theSmilemovies have already secretly provided an answer to this plot hole.TheSmilefranchise’s victims all have one thing in common, namely survivor’s guilt, and this means not everyone from Skye’s concert is susceptible. Specifically, Skye and Rose felt they could have saved their mother and ex-boyfriend.
The Smile Franchise’s Demon Only Preys On Vulnerable Victims
Skye and Rose Have Pre-Existing Traumas Before Their Curses Begin
Meanwhile,Smile 2’s opening victim, Joel, was traumatized by seeing Rose die and thinking he could have saved her at the end ofSmile. Thus, theSmilefranchise’s demon might only be able to prey on people who are already psychologically vulnerable because they are living with the trauma of losing a loved one and feeling uniquely responsible for this death. Much ofSmile’s runtime is devoted to Rose’s guilt over her mother’s overdose, whileSmile 2’s big twist is the revelation that Skye was at least partially responsible for the crash that killed her boyfriend.
These revelations proved thattheSmilefranchise’s demon can’t necessarily pick its victims at random, and it might only be capable of feeding on people whose existing survivor’s guilt leaves them open to manipulation. This explains why both Skye and Rose are haunted when the demon takes the form of people from their past, whether it is Rose’s mother inSmile’s Stephen King-inspired endingor both Skye’s boyfriend and her younger self inSmile 2’s finale. This, in turn, provides an answer toSmile 2’s possible plot hole.
This Smile Series Twist Would Fix Smile 2’s Sequel Setup Plot Hole
Skye’s Concert Wouldn’t Necessarily Need To Curse Every Attendee
Smile 2’s ending seemed doomed to ruin the franchise just as it was getting into full swing. After all, a version ofSmile 3that tries to depict the breakdown of thousands of concert attendees in the week following Skye’s death would feel less like the intensely insular psychological horror of the first two movies and more like a full-blown epic disaster horror. However,Smile 2’s ending would not necessarily pass the curse on to everyone at the concert. Instead, only those who were already vulnerable due to earlier experiences of survivor’s guilt may be vulnerable.
Both the sequel and the original movie needed to follow an individual character’s perspective to feel uniquely scary
This would mean thatSmile 3could avoid having thousands of people all living through the curse at the same time, which would inevitably ruin the isolated atmosphere of the series.Smile 2’s critical successis owed in part to the sequel’s decision to ramp up its action and pace, but both the sequel and the original movie needed to follow an individual character’s perspective to feel uniquely scary. Luckily,SmileandSmile 2already secretly justified the next movie’s singular viewpoint.
