Wait, How Does LL Cool J Survive “Halloween: H20?”

A seasonal inquiry.

There are no stock photo pumpkins of LL Cool J. Photo by norbert velescu on Unsplash

Sometimes, as a journalist, you get a chance to cover a story that really matters. Whether by luck or chance or sheer hard work, you get your hands on a truth the public needs to know, and you follow it until you can bring back treasure. You serve the public, you educate people, you advocate for the underprivileged — sometimes. Other times, you take half a weed gummy so you can go to sleep and wake up to find this in your inbox.

More important stories exist, but I’m not the right person to cover them, so I’m going to go ahead and answer Sleep Me’s question.

For those unfamiliar: LL Cool J is in Halloween: H20, the supposedly final (it was not final) installment of the Halloween franchise, which came out in 1998. In Halloween: H20, LL Cool J plays security guard Ronald “Ronny” Jones, a campus security guard and aspiring romance novelist. He spends much of his screen time on the phone, reading erotic passages of his own work aloud to his never-seen and disapproving wife. It’s uncomfortable.

Halloween: H20 is not the strongest installment of the Halloween franchise. Let’s continue.

So: In Halloween: H20, LL Cool J dies. There is no other way to put this. He’s clearly, emphatically dead for several minutes of screen time. Lots of people die in a Halloween movie, and LL Cool J is no exception. Except that he is, because he’s the only Black actor with a major speaking part, and also because — even though LL Cool J really clearly dies in this Halloween movie — he is alive in its final scene.

Let’s teleport straight to that death scene. LL Cool J dies as he lives: Uncomfortably, and with weird racist implications. Specifically, LL Cool J dies in a jump scare. He pops out around the corner, and one of the white leads (Adam Arkin) shoots him to death because he thinks LL Cool J is serial killer Michael Myers. Michael Myers is an eight-foot-tall man. There aren’t that many people who look like him. Also, Michael Myers — like basically every other character in Halloween: H20 — is white. LL Cool J isn’t.