Happy Death Day 2U catapults Tree into a brand new world where she has to contend with a
new killer and work out how to close the time loop again.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and today I'm explaining everything you need to know
about Happy Death Day 2U including hidden details you missed in that post-credits scene,
what the ending really means, the final Baby Face reveal, and how the finale sets up the
third movie in the franchise.
OK, let's get into it.
Now, the timeline for this movie is pretty complicated and there's a bunch of subplots
we need to break down to completely understand what's going on with the multiple dimensions
and doppelgangers that show up in the film.
The sequel kicks off with Carter's roommate Ryan stuck in a time loop as he relives the
same day after getting murdered by a masked Baby Face killer.
What we soon discover though is that Ryan and a couple of his fellow science students
have been working on a machine that's supposed to slow down time on a molecular level.
The Sisyphus Quantum Cooling Reactor – or SISSY as it's known for short – actually
kicked off the time loop in the original movie when the machine started up unexpectedly a
minute after midnight on the 18th.
That's the day that Tree's time loop began in the first movie and something we also discover
is that whenever the machine is turned on it causes brief power outages, which means
it caused the blackouts we saw in the first film.
Tree, Ryan and Carter resolve to close the time loop; however, there's the immediate
problem of the Baby Face killer stalking Ryan on campus.
When Baby Face tries to kill Ryan for a second time, he gets knocked out by Tree and when
she reveals who's under the mask they discover it's actually another version of Ryan.
When he wakes up, Ryan's double explains that he was "trying to close the loop, but somehow
[he] got knocked into a parallel timeline."
He also warns them that they're all in serious danger and that the longer they all exist
in the same dimension the worse things will get.
Ryan's doppelganger says that the butterfly effect is at work and that the solution is
to kill the Ryan we know from this world, otherwise he'll create even bigger problems.
Ryan number 1 gets freaked out when he realises his doppelganger is deadly serious about killing
him, so he ignores everyone and tries to turn SISSY back on to fix the problem.
As the machine powers up, it generates a huge pulse and shockwave that sends everyone flying.
The scene cuts to Tree waking up again in Carter's dorm room and she discovers it's
the 18th again and she's stuck in a new time loop.
But this time Tree has been sent to an alternate dimension; let's call it Earth 2.
But although it's a different world, there's still a Baby Faced killer at large on the
university campus and Tree dies for the first time in the sequel when she accidentally runs
off the hospital roof fleeing the masked murderer.
When Tree wakes up again to find it's the 18th, she realises a new time loop is in effect
and she starts working with Ryan's team to figure out how to close it.
Tree needs to go through the time loop each day and memorize the different algorithms
that Ryan's crew are testing to fix SISSY and that's when we get the amusing montage
of Tree deciding how she should die each day rather than die at the hands of Baby Face.
After more loops, Tree and Ryan's team figure out the algorithm they need to get SISSY working
again and Tree also decides she wants to go back to her own world, more on why she made
that decision later.
But before she leaves, Tree realises she still wants to deal with Earth 2's Baby Face so
she goes to the hospital where, although she manages to stop Tombs from murdering Lori,
Baby Face then shows up to reveal himself as [Doctor] Gregory.
Gregory had been setting Tombs free so Lori's murder would cover up his affair with her.
Fun fact: this reveal of Gregory as Baby Face is a reference to the original script for
the first Happy Death Day movie where Gregory and Lori were working together as the original
Baby Face killers who were trying to kill Tree.
Back in the sequel we discover that Gregory's wife Stephanie is also in on the murderous
plan , which was hinted at earlier when she was having an argument about a sorority girl
with her husband.
Stephanie shoots Lori, but there's another twist as Gregory turns the gun on his wife,
shoots her and quips he wanted a divorce.
Gregory and Tree end up in an MRI examination room where Tree turns the tables on the wicked
doctor when she switches on the machine's magnet and a metal wheelchair flies towards
it, pinning Gregory to the scanner.
Then Tree releases the screwdriver she's holding which the magnet yanks towards the doctor,
stabbing him [dead] in the chest.
Making Gregory's wife a villain in the sequel is also a neat little easter egg to the alternate
ending for Happy Death Day 1.
In the deleted ending for the first movie which wasn't used as it tested terribly during
test screenings, the final scene has Tree at the hospital again recovering from her
injuries, but then Stephanie turns up and she murders Tree in revenge for the affair
she was having with Gregory.
As for Lori's role in the sequel, well, this time around she survives to the end of movie
thanks to Tree saving her, which is a nice inversion of the end of the first film where
Tree killed Lori after she discovered Lori was the one trying to kill her.
Now that Baby Face has been dealt with, it's time for Tree to be sent back to her own world,
but as SISSY powers back up, Tree shares a final kiss with Carter from Earth 2, proving
perhaps that even between dimensions these two have a real connection.
Although Carter was in a relationship with Danielle on Earth 2, the way he acts around
Tree reveals his true feelings for her.
So, Tree is back in her world and the credits roll, but we also get a bonus credits scene
that sets up the next movie.
As punishment for continuing to run SISSY in defiance of the Dean's commands, Tree,
Carter, Ryan, Dre and Samar have been ordered to clean up litter on the university campus.
A team of government agents then roll up out of the blue led by a Dr Isaac Parker who asks
them to come with him and answer some questions.
They're taken to a DARPA facility which, for anyone who doesn't know, is a real-life US
Defence agency.
DARPA has taken possession of SISSY, but they can't figure out how to work the machine.
Ryan explains that there are many algorithms and they need the right one to make it work,
and Tree points out that she can help with that.
Remember, she did go through all those time loops when she was on Earth 2 and memorised
the various algorithms until Ryan got SISSY working in that dimension again.
Dr Parker then says they'll need a test subject, and Tree wickedly says she thinks she has
the perfect recruit.
The screen cuts to a shot of Danielle waking up in bed screaming, a clear indication that
Danielle is going to be sent into a new time loop in the next movie.
Both the Danielles we've met on Earth 1 and Earth 2 are pretty terrible people.
Earth 1 Danielle is rude, offensive and only really cares about her status as sorority
Queen bee.
"Who's gonna pledge Kappa, now that we have a death curse?"
"We're in crisis mode Tree."
"Eew, who are these people?"
"Call me as soon as you're done with your creepy comic con meeting."
Earth 2 Danielle was slightly nicer and less offensive, but more of a fake, and still very
pretentious and self-absorbed, and was possibly mainly going out with Carter so he helped
her pass one of her courses.
Plus, of course Tree discovered her cheating on Carter with Nick.
Also, in this credits scene is a sneaky little detail about Samar which opens up another
plot point to explore in Happy Death Day 3.
While he's picking up litter in the credits scene, he finds an old discarded churro on
the floor and says "who throws away a perfectly good churro?"
He then proceeds to eat it, which is out of character with the Samar we met at the beginning
of the movie.
In the scene where he brought Ryan a churro from the cafeteria, Samar accidentally dropped
it on the floor and then made a big point about how the churro had gone to waste now
because it was covered in bacteria.
So, why on earth is Samar more than happy now in the credits scene to eat a churro that's
been on the floor for at least a day probably?
The answer is that I think this isn't our original Samar; it's a different version of
him from another dimension.
When Tree was sent back to Earth 1 from Earth 2, it's possible that the original Samar on
Earth 1 was replaced by the Samar from Earth 2.
Earth 2 Samar wouldn't necessarily have noticed any difference yet, as just like on Earth
2, his surroundings and the other people would be similar.
Another possibility is that when Tree was sent back to Earth 1 it caused some other
ripple effect in one of the other dimensions of the multiverse, sending over a different
Samar doppelganger to Earth 1.
Remember that when Ryan from Earth 2 is explaining to Tree about the multiverse he says that
the Earth 2 version of Tree must have been "knocked into [another] parallel dimension
somewhere in the multiverse" and that "in theory the universe has six dimensions."
So, this stale churro-munching version of Samar could have been knocked out of another
dimension and into Tree's world.
This leads me back to Ryan's doppelganger who we met right at the beginning of the movie,
and whose reasons for ending up on Earth 1 haven't been fully explained yet in the franchise.
We do get a little clue as to what's going on here though.
It's just a little comment that's made when Earth 2's SISSY is being fired up for the
first time.
Carter is concerned about the amount of noise the machine is making and they tell him not
to worry as the machine won't blow up again.
Now, that's a crucial little detail that the movie doesn't linger on and the exact timing
of when SISSY previously blew up isn't totally clear.
But it seems like the SISSY machine on Earth 2 had a major meltdown at some point before
or around the moment when SISSY went wrong on Earth 1, which was at a minute past midnight
on the 18th.
Did that SISSY event on Earth 2 trigger a fault in the multiverse that sent a version
of Ryan from another dimension over to Earth 1 by accident?
Ryan's doppelganger at the beginning of this movie kept saying he was trying to close the
loop and that he needed to kill Ryan from Earth 1 to stop him turning on the machine
and creating more problems.
So, did Ryan 1's machine trigger problems, like a butterfly effect, in the rest of the
multiverse, including Earth 2?
Or did Earth 2's machine fail first?
There's clearly some event that's happened that hopefully the Happy Death Day filmmakers
plan to address in the next movie.
Some other unanswered questions about Ryan include what was that distortion that Ryan
1 hears on his phone each time he's in the time loop?
Where was the call coming from?
And what made Earth 1's SISSY turn itself on around midnight at a time when the lab
was locked?
Did that SISSY explosion that happened on Earth 2 ripple out into the other dimensions
or is there another SISSY in another dimension going wrong and kicking off a chain of events
in the multiverse?
Whatever the answers are, it looks like Happy Death Day 3 will entangle us even further
in a wider web of parallel dimensions and alternate timelines.
I'd love to hear any of your thoughts or theories you've got in the comments below.
Although Happy Death Day 2U is more complicated than the original movie, I like the way that
the universe has expanded without the sequel playing like a repeat of the first one.
You might be a little disappointed if you're looking for more of the horror elements from
the first film, but the real star of Happy Death Day has always been Jessica Rothe's
performance as Tree.
And the sequel gives her an opportunity to show that there's still room for the original
mean girl to grow as a character.
Although Tree really wants to live what she thinks is a better version of her life where
her mum's alive, she eventually comes to realise that she needs to embrace the real version
of herself even if that includes the pain that comes with it.
Writer-director Christopher Landon has said that the lesson and the theme of the movie
is that "even if there are things in your life that you regret or things that have hurt
you, […] it's still your life, […] you have to take ownership of it.
And so you can't live in a fantasy version of your life because it's not you."
On top of that, when Tree sees on the local news that Carter, Lori and the police officer
have been killed at the hospital, she "refuses to be the final girl and resets her own day
in order to save her friends" proving that she's a worthy heroine.
Now, I'd love to know what you think of the sequel.
Tap in the top right to vote and leave any comments below.
And if you enjoyed this video, a thumbs-up and a share are hugely appreciated.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!