The Greatest Closing Line In Sci-Fi Movie History Is Undisputed

Although The Thing’s final line might be brutally hopeless, the closing quote from director John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi horror masterpiece is still one of the genre’s greatest lines ever. Like numerous other John Carpenter movies, The Thing wasn’t a financial success upon its original release.

A loose remake of 1951’s The Thing from Another World, The Thing stuck closer to its shared source material, 1938’s novella Who Goes There? by author John W. Campbell Jr. The Thing’s story follows a group of Antarctic researchers who succumb to paranoia and mistrust when a grotesque alien parasite began assimilating them.

By The Thing’s dark ending, the group has dwindled down to only two surviving members. Neither Kurt Russell’s MacReady nor Keith David’s Child’s truly trusts the other, as both men understandably believe the other could be infected by the eponymous alien threat. This leads to The Thing’s iconic closing line.

The Thing’s Closing Line Is Tragic, Creepy, and Devastating All At Once

As Childs and MacReady sit together in an Antarctic ice storm, passing a bottle of scotch between them, Childs wonders aloud what they should do next. With their only means of escape gone, their power generator destroyed, and their base of operations blown to bits by dynamite, both men know they will soon freeze to death.

As such, when MacReady replied with a sardonic “Why don't we just wait here for a little while, see what happens?” the line is dripping with irony. Of course, there is also no small measure of menace in his words, since The Thing’s ending never reveals whether either of its surviving characters is infected.

This charges the comment with a subtle second meaning. On the face of it, MacReady is noting that there is nothing that the duo can do but sit and await their death. However, since one or the other of the two surviving characters could secretly be a ravenous alien parasite, this may not be the end of their story.

The fact that they are about to freeze to death in the middle of nowhere doesn’t necessarily mean the parasite is doomed. After all, The Thing’s titular monster was seemingly buried in the ice for an unknown length of time, remaining dormant until it was woken up by the Norwegian researchers who predated Childs and MacReady’s group.

Just because The Thing’s main characters either succumbed to the monster or ended up freezing alone in the icy wasteland doesn’t mean that the threat from the monster has been entirely eradicated. As such, their whole gory ordeal may have been for nothing.

The Thing’s Last Line Perfectly Epitomizes The Sci-fi Horror’s Enduring Terror

What is so haunting about The Thing’s ending is the dawning realization that, if either Childs or MacReady is infected, the thing itself may not die with them. When their bodies are finally discovered (if, indeed, they ever are found), the alien parasite could thaw out and once again begin its reign of terror.

Even in the final scene, there is no knowing whether Childs or McReady might be harboring the monster and, as such, no way of knowing whether the threat has been destroyed once and for all. Even in movies where everyone dies in the end, there is usually at least some modicum of certainty that the villains are as dead as the heroes.

What makes The Thing’s final line so daring and terrifying is the implication that, despite all their sacrifices, Childs and MacReady may not have successfully rid the world of the thing after all. Alone in the vast, snowy, inhospitable emptiness of Antarctica, the profound loneliness and isolation of the two men is contrasted with the thing’s superhuman survival odds.

The Thing’s Final Line Has Never Been Topped

Even though The Thing wasn’t appreciated by critics or audiences until years after the 1982 movie arrived in theaters, this did not stop the classic from receiving a belated prequel in 2011. Starring Joel Edgerton and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, this sanitized take on The Thing was a box office bomb that failed to recoup its $38 million budget.

The franchise’s 2011 outing also failed with critics, thanks in large part to its failure to commit to the infamously terrifying tone of Carpenter's classic. The prequel’s ending takes an easier route as one character not only survives, but has a convenient snowcat that means she might find civilization and comfort before perishing in the icy cold.

Since the prequel steered clear of the original movie’s crushing nihilism, The Thing’s final line still hasn’t been topped by another sci-fi horror movie. While the entire Alien franchise flirts with the sort of unremitting darkness that Carpenter’s remake commits to, none of its outings ever outdid this brutally cruel final twist.

Moreover, the casual delivery of the movie’s last line makes its impact all the more chilling. Whether MacReady or Childs is secretly the thing or not, both know that they have given everything they have to destroy this threat, and it hasn’t been enough. Instead of solace, the pair only find more paranoia dividing them in The Thing’s ending.