Fear Street Part Three: 1666 ENDING EXPLAINED

The Fear Street Trilogy has finally reached its blood-splattered conclusion, with the third installment Fear Street Part Three: 1666 streaming now on Netflix. Warning: there are a few spoilers ahead for Part One and Part Two.

Part One: 1994 introduced us to the doom-and-gloom Shadyside, a cursed town in Ohio touted as America's ‘murder capital', whose neighbor Sunnyvale is a murder-free place flourishing with prosperity. Our lead character Deena and her Scooby gang had to fend off reanimated serial killers from Shadyside's bloody history, when her girlfriend, Sam, disturbed the grave of long-dead witch Sarah Fier.

Part Two: 1978 wound the clocks back for a Friday 13th homage at Camp Nightwing while delving deeper into the lore of Sarah Fier, the Shadyside witch who allegedly placed an eternal curse on the town. Cue a blood-soaked massacre by the ax of yet another regular-teen-turned-evil-maniac, before we eventually returned to 1994, when Deena is sucked back to 1666, to the time and place where it all began…

Check out the trailer for Part Three below:

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Fear Street Part Three: 1666. If you haven't already seen it, stream it on Netflix and come back here. But if you're happy to keep reading…

Now, the third and final installment in the trilogy takes us back with her, to an old settlement called Union, during the height of witchcraft paranoia. Following a "Previously on", we quantum leap from 1994 to 1666 through Deena's eyes. She looks very much the same to us, but she's actually occupying the body of Sarah Fier, with everything that follows playing out exactly as it did at that time in Shadyside, so Deena has no control – she is simply in the ‘passenger seat'.

But she's not the only familiar face in sight – there's Simon and Kate from Part One, Deena's brother Josh, her girlfriend Sam (who is still currently possessed in 1994), Cindy, Ziggy, and Thomas Slater from Part Two, and Sunnyvale's Sheriff Nick Goode (the 1994 adult version), all of whom are those characters' ancestral counterparts. (To make things easier to follow, we'll use the 1978 and 1994 names for each of these characters). Deena (aka Sarah Fier) and her friends talk about a local witch, and soon after Deena stumbles upon a witch-like lair where she discovers an old witchcraft book.

We soon learn that even in this time, Deena and Sam are forbidden lovers. However, Deena is quickly outed by Sam's mother. As the day goes by, Deena begins to notice everything rotting in Union, from the food to the pigs themselves (who are actually eating each other), and a dog is found dead in a well.

But the most horrifying find is that all the local children's eyes have been gouged out, while their lifeless bodies rot in the church, where the priest – who appears to have committed the heinous act - has performed the same mutilation upon himself. The town becomes divided over the horrors, and fingers point towards a witch being responsible. Sam becomes the target of such accusations and is shackled, ready to be hanged the next morning.

Meanwhile, Deena discovers the body of the local witch, her throat slashed and recovers the book. She learns that the seemingly good-natured Solomon Goode – Sheriff Nick Goode's ancestor – is behind all of Union's recent evil doings, and has made a deal with the devil, offering him the town in exchange for eternal prosperity. A fight between Deena and Solomon in the tunnels sees Deena – Sarah Fier – lose her hand. We also see the blob-creature emerge from the floor symbol – the same pulsating mass we saw in Part Two.

Solomon apprehends Deena and exposes her as the witch responsible for all the evil to protect himself. The next day, the town cheers on as she is hanged, but not before she promises Solomon that she will forever curse him, that he will never escape her damnation. And just as you might start to think that a 1666-setting might seem like a jarring shift in style when compared to Part One and Part Two, we suddenly jump back to 1994, with a title screen officially declaring 1994: Part Two.

Once back in the comforts of a familiar decade, the film doesn't waste any time in getting to the final act and making some big revelations that answer many questions left by Part One and Part Two. And neither will we: Sheriff Nick Goode is evil, and is the reason behind all the shady goings-on at Shadyside. Since 1666, his entire bloodline has used the lair deep in the tunnels to make offerings to the devil, and those offerings have come in the form of innocent Shadyside teenagers, turned into mindless killing machines to keep Sunnyvale – and the Goode bloodline – in prosperity, while Shadyside suffers terribly.

Using the book we saw in 1666, Goode – and his fathers before him – have (supernaturally) engraved the names of ‘selectees' onto the runestone. And the blood of those sacrificed enters the symbol on the floor, presumably a conduit between reality and Hell. As for the blob-thing, it appears to simply vomit out the reanimated versions of the town's dead killers – Goode's failsafe to try and stop those pesky kids from meddling with his otherwise trouble-free lifestyle (he probably would have gotten away with it too).

Related: Fear Street Part Two: 1978 ENDING EXPLAINED

But it isn't a slasher-fest without a showdown, and it's back to the mall we go, for a bloodbath between our heroes, the undead killers, and the Sheriff. While Sam remains shackled nearby, Deena, Josh, Ziggy, and newbie Martin lure the killers into traps using the same blood from Part One: 1994, but this time with a dash of fluorescent paint, to make things a bit easier (and a bit more retro).

Eventually, the action returns to the tunnels beneath Shadyside, where Deena forces Goode's hand upon the blob-thing, leading him to suffer visions of all those who have died because of his bloodline's wicked deals (the same thing happened to Alice in Part Two when she touched it).

When Deena finally kills Goode, the killers in the mall turn to dust. Goode's deal with the devil has been destroyed. Deena and Sam then emerge into a lavish house that appears to belong to Goode. On exiting the house, they find they're in Sunnyvale, where they instantly witness a terrible vehicle collision, an accident that makes it onto the local news, whose anchor confirms that Sunnyvale is no longer a death-free utopia.

A montage sequence sees everything from the rune stone to the floor symbol disappearing. Balance has now been restored between both towns. Neither one is cursed, but neither one is protected either. A mid-credits scene, however, shows a hand snatching the old witchcraft book from the cave floor where the symbol once was.

So is that it for the Fear Street series? Well, considering they snuck in 1994: Part Two, which was technically Part Four, and given the secret ending, it's likely Netflix will give us more. But that's how slasher movies always go – just like the Shadyside killers, they never really stay dead for too long.