[This story contains major spoilers for The Strangers: Chapter 3.]
Madelaine Petsch, the star and executive producer of The Strangers: Chapter 3, has much to say about her trilogy’s surprisingly intimate final showdown.
For nearly four years, Petsch has carried the Strangers reboot trilogy on her back both on and off screen. When she, as Maya Lucas, wasn’t running for her life from the masked serial killers known as the Strangers, she and producer Courtney Solomon would punch up the combined 278-page script during the 52-day block-shoot of all three chapters in late 2022. When The Strangers: Chapter 1 eventually hit theaters in May 2024 and made five times its $8.5 million budget, Petsch, Solomon and director Renny Harlin listened to audience criticism and added a month of additional photography at the top of 2025 to improve Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. The latter installment received the most attention, maintaining only 20 percent of its original photography.
As a result of this creative revamp, Chapter 2’s release date shifted from the fall of 2024 to September of 2025. But in an era of increasingly short attention spans, Petsch lobbied Lionsgate executives to put out Chapter 3 as soon as possible.
“I’ll be honest, I did go into Lionsgate and spend about three hours there. I was like, ‘Let me tell you why [we shouldn’t wait a year].’ And they were all on board,” Petsch tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s such a jigsaw puzzle of what comes out when, theatrically. So we just got really lucky that Feb. 6 was open and available.”
In Chapter 1, the Strangers — who are regarded as Scarecrow, Pinup Girl and Dollface per their mask designs — killed Maya’s fiancé, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), amidst their involuntary stay in the small town of Venus, Oregon. Maya, having narrowly survived her own stabbing, struck back in Chapter 2 by killing Pinup Girl (Ema Horvath’s Shelly), the apple of Scarecrow’s eye since childhood. (Spoilers for Chapter 3 start now …)
Chapter 3 begins with Maya and Gregory (Gabriel Basso) confronting each other in a church. The scene explicitly confirms the open secret that Gregory is Scarecrow and that they’ve both taken their respective loved ones from one another. Maya is then given a head start on their climactic cat-and-mouse game, but she quickly ends up in Scarecrow and Dollface’s clutches. Instead of killing her, Scarecrow has Maya stand-in for Pinup Girl during a random kill as a form of indoctrination. However, Maya turns the tables and alternatively kills Dollface. Their tug of war continued as Scarecrow proceeded to go for the jugular by killing Maya’s sister and brother-in-law after they arrived in town to rescue her.
Scarecrow then gives Maya the opportunity to flee town, but she opts to head for his underground hideout where she killed his father and accomplice, Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake). The stage is subsequently set for the trilogy’s last duel between Maya and Gregory, and before one of them can administer the death blow, they warmly embrace, leaving the viewer to wonder if a twisted romance is hard-launching. Maya decides otherwise, and Gregory, in his waning moments, smiles because he believes he’s successfully passed the torch to her. The trilogy then concludes with Maya walking off into the unknown with the Scarecrow mask in hand.
Petsch admits the ending is meant to be open to interpretation, but she leans toward the idea that Maya has in fact transformed from the final girl into the serial killer.
“That [final shot] was improvisation on my part. I said, ‘Can we do one where I’m holding the mask?’ And then we ended up using that in the final edit,” Petsch shares. “To me, as the artist, it feels so much more aligned with where she’s at and her new lack of humanity that she would go in that direction.”
Below, during a spoiler conversation with THR, Petsch also discusses the other major changes made in the overhaul of Chapter 3, as well as how Scarecrow’s identity was originally supposed to be revealed.
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When we last spoke in September 2025, you were hopeful that The Strangers: Chapter 3 would get a much earlier release than the previous chapter.(Chapter 2 released 16 months after Chapter 1.)
Yeah, we were just here talking about Chapter 2 not too long ago.
And you did end up getting the earlier release date you wanted. Did you have to do much arm-twisting?
I’ll be honest, I did go into Lionsgate and spend about three hours there with [Lionsgate Vice Chairman] Michael Burns and [Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Chairman] Adam Fogelson. I was like, “Let me tell you why [we shouldn’t wait a year].” (Laughs.) And they were all on board. I’m sure people talk about it all the time, but when it comes to scheduling, it’s such a jigsaw puzzle of what comes out when, theatrically. So we just got really lucky that Feb. 6 was open and available.
Knowing that you shot these three films at the same time, how soon into production were you already filming pieces of Chapter 3?
The first week I shot all of the hospital stuff from movie two, and then I think I went into the woods for movie three pretty much immediately after that. We almost ended with movie one because they were building out the whole cabin set, so all the exterior movie one stuff was peppered in between two and three. All the interior movie one stuff, everything interior cabin, was at the end of the shoot. So movie three was shot pretty early into the shoot, but if I’m being honest, we left about 80 percent of the original movie three shoot on the floor. We then came in and enhanced movie three for about 15 days at the top of [2025].
So you, as Maya, were forced to wear the Strangers mask very early on in the process?
Oh, very early. We shot [originally] for about 52 days, and out of that six- or seven-week shoot, I’d say [the mask] was on by the middle of week two.
The early church scene, as shown in the trailer, explicitly confirms Gregory’s identity as Scarecrow. Was that part of additional photography in order to bookend the final confrontation?
Yes, it was not a part of the initial [principal] photography that we did. In fact, there’s a scene in movie two that was a part of our smaller enhancement shoots for two, and it’s where we flash from his face in the bedroom to Scarecrow. We were literally telling the audience that Maya knows it’s him, but I think audiences took it as her being paranoid, which is a fun takeaway as well. But it was never a question. Identity was never a part of the original question of this character and these stories. That’s not what makes them scary. But that [church scene] was added in at the beginning of last year to amplify this very strange chemistry between Gregory and Maya that we found during the editing of movie two.
When Scarecrow removes his mask at the end of Chapter 3, was that the original reveal of Gregory’s identity before you added the church scene and Chapter 2’s flash of Scarecrow in the bedroom?
It was never supposed to be a surprise [to Maya] because there were a lot of hints in the original movie three that she knew who he was long before he told her. There was a line that we didn’t end up keeping because she now confronts him earlier, but she said, “I know who you are. Take it off.” He then takes it off. So, for the audience, it was the original [reveal].
The church scene makes it crystal clear when he says, “I guess we’re even.” That’s in regard to Scarecrow and co. killing Maya’s fiancé in Chapter 1 and Maya killing Shelly/Pinup Girl (Ema Horvath) in Chapter 2.
Maya also says, “You killed your friends [that you lived with]?” And he goes, “Yeah, but I’ll make new ones.” [Gabriel Basso] wrote that line.
After the unmasking at the end, Maya and Gregory have this very intimate embrace in the underground hideout. Was any of it genuine on Maya’s part? Or was she just lulling him into a false sense of security before stabbing him?
I genuinely believe that there’s been a magnetism between Maya and Scarecrow the entire trilogy. The minute he hacks through that door in movie one, he sees her and immediately recognizes the same darkness [in her] that he saw in himself. He then spends the entire trilogy trying to bring it out of her because he wants to indoctrinate her. And when you watch her through that lens, I think it takes on a whole new meaning.
When she walks in that lair with nothing left of herself, there is a 50 percent chance that she stays with him, and there’s also a 50 percent chance that she kills him. The whole time I was doing it, I did not know what her want was until the very end. I could feel that she was drawn to him. There were moments where she puts her head on his chest, and when she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, she genuinely wants to stay there. So that’s what makes it so much more delicious and fucked up.
She stabs him, and as he lies dying, he smiles and says, “We’re the same.” Did he die thinking he successfully transformed her?
Yes, and audiences can [further] take away from the final shot that he was successful.
Yeah, the movie ends with Maya walking off with the Scarecrow mask. I suppose some people could interpret it as Maya keeping a trophy that signifies her life’s most traumatic conquest, but you believe it’s an indication that she’s going to be the new Scarecrow?
I think it’s left to interpretation. That was improvisation on my part. I said, “Can we do one where I’m holding the mask? I just feel like I want to be [holding it]. That feels right for her.” So she unfolds it, and then we ended up using that in the final edit. To me, as the artist, it feels so much more aligned with where she’s at and her new lack of humanity that she would go in that direction. But I could see arguments for both. We didn’t make that decision when we shot it.
What do you imagine is next for her? Does she still go to Portland for that job at an architectural firm and then moonlight as Scarecrow?
Yeah, probably an anti-vigilante who does a regular architecture job during the day. (Laughs.) No, definitely not. Can you imagine her going there covered in blood with a limp and boar wounds in her leg? I spent some time really thinking about it, and I was like, “Where does she walk to? Where is she going?” I don’t know the answer. That’s what’s so fun about the ending. Audiences can have these conversations and a real discourse about what happens next for her.
What were the other major additions and revisions in the retooling of Chapter 3?
Honestly, the entire motel sequence was all additional. Her first intentional kill is there. She really takes matters into her own hands and kills Dollface, which is a really pivotal moment for her. Debbie [Maya’s older sister, played by Rachel Shenton] always died in movie three, but she didn’t die the way she dies in this new version. You already recognize that Maya has lost every bit of her personality, and her reaction to Debbie’s death was a big conversation that we had before we reshot it. If Debbie had died in movie one, Maya’s reaction would’ve been vastly different than it is now, and it was important to show that. So it was really about fine-tuning those pivotal moments that changed Maya at the core of who she is and take away every last bit of her as she knows herself. The motel sequence and the church stuff were big rewrites, and those were the two biggest pieces that we added.
We’ve talked previously about how you truly earned your EP credit on a creative level. Thus, this question might not be in your wheelhouse, but there’s been ongoing talk about the need to ramp up production in the States, especially California. Case in point, the majority of your career has been spent outside the U.S. Is there any reality where you could’ve shot this trilogy in the States? Would the 75-80 total days have been far too costly?
I shot one of my first films ever in America last year, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I do find that the micro budget indies are way easier to accomplish in the States right now. There are states that have these really great tax incentives now, and I would love to see California bring a larger tax incentive back. That’s why Hollywood is what Hollywood was. The crews that we have out here are the best crews in the world, and they’re completely underutilized. My production company is trying to bring film back to L.A. We want to be a part of that.
I’m not sure if these films could have been shot in the States. I wasn’t a part of the initial production conversation, but I do know that the Slovakian tax credit was insane. With the way film is right now and the scarcity mindset we have — and because the ebb and flow of the box office is so unpredictable — I understand why things are being taken out of the States. There is not a lot of money in film right now. There’s less money in film than there has ever been in my experience, so less things are being made.
But it does feel like we’re ramping things back up again this year. I’ve already got three things slated to shoot in the States. I much prefer to be close to home, but I also like shooting out on location. I just think it’s nice when it’s actually called for. If the story takes place in that country, that’s really cool. But throughout my career, it’s also been great to travel around the world, so I just try to go with the ebb and flow of where we’re at right now.
I just learned that you have an annual tradition where you post photos of yourself crying, and I admire that because most people tend to curate an idealized version of their life on social media. Maya shed lots of tears throughout the story, but did you also shed lots of tears behind the scenes?
(Laughs.) Yes, I did. That tradition started during the pandemic because I felt like everyone was posting so much about how everything was fine. And I was like, “I’m having mental breakdowns every day. How is everything fine?” So I posted all my mental breakdowns, and why I ever took photos of them, I could never tell you in the first place. But I had a lot of them. People then really resonated with it, and I was like, “You know what? A yearly [post to say], ‘I have emotions, too. Not everything is perfect all the time,’ feels nice.” So I’ve kept doing it.
But there were a lot of behind-the-scenes tears on these films because they were hard. The hours were crazy. I was isolated from my family. I was shooting in a different country that was 12 hours ahead of them. It’s already really isolating to shoot a horror film and have to go to those places. So there were a lot of tears. I also cry easily, though. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Honestly, you could probably make me cry right now if you really wanted to.
Next time. Let me take a raincheck.
Okay, great! Let’s try it next time, for sure.
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The Strangers: Chapter 3 is now playing in movie theaters.
