All the clues are hiding in plain sight.
Happy Death Day 2U debuts in theaters February 13, 2019, the day before Valentine’s Day. It is a sequel to Happy Death Day, the breakout slasher film inspired by Bill Murray and Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day.
In the first film, Tree (Jessica Rothe) finds herself stuck in a time loop on her birthday; a baby-masked murderer with a big knife kills her every evening, and the day resets itself. After repeating this cycle numerous times, she eventually figures out who the killer is. And like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, Tree learns to be a better person in the process.
The sequel, based on its trailers, is the right kind of Part 2. Rather than being a straight retread of the first film, it’s an expansion and elaboration on its mythology. This time, more than one person is stuck in the time loop. And there seem to be science fiction elements in play; there’s a spherical, glowing machine that explodes halfway through the trailer. Maybe in this movie, the characters will finally get to the bottom of what’s causing the time loop in the first place.
The writer/director of Happy Death Day 2U, Christopher Landon (who also directed the first film), has long claimed that there are relevant Easter eggs hidden in the first movie: “I will also say that the whole idea for my sequel idea is actually already in this movie. It’s hiding in plain sight, but I’m not going to say what,” said Landon in an interview with Insider.
That sounds like a challenge to us. We’ve done a whole lot of frame-by-frame viewing and Reddit surfing. Here are are 7 things that we’ve found in the first movie and the sequel trailers that may give away the new movie’s big twist. Spoilers ahead, especially if we’re right.