Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Fear Street Part Three: 1666 and the entire Fear Street trilogy.
Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy of horror films was a monumental success, as Fear Street Part 3: 1666 stuck the landing and then some. This trio of films from director Leigh Janiak took the spirit of R.L. Stine’s book series and crafted an epic story told across three movies and three separate time periods, culminating in a revelatory and chilling ending with 1666. The third and final film in the trilogy reveals the truth about the Shadyside curse and the witch Sarah Fier, while also bringing the story of the trilogy's heroes to a satisfying conclusion – and then caps it off with a great post-credits scene.
There’s a lot to unpack in Fear Street Part Three: 1666, so let’s dig into what we learned and how it all connects.
The Truth About Sarah Fier
Fear Street 1994 began our story in Shadyside, a town cursed by a witch named Sarah Fier who, before she was hanged, cut her hand off and cursed the land forever, in an act of defiance against the townspeople who killed her. Fear Street 1666 takes us back in time to 1666 to reveal the truth about Sarah Fier, with Deena actress Kiana Madeira playing Fier in a bit of witchcraft. Indeed, 1666 smartly finds a way to reuse actors we’ve come to know in new roles, as Ashley Zuckerman plays Sheriff Nick Goode’s ancestor Solomon Goode, and the ensemble is filled out by actors from 1994 and Fear Street 1978.
But in traveling back to 1666, we learn what really happened is significantly different than the legend. Sarah Fier and the preacher’s daughter Hannah Miller (Olivia Scott Welch) had struck up a secret romance, clearly forbidden in those times and especially in this town. At the same time that their secret is outed, the town is suddenly plagued with disease and rot – their crops and their livestock wilter, and the preacher goes insane and murders all of the town’s children before being killed himself.
Given the correlation with their outing, Sarah and Hannah are accused of being witches, their forbidden love fueling the town’s bigotry and hatred. Thinking she accidentally made a deal with the devil, Sarah escapes capture and heads into the woods to the home of a witchy woman, only to find she’s been murdered and her book on witchcraft has been stolen.
Sarah finds refuge in the only place she knows, the house of a mild-mannered friend named Solomon Goode (Zuckerman) who is down on his luck. But when she hides from townsfolk in his house, she discovers a series of caverns underneath Goode’s house – the same caverns we saw in Fear Street 1978. As it turns out, Sarah Fier didn’t make a deal with the devil. Solomon Goode did.
Goode explains that he traded the town’s good fortune for his own, sacrificing a name of a townsperson every few years and in return, he’d get fortune and glory. The name, of course, curses that individual and makes them go mad – the first being the preacher. When Goode made the deal, the underground temple and caverns appeared out of the ground, including that beating heart that the characters in 1978 mistook as belonging to Sarah Fier.
Solomon tries to explain himself to Sarah, but she is disgusted that he’d do such a thing. A physical struggle ensues, during which Sarah’s hand is cut off, and she seemingly escapes into town only for Solomon to grab her from behind and announce that he’s caught the witch.
The action then moves to the hanging tree, where both Sarah and Hannah are told to confess their witchy ways. In an act of self-sacrifice, Sarah confesses and takes the blame for “seducing” Hannah, which in turn saves Hannah’s life. Goode ties the chains and rope around Sarah, but right before she’s hung she curses the Goode family. “The truth will come out,” she says. “Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but it will.” Sarah continues:
“The truth shall be your curse. It will follow you for eternity. I will shadow you forever. I will show them what you’ve done. I will never let you go.”
And with that, Sarah Fier is hung. She was not a witch. She did nothing wrong. She was “different” and punished for it, while the true perpetrator of the curse got away scott-free. Which brings us to…
Fear Street 1994: Part Two
At this point in the story, Fear Street 3 smashes back to the events of 1994, with Deena having just full-on lived out Sarah Fier’s life story. She’s in the woods with her brother when Sheriff Nick Goode happens across them, and when they run, he sets after them with gun in hand. The title then smashes across the screen: Fear Street 1994: Part Two.
Yes indeed, for generations the Goode family has continued the deal that Solomon made, with every father instructing his first-born son how to perform the ritual – choose a name, make the sacrifice, watch another Shadyside tragedy unfold, and live a life of luxury. Deena explains it this way to her brother:
“Goode gives a name to the devil, the devil takes over that person, that person kills and murders, and the devil feeds on the blood of dead Shadysiders. And Goode gets whatever he wants. He becomes sheriff. His brother becomes mayor. All of Sunnyvale gets better and better.”
In one of the trilogy’s most heartbreaking twists we learn that young Nick Goode at camp in 1978 was the one who instigated all that murder. He performed the ritual and chose Tommy Slater as the sacrifice – the one who was possessed and went on a killing spree with an axe in hand. But he fell for Ziggy (Sadie Sink), which is why he told her he wouldn’t let her die that night – and he didn’t. He performed CPR and brought her back, knowing full-well he was responsible for all of this.
And why did all the cursed individuals come back to life to attack Cindy Berman (Emily Rudd) in 1978 and Deena and Sam in 1994? Because they came close to uncovering the truth about the curse. The murderers came back to protect the devil’s deal with the Goodes.
So in order to stop the curse, the characters in 1994 – Deena, Ziggy, Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.), and Martin (Darrell Britt-Gibson) – set a trap at the Shadyside Mall, the site of the Hanging Tree and the original settlement from 1666, to capture the killers, kill Goode, and stop the curse once and for all.
After some Home Alone antics and a few close calls, they succeed. Goode is killed by Deena and Sam, and as soon as he’s dead the curse is lifted. The killers disappear. Deena and Sam climb up from out of the caverns where the rituals were performed, through the opening that used to enter into the church and now opens into Goode’s gaudy mansion. And in the daylight they see one final sign that the curse has lifted – a Sunnyside resident gets broadsided by a truck, their car totaled. At long last something bad happened to those preppy Sunnysiders.
Who Took the Book in the Fear Street 3 Credits Scene?
But there’s one final twist. In the Fear Street 3 credits scene, the camera traverses the grounds of Shadyside and goes back into the caverns underneath the mall. The ritual altar has disappeared, the names erased from the stone wall, and the beating heart descended back into Hell. But the book of spells that the Goodes have used to enact this ritual for generations remains. Sitting on the floor, forgotten by Deena and Sam. A fly appears. And then another one. And then suddenly a hand reaches out and grabs the book, and the screen cuts to black.
So who took the book? It’s anyone’s guess, but clearly Goode’s brother the mayor is still alive, and he surely knew about the “family secret.” Josh says as much watching Mayor Goode on a news report that dubs his brother a serial killer. So he's the likeliest suspect here, the question being whether he will make another deal with the devil for his own gain.
Will There Be a Fear Street 4?
Does this mean Fear Street 4 is on the horizon? Netflix has yet to make any sort of announcements and, honestly, director Leigh Janiak deserves some rest. She made three incredible horror movies that all connect to one another yet feel distinct, telling an emotional (and refreshingly female-driven) story all the way through. Will there be a Fear Street 4? Or a new trilogy? Maybe. Hopefully. And if there is, it’d be great to have Janiak back in the director’s chair.
But if there’s not, the Fear Street trilogy still stands as one of the most exciting and best original films Netflix has released in recent memory. And if this particular story is indeed over, that whopper of a credits scene only further underlines one of the themes of this trilogy – evil is near-impossible to snuff out completely. We can only hope to fight for our loved ones and survive.