The Strangers: Chapter 2 - Pin-Up Girl's Origin and Chapter 3 Setup Explained

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for The Strangers: Chapter 2The Strangers: Chapter 2 didn’t do much to advance the narrative surrounding Madelaine Petsch’s Maya Lucas, but it did reveal some key backstory behind why The Strangers kill seemingly at random. Inspired by Bryan Bertino’s acclaimed 2008 psychological horror-thriller The Strangers, the poorly-reviewed new trilogy is allegedly part of the same continuity as the original, although the killers behind the masks may not be the same.

We were given precious little information about The Strangers themselves in the first two Strangers movies or in Chapter 1 of the new trilogy. The first chapter at least provides a point of origin for them: the small rural town of Venus, Oregon.

The implication was heavy that some or even all the townspeople were in on the string of murders in the area in Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 poured more gasoline on that suspicious fire. The identity of the killer, colloquially recognized as “Pin-Up Girl” based on the mask she wears, was finally confirmed in Chapter 2. We got a hefty, if somewhat confusing, dose of backstory for her in the process.

How Shelly Became Pin-Up Girl

The identity of Pin-Up Girl was revealed as Shelly, the friendly waitress who first sent Maya and her boyfriend Ryan up to the Airbnb where they were stalked in the first movie. It’s confirmed early in the movie during a flashback to a past killing by The Strangers, and we get a formal unmasking when Scarecrow laments over her corpse after Maya kills her by flipping the ambulance they’re in.

Throughout The Strangers: Chapter 2, we’re given small glimpses into what Shelly’s childhood looked like, particularly focusing on her time in what appears to be a religious grade school. She’s depicted as an outsider among her classmates, a loner and outsider who seems to be mildly bullied by some of the girls she goes to school with.

She’s shown to have some psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies, like her cold, barehanded murder of a harmless mouse while smiling. Those tendencies culminate with the brutal murder of one of her classmates, a girl who had bullied her and who had kissed a boy that Shelly liked and was closer to.

A flashback revealed a game that Shelly’s classmates played, involving knocking three times on a playhouse door and asking if the person is there. It’s the origin of the iconic “Is Tamara home?” line from The Strangers franchise. The girl that Shelly beat to death with a rock was in fact named Tamara.

It’s clear that Shelly was mentally unstable as a child, whether via nature or trauma, and that is the driving force behind her participation in the ritualistic murders of The Strangers. Her ability to appear as a smiling, friendly waitress by day and a brutal killer by night indicates some sort of severe antisocial personality disorder that’s existed since at least her early childhood.

Who Are Scarecrow And Dollface?

Scarecrow’s affection for Shelly combined with the flashbacks implies that he could be the boy that Shelly befriended and liked way back in grade school (the child actor is listed as Young Scarecrow, so it seems like a safe bet). When she killed Tamara in the playhouse, the boy helped her draw a smiley face in the pooling blood, indicating that he may have been just as unstable as her even way back then.

The Strangers: Chapter 2 – Key Review Scores
RT Tomatometer	Metacritic Metascore	IMDB Score	Letterboxd Score
14%	27/100	5.0/10	2.4/5

Some of the people from the town can be eliminated as the identity of Scarecrow or Dollface, who in theory could be hiding multiple people under the same masked disguises. Based on their deaths at the end of the movie, the people who took Maya in after her inexplicable ordeal with the feral pig aren’t the killers, as Maya heavily suspected.

Gregory, the most hostile and menacing of the group, survived the movie, could in theory be Scarecrow, especially since we were given some slight background on him by his roommates. However, he was drunk when he left the house where the murders occurred, and it seems a bit too obvious a solution.

We can also probably rule out the sheriff, who is played by the perfectly menacing Richard Brake. He seems to have plenty of knowledge of The Strangers, and attempts to cover for them, but he seems too old to actually be the killer under Scarecrow’s mask, who is bulkier, athletic, and agile.

Dollface’s identity is completely up in the air still, as there is no obvious candidate now that Maya’s nurse, Danica, and her roommate have been killed. It seems like a safe bet we’ll learn more about her in The Strangers: Chapter 3, just as we learned about Pin-Up Girl and Scarecrow in Chapter 2.

What The Strangers: Chapter 2’s Post-Credits Scene Reveals About Chapter 3

The post-credits scene for The Strangers: Chapter 2 isn’t actually a scene at all, but rather a series of them. Immediately following the credits is a trailer for Chapter 3 that provides some small details about what to expect in the finale of the reboot trilogy.

There are a few key scenes in the trailer, like Maya’s encounter with Sheriff Rotter; she alerts him that she knows where The Strangers are, to which he responds with predictable sketchiness. We get some other quick shots of Maya, Scarecrow, and Dollface, but the highlight is a potential plot twist.

One brief image shows Maya’s fiery red ponytail sticking out of the Pin-Up Girl mask, standing next to Scarecrow and Dollface. The tease is meant to imply that Maya actually joins the other two killers in their sick game by the end of the movie, but it’s entirely possible that could be a misdirection.

It could be a shot from a dream or vision that Maya has, perhaps born from subconscious guilt over her own murder (in self-defense) of Pin-Up Girl. It could also be a ploy on Maya’s part to get closer to her assailants so she could finish them off herself.

It wouldn’t be a huge shock if Maya really does join The Strangers after the psychological and physical torment they’ve subjected her to, but if that were the case, it seems like it would be foolish to spoil that in the trailer and ruin the surprise twist. The team behind The Strangers: Chapter 2 at least put their best foot forward with the teaser, as it promises far more narrative development than the second chapter.