Can the Smile Entity Be Killed? Every Escape Plan Explained
After watching both Smile movies, I kept coming back to one question. Can the Entity actually die, or can each host only pass it to someone else? The films show one escape that works, but nobody has destroyed the creature.
Spoilers ahead for Smile and Smile 2.
How did Robert Talley survive?
Joel finds 20 connected cases in the first movie, but only 19 people died by suicide. The missing death is Robert Talley, the accountant Rose later meets in prison.
Talley became infected after his business partner died in front of him. Four days later, he murdered a stranger while another person watched. The curse moved to that witness, who later died and continued the chain.
Talley also found an older chain in Brazil. A man escaped it by murdering his neighbor in front of the neighbor’s wife, passing the Entity to her. According to Talley, the violent act must create enough trauma for the Entity to attach itself to the witness.
The opening of Smile 2 confirms that this method works.
Joel tries to kill one criminal in front of another, but his intended witness dies during the fight. Lewis sees the violence instead and receives the curse. Joel is hit by a truck moments later, but the transfer had already happened.
Talley and Joel both escaped the Entity. They did it by creating another victim.
Could any of the other plans work?
The other ideas try to stop the chain, remove the host, or keep the Entity from reaching another person.
| Plan | What actually happened | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Kill someone in front of a witness | Talley and Joel passed the curse to another person | Works, but creates a new victim |
| Die without a witness | Rose isolated herself, but Joel saw her die | Not completed |
| Temporarily stop the host’s heart | Morris proposed it, but Skye never reached the real procedure | Not tested |
| Fight or burn the Entity | Rose’s apparent victory was a hallucination | No real attack took place |
| Trap it inside an immobile host | Nobody has attempted this | Theory only |
Rose returns to her abandoned childhood home because she believes the curse cannot continue without a witness.
The Entity makes her think she fought it, burned it, escaped the house, and returned to Joel. None of that happened. Joel reaches the real house before Rose dies, allowing the curse to pass to him.
Rose’s plan remains unanswered. A host dying completely alone may leave the Entity with nobody to infect, but the films do not show what happens next. It might die with the host, remain inactive inside the body, or wait for someone to find it.
Morris has a more direct idea in Smile 2. He believes the Entity acts like a parasite and needs a living host. His plan is to stop Skye’s heart, keep her body cold to reduce brain damage, and revive her after several minutes.
Skye appears to reach Morris and prepare for the procedure, but she later wakes onstage at her concert. That sequence was part of the false reality created by the Entity, so her heart was never stopped.
Morris may be right, but his plan assumes the Entity dies as soon as its host does. It might remain attached to the body until resuscitation or move to someone nearby.
Another theory is to place the curse inside someone who cannot move or hurt another person. A host in a coma or with severe paralysis may be unable to create the violent death needed for another transfer.
That idea depends on the Entity following the body’s normal limits. The films show it taking control of its host, but not what it could do inside an unconscious or paralysed person. It could also wait for the host to die or use a caregiver as the next witness.
This may contain the Entity for a time, but it gives us no clear way to kill it.
The hardest part of every plan is the host’s perception. Isolation, restraint, and medical treatment mean little when the Entity can make someone believe the plan already worked.
Did Skye infect everyone at the concert?
Before Skye’s death, every known chain appears to move from one host to one new witness.
Skye dies before a packed arena, with many people recording her. The movie ends before revealing if the Entity chose one person or infected a larger part of the crowd. In an interview about the ending, Parker Finn described the venue as holding around 20,000 fans, but he did not confirm how many received the curse.
The films have not confirmed if a phone recording or livestream counts as witnessing the death. Every earlier transfer happened with the new host physically present.
If several concertgoers received the curse, Skye changed it from one chain into a possible outbreak. If the Entity still chooses only one person, someone inside the arena became the next host while the rest of the crowd escaped.
A third Smile movie is reportedly in development, but Paramount has not announced its story, cast, or release date. Skye’s concert is still the clearest place for another film to continue.
The creature’s real nature is just as unclear. Calling it an Entity is safest because the films never explain its origin. Curse describes how it spreads, while parasite matches Morris’s belief that it depends on a living host. Demon is possible, but nothing in the movies connects it to a religion.
What we know comes from its actions. It feeds on trauma, controls what the host sees, uses personal memories, takes over the body, and spreads through witnessed violence.
Robert Talley found a way to survive by passing it forward. Morris may have found a way to kill it, and Rose may have found a way to stop the chain. Neither plan reached the point where the Entity had to prove it could survive.