How The Forever Purge Makes Election Year Pointless

The Forever Purge is a good sequel in many ways, but in the process of telling its story, The Purge: Election Year is rendered entirely pointless. More than anything else, what made the original Purge movie successful was its central concept, which was simple yet creative enough to captivate audiences. Most people enjoy a good “what if?” story, and Purge Night leads viewers to wonder what they would do. Would they run? Hide? Participate? It’s a tantalizing question.

Granted, most people who watch The Purge movies likely have zero desire to go out and commit any type of violence, much less murder, but a scenario in which all crime is legal for a 12-hour stretch presents so many intriguing potential scenarios. The rich could likely afford protection like they have in the movies, but normal folk may well need to literally fight for their own survival against psychopaths. As the franchise has gone on, the questions about Purge Night have also expanded to include those of just how bad U.S. politics would have to get in order to sanction a Purge event.

The Purge: Election Year really began pushing the political side of the franchise’s story to the forefront, with prequel The First Purge and the new Forever Purge ramping that aspect up even more. Election Year memorably ended with a ray of hope in the darkness, as anti-Purge politician Charlie Roan was elected U.S. President, unseating the evil NFFA. Many fans wondered where the story would go from there once the Purge franchise’s movie timeline returned back to the present. How would things change? Sadly, that question goes unanswered.

Over the opening credits of The Forever Purge, some voiceover news clips play that very anticlimactically and casually reveal what happened after Charlie Roan’s election. A new rise in hatred and division led to the NFFA being swept back into power in the election afterward. Purge Night was instantly reinstated, and everything basically went back to the status quo, but worse. All the progress Roan made toward turning popular opinion against The Purge, all the people lost on the way to getting her elected, that all seems to have been for nothing.

While not a full retcon of The Purge: Election Year‘s mostly triumphant ending, The Forever Purge‘s opening effectively undoes its effects and removes any interesting developments that could’ve happened in its aftermath (while also begging the question of what happened to Leo Barnes). Instead, fans are thrust back into the normal Purge world, at least until the “Ever After” cult decides to make Purge Night endless. While that’s a worthwhile new wrinkle all its own, it doesn’t change the overwhelming feeling that franchise creator James DeMonaco wrote himself into a corner with Election Year, and didn’t know how to satisfactorily get from there to where The Forever Purge begins. So instead, he chose to all but hand wave the situation. Fans of Election Year deserved better, as did the character of Charlie Roan.

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