Once Upon A Time In Hollywood's Sequel Can Finally Shut Down 2 Major Tarantino Theories

Published Sep 5, 2026, 1:45 PM EDT Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 17 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic. Some things in life are guaranteed: death, taxes, and Quentin Tarantino movies inspiring often wild fan theories. At some point, Tarantino will make his final movie and it’ll all be over, but even then, the cinematic sandbox he’s created will no doubt continue to provoke new hot takes. To some extent, he’s encouraged it by connecting his movies together in a multi-layered universe, tying characters by family bloodlines in completely different movies. And sometimes, he has absolutely no part in what happens to his stories after their release. Naturally, his last movie (so far), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood again became a goldmine for fan theories that completely changed how people would watch it. Audiences spent years enthusiastically analyzing everything from whether Cliff Booth actually killed his wife to whether Brad Pitt’s Cliff Burton unwittingly changed reality when he fixed Rick’s TV aerial. Like I said, some of the theories are stronger than others. And now, 7 years after the Hollywood epic landed, David Fincher’s sequel - The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth - will expand the world Tarantino built. Talk about an impressive replacement. . Because the Netflix exclusive movie will expand the life of Pitt’s Steve McQueen-like stuntman and fixer almost a decade later, it’s also an opportunity to actually settle some of the theories. Will we get confirmation that he did kill his own wife? Possibly. Will it be confirmed he changed reality? I’m going to say no. But two other theories could get definitive answers. The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth Can Prove OUATIH's Ending Was Real One of the more frequently cited alternative readings of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follows the age-old trend of people wanting everything to be a dream. It’s like we learned nothing from Dallas. The theory, which does have some evidence suggests that the violent, fairy-tale climax that saw Booth and Dalton take on the Manson family was actually a hallucination or, somewhat less creatively, just a dream sequence. The suggestion is that the events are actually the psychedelic result of the cigarette Cliff smokes just before the cult members break in. That wouldn’t be entirely illogical, given the cigarette was dipped in acid, and there is a somewhat surreal feel to the battle against Tex, Sadie, and Katie. It’s certainly a little more plausible than Booth dropping acid and still being able to fight off the assailants, even with his military past and stunt work. The sequence is Tarantino’s revisionist take on history - just as the end of Inglourious Basterds gave him the fantastical opportunity to kill off Adolf Hitler - saving Sharon Tate from her grim fate. And 7 years on, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth will surely confirm whether it really was just a trippy, idealist delusion. It feels a little unlikely that Fincher would dismantle the ending so concretely, and by virtue of being set in 1977, we’ll surely get some reference to what happened next. And given we know Cliff has now become a full-time studio fixer, his reputation being built as the man who took on a cult would be a fitting springboard. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood's Sequel Should End The Cliff Booth/Aldo Raine Theory Somewhat less straightforward is the theory that follows Tarantino’s fondness for tying characters in his universe together, like the Vega brothers in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, or Donny and Lee Donowitz in True Romance and Inglourious Basterds (and many more). In a more direct way, this fan theory claims Cliff Booth is also another entirely different character, Inglourious Basterds’ scalp-hunter-in-chief, Lt. Aldo Raine. Obviously, the two share a resemblance, given both are played by Brad Pitt and both have a certain flair for violence, with a shared military past. But that’s not exactly compelling evidence. The narrative suggests Booth survived the war, moved out West with a new identity and swapped carving swastikas in foreheads for the stunt business. Quite how this theory persisted is unclear, given it doesn’t at all fit the timeline, and especially when the alternative theory that Inglourious Basterds is a film within a film (as Kill Bill is often proclaimed) and Booth played the character of Aldo Raine would make infinitely more sense. The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth can settle this one simply by offering a deep dive into Booth’s life. In the first movie, he’s a bit of an enigma, but giving him a more central role could mean more flesh on the bones of his story. And showing even a small part of his backstory before the 1960s would finally stop the silly rumors. Unless, of course, they’re so silly Fincher wouldn’t bother… The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth releases on Netflix on December 23.