To be honest, it's not a notion that I've given any real thought to, now almost four and a half decades since first seeing E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. It's the suggestion that maybe, just maybe, E.T. and Elliott had a happy reunion many years later, when Elliott was all grown up. Might the heart-burning alien who found his way everywhere in 1982 (or at least all over your own house especially when you had small children... and let's not forget the Atari game!) have made a return to Earth?
It's a question that Steven Spielberg himself has now addressed. Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to discuss his new movie Disclosure Day (a friend said it's worth seeing especially for John Wiliams's score), Spielberg shares about whether Elliott and his pal had a reunion...
"No, never saw him again," he said. "But he did dream about him. So there was a psychic link between the two of them. If you notice that E.T. touched Elliott right here [points to his forehead] and said, 'I'll be right here.'"
I can live with that, as heartbreaking as it might be for some people to be told that. Sometimes there are people who come into your life for however brief a season. They make an impact on you, and you like to think that you make one just as strong on them. You may never see them again but they're with you, bright in heart and memory. In E.T.'s case that is quite literal. And maybe someday, in ways you've never imagined or thought possible, there gets to be a happy reunion after all. It's certainly happened in my own life a number of times.
But if not, I like to think that Elliott grew up happy, and now has a family (maybe he's even a grandfather) and that the days he spent with E.T. are forever a special part of his childhood. No doubt something that he's shared with his own children.
That's as good an ending to the story as any.
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