Modern Family is known for its hilarious Halloween episodes. With only one more left in its final season, we're going down spooky memory lane.
For the past 10 years, we have been gifted with over 230 episodes of Modern Family. From Cam and Mitchell's wedding to Lily's adoption to Haley's pregnancy, we've seen this family go through it all. It's their diversity that really makes this show as spectacular as it is. In true form, they are 2010s version of a modern family.
Although many sitcoms have holiday-themed episodes, none are quite as dedicated to Halloween as Modern Family is. Thanks to Claire's infatuation with all things death and scary, the Dunphy household goes all out for Halloween night every year, with haunted houses and Halloween parties galore. And let's not ignore the fact that Mitchell and Cameron love a good costume moment.
Below we have all six of Modern Family's Halloween episodes ranked from worst to best — although it's pretty hard to say that a Modern Family episode is bad. However, the show's seventh — and last —Halloween episode, "The Last Halloween," premiers on Mischief Night this year (after this article's publishing), as the show has reached its final season.
As the fifth episode of the ninth season, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Phil Dunphy" is the show's worst Halloween episode. Knowing how important the holiday is to the Dunphys, it was a little weird that the Dunphy kids weren't into the holiday that year.
While Claire tried her hardest to scare her kids, and later, her co-workers, her efforts fell flat. Meanwhile, Phil was busy trying to build a pumpkin to hide inside of, which went awry when he went rolling into his neighbor's yard. Claire and Phil spent the whole episode trying to get everyone on board with adult-Halloween but it went nowhere. Oddly enough, Halloween was barely mentioned with the Pritchett-Tuckers and Pritchett-Delgados (besides Joe dressing up as God).
Before the 10th season aired, fans of Modern Family heard that there would be a death in the show. No one knew who it was and suspected it to be Jay, Stella, or even Phi's dad. However, in the fifth episode of the 10th season titled "Good Grief," thing starts off with Claire (dressed as a spider) and Phil (dressed as a fly) decorating their house for Halloween night.
Claire received a phone call and soon learns that her mom (DeDe) passed away. As you can imagine, this put a big damper on their Halloween night. However, the great thing about this episode was the Halloween costumes. Mitch and Cam dressed as Prince Harry and Princess Meghan, and Gloria dressed as Marilyn Monroe. All together dressed in funny costumes, this family had to get over losing a big figure in their lives.
"The Revenge of Rod Skyhook" showed us that Luke was ready for his first Halloween party. Without Phil and Claire around, they had high hopes for Luke's party to be a success. Sadly for him, there was a competing party the same night.
All of the people he invited went to that party instead (including Manny), which left Haley and Claire showing up at that party to encourage all the guests to go to Luke's party instead. Their hard work ended up working out and it was sweet to see Haley try so hard for her little brother (which doesn't happen often).
In Modern Family's sixth season, we were blessed with the episode "Halloween 3: AwesomeLand." Now that Claire is working full-time, she's letting Phil have his way by decorating the house for Halloween night. In a classic Phil way, he decides to get rid of the horror and gore and add awesomeness instead. He calls his new house experience "AwesomeLand" and decorates it with everything he finds awesome. But once Phil and Claire enter a friendly competition for the scariest house on Halloween, Claire takes over and replaces all of Phil's awesomeness with horror. Phil is, of course, shattered, and has to go along with Claire's crazy idea because, well, she's Claire.
We're getting down to the top two Halloween-themed episodes of Modern Family. In the fourth season, "Open House of Horrors" shows Phil upset that he has an open house on Halloween night, meaning he can't partake in one of Claire's kooky ideas.
However, Claire has something else up her sleeve. She decides to haunt the house Phil is selling to scare him throughout the night. Meanwhile, over at the Pritchett-Tucker residence, Cameron and Mitchell throw a Halloween party. With Gloria pregnant and Cameron trying to show off his newest weight loss journey, this episode was filled with hilarious moments and, most importantly, the entire family involved with Halloween.
In the show's first Halloween episode, we get "Halloween," Modern Family's best Halloween episode to-date. This is the episode where we truly see Claire's fierce dedication to Halloween and how much she adores scaring people. After making the Dunphy residence into a haunted house, she gives each family member a role they have to play when children ring the doorbell. But when the family isn't as enthralled with Halloween as Claire is, her plans go off the rails and get gets upset.
Before the nigh night, Mitchell started a new job and was excited to dress up in costume with his co-workers. Dressed as Spider-Man, Mitchell arrives to work and sees that no one else is dressed in costume. He panics and finds an old suit in the back of the car and puts it over his Spider-Man costume. But in a classic Modern Family twist, his plan fails and he's caught in the most embarrassing way possible.
Unlike the other Halloween episodes, this episode shows each side of the family perfectly and shows us another side to Claire's villainous ways.
