Wait, Heidi Klum was also a ridiculously elaborate E.T. for Halloween?

Earlier this week, while writing about Janelle Monae’s elaborate, disturbingly realistic E.T. Halloween costume, we closed out the Newswire with a joke about “Your move, Klum.” Heidi Klum is, after all, the only person in Hollywood who is currently matching the sheer vibes and energy that Monae devotes to an annual Halloween costume, employing numerous high-end professionals to bring her latest oddball idea to life. (You could argue that Kim Kardashian is also a pretender to this throne, but costumes like Kardashian’s 2024 offering of “albino alligator” carry an implicit unwillingness to make herself grotesque and unrecognizable that Monae and Klum have both transcended.) Imagine our genuine shock tonight, then, when Klum debuted her own incredibly extra Halloween costume at her annual party… and it was also an elaborate, disturbingly realistic E.T. (Two, in fact, with her husband Tom Kaulitz as regular E.T., and Klum as the “dressed up by Drew Barrymore” version.)

And now, like, all we’re going to be doing for the rest of the night is trying to work out the social dynamics of whatever the hell happened with this unlikely confluence of extraterrestrials. Was there espionage or skullduggery? Were there leaks in the Klum Organization? Scuttlebutt in the E.T. cosplay scene? In an interview with Entertainment TonightKlum, who spent all day teasing her look on social media, said she’s been planning the costume for a literal year. That’s a lot of time for loose, fleshy, synced-up lips to sink ships.

For what it’s worth, we’ll note that, while Monae’s E.T. had its more DIY charms, a close-up look at Klum and Kaulitz’s is kind of insanely impressive, including the extensive prosthetic work they had done to make themselves up as their own alien necks, and the remote controls operating the E.T. heads’ eyes and mouths as they talk. Money may not be able to buy happiness, as the aphorisms tell us, but it turns out that it absolutely can buy you the best E.T. costume that we have ever personally seen, and also the best that we will hopefully ever see, because we’re actually kind of at our fill for elaborate, disturbingly realistic E.T.s, thanks.