Here’s Why Halloween Marked a Turning Point in Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Love Story

As parents to Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, Halloween has surely taken on a whole new meaning for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. 

But eight years ago, on Halloween 2016, the holiday meant something entirely different to the couple, who at the time had been dating for about four months. In the couple’s six-part Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, which premiered on the streaming service in December 2022, they shared previously unseen photos of themselves dressed in costume for the spooky holiday. Harry, now 40, and Meghan, now 43, attended an apocalypse-themed party with Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank in Toronto, where Meghan was filming Suits at the time.

The theme served a dual purpose as a disguise for the famous foursome, as their respective costumes hid their identities. In the docuseries, Harry explained that former palace communications secretary Jason Knauf told him that news about his relationship with Meghan was about to break worldwide, inspiring him and his then-girlfriend to “pull the pin on the fun grenade” and enjoy one last night out incognito before everyone was clued into their romance.

“And we did,” Harry said, as photos of the foursome wearing dark clothes and leather accessories flashed across the screen.

“It was so great,” Meghan added. “Just silly fun.”

In his memoir Spare, released one month after Harry & Meghan in January 2023, Harry shed further light on that memorable Halloween. He disclosed that the party was held at Soho House in Toronto, and that they invited “Euge and Jack,” Harry’s cousin and her then-boyfriend, to join them at the costume party. (Eugenie and Jack would ultimately marry at St. George’s Chapel, the same location Harry and Meghan exchanged vows, five months after Harry and Meghan said “I do” in May 2018.)

Harry wrote that he borrowed his friend’s Mad Max costume, and Meghan wore a camo tank with torn black shorts and fishnet stockings. “If that’s the Apocalypse, I thought, bring on the end of the world,” the Duke of Sussex wrote in Spare.

“The party was loud, dark, drunk — ideal. Several people did double takes as Meg passed through the rooms, but no one looked twice at her dystopian date,” Harry wrote. “I wished I could wear this disguise every day. I wished I could reuse it the next day and visit her on the set of Suits.”

The two connected over the summer of 2016 and had only gone on two dates before Harry invited Meghan for a five-day trip to Botswana, a country close to his heart. “So then we were really by ourselves, which was crucial to me to make sure that we had a chance to know each other,” Harry said in the couple’s November 2017 engagement interview.

He also later said that the Botswana trip was when he knew Meghan was his “soulmate.”

Fast forward a couple of months later, and the couple headed out for their last hurrah as a private couple, which Meghan spoke about in a November 2021 interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

“He came to see me in Toronto and our friends and his cousin, Eugenie, and her husband Jack, they came as well, and the four of us snuck out in Halloween costumes to have one fun night on the town before it was out in the world that we were a couple,” Meghan said. “It was a post-apocalypse theme, so we had all of this very bizarre costuming on, and we were able to just sort of have one final, fun night out.”

Sure enough, news of Harry and Meghan’s relationship broke on Oct. 30, 2016, just before Halloween. A friend of Harry’s confirmed to PEOPLE that he and Meghan had been dating for “a couple of months” at the time, and a source told PEOPLE that Meghan had already met then-Prince Charles.

“Harry is pretty serious about her, and she is pretty serious about him,” the source said. A friend of the two added, “It’s great. They have a lot in common and I’m sure they will get on very well.”

Just nine days later, on Nov. 8, 2016, Harry released a groundbreaking statement about Meghan, confirming they were a couple and breaking precedent in the process. In the landmark statement — released by his communications secretary — Harry said he understood that “there is significant curiosity about his private life,” and while “he has never been comfortable with this,” the past week had “seen a line crossed.”

It went on to detail how Meghan had been “subject to a wave of abuse and harassment,” including “outright sexism and racism,” Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland “having to struggle past photographers in order to get to her front door” and “the bombardment of nearly every friend, co-worker and loved one in her life.”

“Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markle’s safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her,” the statement continued. “It is not right that a few months into a relationship with him that Ms. Markle should be subjected to such a storm. He knows commentators will say this is ‘the price she has to pay’ and that ‘this is all part of the game.’ He strongly disagrees. This is not a game — it is her life and his.”

In the Netflix docuseries, Meghan shared of the moment their relationship became public, “Right when news broke, I think we both felt tremendous relief. There's a frenzy happening, and it almost felt like all the things we were nervous about, of it getting out ... okay, don't worry it's fine. And then that changed very quickly.”

“Truth be told — no matter how hard I tried, no matter how good I was, no matter what I did, they were still going to find a way to destroy me,” she said in episode two of the series.

The couple, who announced their engagement in November 2017 and married six months later, eventually stepped back from their roles as working royals in January 2020 and relocated to the U.S., where they now live in Montecito, California with Archie, 5, and Lilibet, 3. Halloween looks quite different now than 2016 at Soho House in Toronto — and Meghan opened up about her first Halloween as a mom of two in her 2021 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

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“We wanted to do something fun for the kids, and then the kids were just not into it at all,” she told DeGeneres with a laugh, adding that Archie only wore his dinosaur costume for “about five minutes.”

“Not even five minutes,” interjected DeGeneres, who celebrated the holiday with the family of four. “Finally Harry talked him into putting the head on.”

Lilibet, for her part — who was just under five months old at the time — dressed up as a skunk, “like Flower from Bambi,” as Meghan put it.