If you don’t have it marked on your calendar, we’re now less than 100 days, and counting, until Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Scream VI hits theaters. This means trailers are dropping, news is circulating, and fans’ hopes and theories are more than likely stirring up again. Now that we’re approaching the franchise’s sixth film, we’re due for some supernatural, resurrection aspects typical of slasher movies – New York today, deep space tomorrow. So who, if you could, would you bring back? Collider’s Perri Nemiroff was curious who original Scream screenwriter, Kevin Williamson, would choose and why, and it’s a good one.

It’s 1996 again, and Wes Craven’s Scream just blew your mind. A brand-new slasher with not one, but two unhinged killers, a pretty solid motive, bucking tradition with its final girl and the previously-rigid genre rules, and a very meta introspection provided by a character within the film. It was everything horror needed and more, and it’s proven to churn out some entertaining (Scream 3 was still entertaining) sequels that maintain their foot in the first movie's established lore.

After 2022’s Scream 5 rebooted the franchise with Melissa Barrera’s Sam Carpenter and her sister, Tara (played by Jenna Ortega), the tropes have shifted to new characters, something Craven set in motion back in 2011 with Scream 4. However, there are always rumors floating around that characters we may have thought were dead and gone might be biding their time to resurface later on. Most of these are incredibly unlikely due to Ghostface’s affinity for over-killing their victims, but we were curious who Williamson, the man who penned the original trilogy films, would bring back if he could. It’s clear Williamson had time to think on this, because he not only gave us a name, he gave us a yearning for what could have been, saying:

“I think everyone I know would say Randy because he kind of met an untimely demise in the middle of the film. Had I known that there was gonna be a 3, 4, 5, that it was gonna go on, I would have loved to have had him be a legacy character.

“I think he could have evolved with the state of horror through the last 20-something years, and I think you could have done a lot with him in terms of who he was and who his character is, and how it informed his life and the trauma of what really happened versus his love for the horror films. Would that always be? Would he turn against them? What would happen? And I kind of thought that would have been an interesting character to play with.”

Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) lecturing the teens in Scream

RELATED: 'Scream': Kevin Williamson Confirms Matthew Lillard’s Stu Is Dead

In Scream, deaths are expected, but Jamie Kennedy’s Randy Meeks hurt a significant amount. His character made the first movie meta, he knew the game, played the game, and even somewhat returned in the third because he had the foresight to know his part was nearing its end. In his own words, Williamson explains, “I think the trick to writing sequels or writing horror in general is to write emotional horror because if we don't care, there's no point,” (you can read more about that here) and Randy’s death was a huge loss because, like the screenwriter said, Kennedy’s character most certainly would have held his own in these violent reboots, and would have had an earful for Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott about Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) and Billy Loomis’ (Skeet Ulrich) lingering influence.

Understanding the importance of Randy’s legacy, and how it sets the franchise apart, Scream 5 writers James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and Guy Busick (Ready or Not) introduced Randy’s niece and nephew Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding). Mindy, like her late uncle, is a huge horror movie fan, and she knows the rules – the new rules – of the requels, and could be an asset to Sam and Tara going forward. So maybe we could all learn from our mistakes and just please, please – despite how the teaser trailer sets us up – let Mindy live!

Scream VI, which introduces Dermot Mulroney, Samara Weaving and more, premieres on March 10, 2023. Stay tuned to Collider for more from Perri’s interview with Williamson.