Scream VI is just around the corner, bringing Ghostface, Gale (Courteney Cox), and the new gang of victims to New York City. It will be the first film in the franchise without David Arquette's Dewey Riley or, more controversially, Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott. But for a second, let's travel back to this time last year when we were gearing up for the fifth film, Scream (2022), ten years after Scream 4. Around this time, fans had many questions: Could Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett of the Radio Silence collaborative and directors of the outstanding Ready or Not handle the pressure of taking over for a legendary director in the late Wes Craven? Would one of the legacy characters finally be killed off? And could we see the return of one of the original Ghostface killers, Stu Macher, played with maniacal brilliance by Matthew Lillard? It was a potential move theorized about for years. He was supposed to return in the original script for Scream 3, and after all, we never saw his dead body. Who’s to say he didn’t survive having a '90s-era tube TV dropped on his head?
We know all the answers to these questions now. We never got a Stu return and our hearts broke as we watched Dewey get ripped apart by Ghostface. But, we did get the return of someone else nobody expected - for better or for worse.
What Happens in 'Scream' (2022)?
Early in the film, we’re introduced to Melissa Barrera (In the Heights) as the cleverly named Sam Carpenter. She has left Woodsboro but is brought back after her sister is attacked by the latest incarnation of Ghostface. While visiting her sister in the hospital, she goes to the bathroom to take her medication. When she looks in the mirror she sees Billy Loomis, the other Ghostface and the mastermind from Woodboro’s first massacre, standing behind her. It’s an impossibility, but she’s not scared, and we can tell she’s seen him before. He is still very much dead though. There’s no way he’s coming back from a bullet to the head, not in this movie. Instead, he is a hallucination, a vision that sees a de-aged Skeet Ulrich brought back, still covered in the bloody white shirt from the night he died. He mocks Sam’s use of antipsychotic meds, telling her that they’re not working as well as they used to. She stands up to him and curses him, but he lets her know that she can’t run away from who she really is, and asks when she’s going to tell her sister why this is happening.
Sam goes back to her sister’s room and confesses a long-buried secret: Billy Loomis is her father. When she was 13, she found her mother’s admission of this in a journal. It led to the man she had called her father leaving the family and Sam eventually running away from Woodsboro, afraid that she would one day end up like the serial killer who created her.
This twist in and of itself is not the issue. In a film that so often looks at how the families left behind after the 1996 massacre turned out, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to have Billy Loomis be someone’s illegitimate father and to witness her journey as well. It actually adds more to Sam and the plot, showing that she is mentally unstable and losing her connection with reality, deepening the ultimate mystery so needed in these movies. Could Sam be the killer? It’s even acceptable to have his daughter hallucinate him, though it borders on the supernatural, something that the Scream series mostly stays away from, outside of the messy subplot of Sidney seeing her dead mother in Scream 3. The true failure comes in what happens next.
What Is the Purpose of Billy's Cameo?
Sam confesses to her friends that she is the daughter of Billy Loomis. They give their theories on why the attacks are happening again. Someone else was attacked, and murdered this time, that turned out to be Stu’s nephew. And now…everyone’s a suspect! Even Sam is named as the possible killer. We know it can’t be her. It would be too obvious. Then again, it was too obvious once upon a time that Billy Loomis was the killer.
Later, while driving her car, ghost dad appears again, this time in the backseat, Sam watching him in the rearview mirror. He’s more forceful now, angrier, but in a fatherly way, as if he’s trying to push her to be better. He tells her that a killer is on the loose trying to kill her sister, and he asks if she’s going to run away from the killer, if she's going to run away from who she is like always, or is she going to “use it.” She doesn’t want to be like him and tries to resist the call, as if this is some upside-down episode of Dexter. Billy demands that she accept who she is, that it’s the only way to survive. Before he leaves he tells her to cut some throats.
=What is meant to be gained by this scene? Is Billy Loomis telling his daughter to “use it” like she is supposed to tap into her dead dad’s serial killer tendencies as if it were the Jedi force? Are we supposed to believe that his evil is hereditary? The directors seem to be aiming for a moment that will make us pump our fists and cheer her on. Yeah, Sam, go get ‘em! Kill just like your psychotic father did!
Sam Doesn't Need to Connect to Her Serial Killer Dad to Defend Herself
That idea is driven home during the finale, which once again takes place at the home of Stu Macher. The killers have been revealed. Sam is not one. Her psychosis is not so deep that it has created two identities. Her boyfriend, Richie (Jack Quaid), however, is one of the killers. In a fight to the death, a wounded Sam crawls across the floor. In yet another mirror she sees Loomis again. This time he nods to a dropped knife in the corner, seemingly telling Sam that it’s time to live her true destiny. He gives her a proud smile that says he believes in her and knows she can do it. Sam picks up the knife and turns to her boyfriend, delivering the cringiest line of the movie. “Never mess with the daughter of a serial killer,” she says, before sticking the knife through Richie’s throat.
Sam has given in to who she supposedly is and as the audience we are to cheer her on. It begs the question, why does she need to tap into some dormant need to kill in order to defend herself? She could just as easily reject the idea of what her father means, pushing him away until the visions disappear, and kill not because she is disturbed, but simply because she is the strong heroine defending herself.
In the final moments of the film, we get the obligatory ambulance outside the crime scene moment. Sam speaks to Sidney and Gale here, then walks away. She spots her father’s reflection one more time hovering behind her, proudly watching over her. She holds his gaze for a long while, then smiles slightly, before walking off camera with the set jaw of someone who not only accepts their past but the effect it has on them. Sam is thankful for her father and being a little crazy and a little murderous seems A-okay to her.
Is 'Scream' Trying to Redeem Billy?
Through all of this, Billy Loomis is given a redemption arc. He is the hero beyond the grave, even if he is only the figment of his daughter’s imagination. He comes across almost like the ghost of Anakin Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi, the former enemy redeemed and watching over his child even after death. As evil as Darth Vader was though, he was redeemed in life, at the end regretting what he’s done and dying a hero. Billy Loomis never had any redemption in life. His insanity never wavered. He was evil to the death.
Maybe most fans found it easy to accept Billy’s return out of simple nostalgia. We grew up with this character. We love Skeet Ulrich and are happy to see him again. Maybe it speaks to how fun the Scream series is that we never took any of the violence all too seriously. It was more of a thrill ride to see who would die and how, and who would be unmasked, rather than something horrific that made us turn away in fear. To redeem the original killer, however, is to undermine everything he did and everything he set in motion. It says that his crimes weren’t so atrocious, that Sidney Prescott and everyone else’s trauma is bearable. It says that the memory of Billy Loomis is not to be feared, but somehow forgiven.
With that all being said, can we please have Matthew Lillard back as Stu Macher in Scream VI? That would be fun.