Scream 7’s Killer Reveal Rewrites A Major Rule of The $1 Billion Franchise

Although Scream 7’s killer reveal is undeniably surprising, the twist breaks a major rule of the Scream franchise in order to shock viewers. By Scream 7’s ending, it is clear that director Kevin Williamson’s reboot is determined to reset the canon of the franchise for good.

Although Scream 2022 featured Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott in a major role, the movie mostly focused on franchise newcomers Sam and Tara, two sisters played by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega. Scream VI took this approach even further as, after salary negotiations with Campbell broke down, the series released its first sequel without an appearance from Sidney.

After Barrera was fired for voicing her opinion online and Ortega immediately left the series, Scream 7 brought back Sidney and promised a return to the franchise’s pre-Scream 2022 status quo. Although Scream 7 isn’t set in Woodsboro, its focus on Sidney and her family is closer to Scream 1-4 in terms of storytelling style.

Scream 7’s Main Killer Doesn’t Have A Link To Sidney

However, the sequel makes a massive departure from franchise tradition when it comes to the biggest Scream 7 spoiler. The ending of the slasher sequel reveals that the movie’s two killers are Anna Camp’s seemingly sweet and supportive neighbor Jessica and her accomplice, Ethan Embry’s asylum worker Marco.

Jessica’s motive is that she read Sidney’s memoir, Out of Darkness, and found the strength to kill her abusive husband as a result. However, when Sidney removed herself from public life, Jessica felt betrayed and began concocting an elaborate revenge scheme that would turn Sidney’s daughter, Tatum Evans, into a replacement role model.

Jessica viewed Sidney as an archetypal Final Girl and an inspiration to women like herself, so she wanted to make up for Sidney’s absence from public life by killing her in front of her daughter, thus turning Tatum into a similarly resilient survivor for a new generation of impressionable people. It’s a convoluted plan, but that isn’t new to the series.

What is a major new innovation is the fact that, for the first time, this Scream movie’s version of Ghostface doesn’t have a close, intimate connection to the movie’s star. Unlike Billy, Stu, Scream 2’s Ms. Loomis, and Scream 4’s Jill, Jessica isn’t related to Sidney, and nothing in Sidney’s past, outside penning a bestselling memoir, links her personally to the killer.

Scream 2022 and Scream 6‘s killers had links to Sam and Tara instead of Sidney, as they were the heroines of those outings, but were still closely connected to the main characters of their respective movies. Amber was a friend of Tara and Richie was Sam’s long-time boyfriend, while Scream 6’s killers were all members of Richie’s grieving family.

Scream 7’s Second Killer Isn’t A Major Character

Admittedly, Scream 2’s Mickey and Scream 4’s Charlie weren’t meaningfully connected to Sidney, but they were also both pawns in the main killer’s game. Much like Matthew Lillard’s Stu, who was friends with Sidney and dated her best friend, but was not otherwise particularly close with her, Mickey and Charlie were working for killers much closer to Sidney.

On this note, Jessica’s accomplice Marco also breaks with franchise tradition, and Scream 7’s second killer falls into a classic slasher trap in the process. Although Embry is a fairly notable character actor with a long career of TV and movie credits, his Marco is a random character who is only glimpsed in one earlier scene of the movie.

As such, the revelation that he is working for Jessica feels forced, since viewers never had a reason to suspect such a minor, insignificant character. Of course, this also plays into the fact that Jessica’s Scream 7 killer motivation doesn’t make much sense, as she became Sidney’s close friend because she was annoyed Sidney wasn’t available to the public.

Scream 7’s Killer Reveal Breaks A 30-Year Franchise Tradition

Jessica then started killing Sidney’s loved ones to turn Tatum into a final girl, but inexplicably failed to prioritize killing Sidney herself. As a fan of Sidney’s life story, Jessica would undoubtedly be aware that Tatum’s mother had already survived no less than five massacres and defeated as many spree killers, meaning Jessica was almost certain to fail.

The only thing that Jessica had going for her was the element of surprise, but she lost this by going after Tatum’s unguarded, inexperienced friends like Hannah first instead of Sidney. This gave Sidney time to mobilize a defense, which inevitably resulted in the arrival of backup in the form of Chad, Mindy, and Gale.

As evidenced here, Jessica’s plan doesn’t make much sense upon review, and this could be because the plot veers so far from the franchise’s typical Ghostface motives. Without a close personal connection to Sidney, Jessica’s Scream 7 motivations are diffuse, which makes the many mistakes she makes all the more inscrutable and makes her Scream franchise story unclear.