Scream 7 Missed the Best Ghostface Twist That Would’ve Fixed Stu’s Return & That Awful Reveal

Scream 7 brought Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott back to the franchise and also had a surprising return for Matthew Lillard’s Stu Macher. While this created a lot of excitement and anticipation for the movie, what resulted was a letdown when the final credits began rolling. While there were some creative kills and a solid family story for Sidney and her daughter, the final reveal of the Ghostface killers was a tremendous disappointment, as one change could have saved the entire film’s story. The problems all started with Stu possibly being alive and surviving the original movie, or the final twist could at least have tied in with Stu a lot more than it did.

The twist ending of Scream 7 had a woman named Jessica Bowden (Anna Camp) unmasked as the new Ghostface, and two other Ghostface killers in the movie working for her. One was a patsy that they let die earlier, named Karl (Kraig Dane). The second was Jessica’s main partner in crime, Marco Davis (Ethan Embry). None of these Ghostface killers’ identities mattered in the end.

Stu’s Appearance Provided A Better Twist Ending for Scream 7

The reasons for the Ghostface killers were ridiculous, and it didn’t play into the use of Matthew Lillard’s return as Stu Macher. Jessica was someone who read Sidney’s book and gained courage from Sidney’s story. Jessica was in an abusive relationship, and thanks to seeing how Sidney could survive a murder plot by her own boyfriend, Jessica got up the guts to fight back. She killed her abusive husband and staged it as self-defense. She served some time in a mental hospital to help her recover, and that is where she met Karl, a patient there who was a serial killer, and Marco, an orderly at the hospital.

Jessica manipulated both men to start killing so she could kill Sidney and become the alpha survivor in their town. It was a bland premise, and there was a much better angle right there for the film to take. Marco was a computer expert, and he created deepfake videos that made it look like Stu Macher was still alive and that it was Stu who had returned for revenge. That was exciting at first, but having Stu back would also have been a mistake.

However, what could have worked better from a storytelling point of view would have been if Jessica weren’t a fan who read Sidney’s book and saw herself as another abuse survivor. Instead, what if Jessica were Stu’s sister? This would have tied in to the past movies’ ideas of family trauma, leading to more tragedies. Every movie seemed to lean into the idea of how that one traumatic moment that started everything (Sidney’s mother cheating on her dad) spiraled into the family drama that led to one murder after another for years to come.

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If Jessica were Stu’s sister, it would explain her desire for revenge on Sidney better than anything. She targeted Sidney’s daughter and wanted to take away her family, just as Sidney had taken away hers. It would have also been better explained using Stu in deepfake videos, tormenting Sidney, because Jessica would have been using her own brother’s face as she sought revenge. Using Stu’s face served no purpose other than to just deflect suspicion. Having Jessica kill her own son was also a misstep and showed this wasn’t about trauma and abuse at all. It was just a killer who wanted to hurt other people, the cheapest of reasons.

Jessica used a lot of deepfake videos in the finale of the movie, as she hunted down Sidney. She included deepfakes of Dewey, Nancy Loomis, and Roman Bridger, and it did nothing but add nostalgia to the movie. If these videos had served a purpose, they would have been utilized to better effect. Roman was Sidney’s half-brother, who blamed her for his struggles. Nancy was Billy’s mother, who blamed Sidney for her son’s death. Sidney already likely blamed herself for Dewey’s death. Having Jessica blame Sidney for Stu’s death would have fit the movie’s themes better.

Instead, Scream 7 chose a weak explanation and one that never fit into the franchise’s best movies. Yes, past movies showed fans of the fictional Stab movies and of Sidney’s stories becoming killers. Those are the weakest reasons. Scream 6 was great because it moved past that and had the family issues become involved again, even if it was a slight repeat of the Nancy Loomis storyline from Scream 2, with a parent wanting revenge because of the death of their child, the last Ghostface killer in each movie. If Scream 7 wanted to bring back Sidney, it needed a better reason than that she wrote a book. Jessica, being Stu’s sister, would have been much better than what the movie delivered.

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