Stu Returns

Before I took a pregnancy break from this newsletter, I was planning on finishing, finally, an essay about Scream that I’ve been writing and rewriting and trying to pitch outlets to no avail. It would have been for its 28th anniversary in December. But then my baby came, and (rudely) she doesn’t like to talk about Ghostface. That essay will come, but for now it’s time we speculate about something: Stu’s return.

I’m a diehard Scream fan. While I love the franchise as a whole, there is nothing that beats the original and there simply was no need to make any more. It was terrifying but also funny, it was formulaic and also not. It created the most popular Halloween costume for eternity (literally elementary school students are still Ghostface every year).

But the franchise did continue, and so the fate of Stu, played by Matthew Lillard, continues to be debated among fans. In the original Scream, Stu is electrocuted when a TV gets dropped on his head—a scene that could no longer happen with modern TVs I might add. It was a gnarly death along the lines of “death by stereo” from The Lost Boys. It seems pretty cut and dry that he couldn’t make it out of that, but this is Scream so the question has to be asked, did he really die? Some will tell you to let it go; he couldn’t have survived. But some of us hold out hope. There are two main reasons fans believe Stu is really alive and will eventually make his grand appearance:

1. Horror movie rules say the killer always comes back for one last scare

2. The original plot for Scream 3 supposedly had him doing just that

Fans of the original know that when Billy is seemingly dead in the final act, Randy tells Sidney: “This is the moment when the supposedly dead killer comes back to life, for one last scare.” As he pops up, she delivers a final blow. “Not in my movie,” she says. In Scream, there’s always a final scare.

But Stu doesn’t come back for one last scare. Scream is all about misdirection, making, breaking, and falling into horror movie tropes. It breaks the rules—like killing its biggest star, Drew Barrymore—and it also falls right into them—remember Sidney running up the stairs because she couldn’t get her door unlocked moments after making fun of women in horror movies who always seem to run up the stairs instead of out the front door? So, does Stu’s one-time death mean he really is lurking around a corner somewhere or was it just another way of them breaking their own rules and misdirecting audiences?

That’s continuously up for debate, but something that can’t be denied is that the writer intended for him to come back in Scream 3. The original script called for an ending that revealed Stu had been orchestrating teenagers in another Ghostface killing spree. But after the Columbine High School shooting, the idea was scrapped, as they thought the world had seen enough teenage killers (I wonder what they think of life today). Instead, we got a plot about the Stab movies introduced in Scream 2. Instead of Stu orchestrating it, we learn that before the first movie, Roman actually convinced Stu and Billy to kill Maureen Prescott, setting off the chain of events a year later.

When Scream 5 was released (11 years after the fourth movie), I wanted Stu to make his return. It was the only way I thought the franchise should end. I even went to see it in theaters opening week so I couldn’t accidentally be spoiled if he did (and I hate movie theaters tbh). He wasn’t the killer, but in a blink-and-you’ve-missed-it scene, while Richie is watching YouTube, one of the suggested videos is titled "Did the real-life Stu Macher survive?" A clue or just a nod to the fan speculation? This scene also shows a video confirming that Kirby survived Scream 4. She shows up in Scream 6, but Stu is again notably absent.

The fifth and sixth installments kind of mirror the first and second movies. Scream 5 (confusingly called simply Scream, but will be referred to with the number in this newsletter) involves a home-alone invasion and a boyfriend killer like Scream does and Scream 6 takes place when the main characters are off at college, as does Scream 2. Now that Scream 7 (hopefully the last one) is officially in the works, fans have to wonder if it will mirror Scream 3.

Then two weeks ago, Matthew Lilliard posted a video of him writing “My mom and dad are gonna be so mad at me,” his famous and hilariously delivered line. I nearly rocketed out of bed, I could barely believe it. But then, I started to think, if Stu was really going to return why would they spoil it before filming even begins? I went to sleep suspicious but hopeful. Then it was announced that Scott Foley who played Roman is also returning. Roman did get a final kill, which makes me think this is less a Stu returns and more a flashback scene to Roman’s murder orchestrating. We did get flashbacks of a de-aged Billy in the fifth movie, but can they really make the trio look like teens again? Will it be more like the Saw franchise’s attempt to make Tobin Bell play his younger self by simply putting on a baseball hat?

Scream has always been about appreciating horror movies. The fifth installment was about appreciating Scream, but even it took the risk of killing off, spoiler alert, fan-favorite Dewey (after going back to make sure Ghostface got his final blow, I might add). Main characters can die; can dead characters come back?

Neve Campbell’s Sidney was notably absent from the sixth movie but she has also signed on to this one. While a flashback is the most likely scenario, in the Scream universe you can never be sure. Is it a spoiler, a misdirection? Is it meant to seem like a too-obvious spoiler so you think you’re being misdirected only for it to actually be the thing you thought it was?

Unfortunately, we have an entire year to speculate, because Scream 7 isn’t set to be released until February 27, 2026. (And I’m choosing to ignore that Joel McHale was cast as Sidney’s husband.)