Neve Campbell didn't realize until after the fact that Sidney Prescott's husband in Scream 2022 was a franchise Easter egg. Scream debuted on January 14, 2022, nabbing a robust opening weekend that nearly grossed more than Scream 4's entire domestic run. The film follows a new iteration of Ghostface who is hunting down people related to characters from the original films in an attempt to create a "re-quel," in which new characters are blended with "legacy characters" returning from previous films, including Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), Dewey Riley (David Arquette), and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell).

Campbell has been playing final girl Sidney Prescott since the original 1996 Scream. The character has grown and changed quite a bit over the course of five movies, and Scream 2022 finds her in a place she's never been before: happily married and a mother to twins. Although neither her husband nor children are seen onscreen, her phone conversation with Dewey reveals that her spouse's name is Mark. This is a sneaky reference on the part of screenwriters Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt, implying that she is now married to Patrick Dempsey's character Mark Kincaid from Scream 3.

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While speaking with Screen Rant about her role in Scream 2022, Neve Campbell was asked about the Mark Easter egg. She revealed that "someone just told me that yesterday," and that she "didn't realize it when I was saying it." Considering that it's been 22 years since the release of Scream 3 and the character has not appeared since then, this is not surprising, though she admitted that, "what's funny is I played Patrick's sister in Grey's Anatomy!"

Sidney and Mark talking in Scream 3

This fits in organically with the universe, given that the ending of Scream 3 implied Mark and Sidney getting together. However, he was neither seen nor mentioned 11 years later in Scream 4. Certain lines in the new film imply that they may have met again and gotten back together in the intervening years, which would account for this.

The Scream franchise is so packed with references that it makes sense to not catch all of them at first blush, even if one has been involved since the very beginning. The same thing happens with the Marvel films, which are chock full of comic book references, as Angourie Rice learned recently when she put together only after the fact that one of her Spider-Man: No Way Home lines was a sly MJ reference. What's important is the fact that Campbell focused on bringing her all to making the character come back to the screen in an organic and satisfying way, which she certainly did.

Next: Scream 6: Every Legacy Character & Survivor Who Could Return