Although it was a genuine surprise when Scream 2022 killed off Dewey, Scream 6 can’t afford to repeat this trick with one of the Scream franchise’s only remaining legacy heroes. It is unusual for a slasher franchise to have a recurring cast of beloved heroic characters. While viewers do look forward to seeing Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees return to kill a new batch of victims in every new franchise installment, these killers are always subdued (however temporarily) at the end of each movie. More importantly, they are technically the villains of their movies.
The heroes of most slasher franchises are the teens who are picked off one-by-one until only a final girl remains. This is what makes every entry into the Scream franchise unique since the series managed to build up an array of lovable recurring characters even though its slasher movie formula means each Scream movie needed to kill off some of these heroes. Even though Scream 2 broke a lot of hearts when the sequel killed off Randy (and Scream 3 annoyed many viewers when Cotton Weary was murdered), few characters have earned a bigger place in the hearts of horror fans than Gale, Dewey, and Sidney.
Scream 6 Shouldn't Kill Off Gale
As such, since Scream 2022 brutally killed off Dewey to establish the stakes of the requel, Scream 6 shouldn't kill off Gale. With Dewey gone, Scream 6’s higher body count could see the sequel kill off Courtney Cox’s sardonic reporter to continue breaking away from the franchise's past. This would also cement the movie's status as a legacy sequel since it could work as a playful homage to how each Star Wars sequel killed one of the three central characters from the original trilogy. However, Gale deserves better since she has already lost Dewey.
Gale and Dewey’s romance was one of the sweetest elements of the Scream franchise, a gory set of slasher movies that have a lot of heart but little in the way of happy endings. Whenever heroes like Randy and Cotton ended up on the wrong end of a knife, viewers could console themselves with Gale and Dewey’s surprisingly sweet relationship. However, now that Neve Campbell’s Sidney won’t be in Scream 6 and Dewey died while he and Gale were on bad terms, it would be incredibly bleak for the series to do away with its last link to the past.
How Scream Can Move Away From The Past Without Killing Legacy Characters
Fortunately for the creators of Scream 6, the sequel doesn’t need to kill off Gale to move away from the past of the franchise. For one thing, Scream 6 has already uprooted the action of the franchise from the sleepy small town of Woodsboro to New York City, a substantial change that means the sequel won’t feel like its predecessors. For another, Scream 6 will bring back Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby Reed, Gale, and the survivors of Scream 2022, meaning it will feature three generations of Scream stars.
As such, Scream 6 can bounce between generations without leaving any characters safe from Ghostface’s wrath. Scream 6’s city setting gives the sequel a fresh tone while the presence of so many characters from various eras means that the deaths will be impactful even if the sequel doesn’t repeat Scream 2022’s devastating Dewey demise with Gale. As such, Scream 6 doesn’t need to bring back Scream 2022’s most shocking moment and could harm the Scream series as a whole if it does.