Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 director David Blue Garcia teases original lead Sally Hardesty's story for the new direct sequel. Marilyn Burns first brought the character of Sally to life in 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a free-spirited young woman who ventures through the titular state to investigate her grandfather's grave after learning of a series of grave robberies in the area. In the process, Sally and her friends cross paths with Leatherface and his cannibalistic family and most end up dead, save for Sally who escapes in the back of a passing pickup truck.
Following the passing of Marilyn Burns in 2014, Olwen Fouéré has picked up the role of Sally for the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film picks up 50 years after the events of the original film as she lives near the small town of Harlow and learns of Leatherface's reemergence, heading to the small town in an effort to put the brutal killer in the grown once and for all. With Sally now officially back on screen for Texas Chainsaw Massacre, those behind the film are offering some insight into the final girl's return and where she's been in the time since.
In time for the film's release on Netflix, director David Blue Garcia spoke exclusively with Screen Rant to discuss the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre. When asked about the return of original final girl Sally, the filmmaker expressed his belief it was important for her to come back and help guide the new group of survivors in their fight against Leatherface. See what Garcia said below:
"I think Sally was important to bring back because we wanted to sort of pass the torch from her character to the next group of characters, and it quite literally happens in the film. In 50 years, she's been dealing with her own past, her own trauma, something she ran from initially. But now she's trying to fight. She wants to get her revenge, but she just hasn't been able to find Leatherface. It's nice to be able to tell and complete her story, continue her story."
When it was first announced that Sally would be recast and return for Texas Chainsaw Massacre, many audiences immediately took to noting the parallels between this plan and that of Danny McBride and David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy. Both slasher efforts were bringing back their iconic final girls as a more hardened and traumatized version of their former selves as they have primarily only thought of getting revenge for the masked figures that nearly ruined their lives. Garcia's discussion of Sally's return feels right in line with Jamie Lee Curtis' return as Laurie Strode, though his note of being able to "complete" her story may hint that either she or Leatherface will meet their end in the film.
In the years that followed the original film, Sally's time in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise saw progressively worse evolutions for the character. The opening monologue for the original 1986 sequel explained she had been left catatonic by the events of the first film while the third said she died in a private health care facility, only for Burns to appear in a non-speaking cameo in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Only time will tell how audiences respond to Sally's return in the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre as it is now streaming on Netflix.