2011’s “Scream 4” seemed to indicate that a new core set of characters would be taking over the franchise from the original surviving trio of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette), but of course, that all turned out to be a ruse, as all of them were murdered and two of them turned out to be the Ghostfaces responsible.
That left 2022’s new younger core characters — Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown), and Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding) — to properly take the torch passed to them by Sidney, Gale and Dewey, legacy sequel-style. “Scream VI” sees the film and, by extension, the series continuing forward with primarily those “Core Four,” as only Gale and a not-dead Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere) from “Scream 4” return to the series.
This passing of the torch to a new ensemble has happened before in the slasher world, however, specifically in “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” In part 3, “Dream Warriors,” the heroine of the first “Nightmare,” Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), returns, shepherding a group of troubled Elm Street teens as they fight Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) in their dreams. The survivors of that film appear in part 4, “The Dream Master,” where they’re quickly killed off, passing the torch (and their dreamland superpowers) onto the new Final Girl, Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox).
In the “Elm Street” series “dream trilogy” of 3, 4, and 5 (“The Dream Child”), this soft reset occurs in each film, with a new ensemble of heroes (or victims, as the case may be) featuring alongside at least one recurring character. The New York City setting of “Scream VI,” along with a de-emphasis on the legacy characters (though not the legacy of the series itself) gives the installment a very “dream trilogy” vibe.
