Scream 7 is positioning itself as a proper homecoming for the iconic Sidney Prescott, but it’s also flirting with a messier idea—slightly reshaping canon to heighten the emotion and crank the nostalgia. From the reveal of Sidney’s secret teenage daughter to the hard pivot back to Billy-and-Stu-era iconography, or even a few lines that don’t sit neatly beside earlier films, Scream 7 has already sparked the kind of continuity arguments the franchise usually skewers through Stab.

Here’s what feels a little shaky, why it’s giving me pause after 30 years of unwavering love, and why I still think Scream can tighten the blueprint into something sharper if it comes back for Scream 8. But make no mistake: it’s still the best ongoing horror franchise around, and Sidney is still a top-tier final girl. The details are just where it gets complicated.

Scream 7 | Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group

Continuity Changes: Sidney’s Daughter and the Occasional Misstep

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: Sidney Prescott’s suddenly 17-year-old daughter, Tatum Evans. Isabel May steps into the role with obvious star power, and the full-circle mother-daughter dynamic Neve Campbell has teased sounds genuinely moving—Sidney protecting her kid thirty years after Maureen’s murder is extremely poetic. Yet the math is hard to ignore. If Scream 7 is set in 2026 and Tatum is 17, she was born around 2009. That means Sidney was already a mom (and presumably in a serious relationship) by the time Scream 4 rolled around in 2011. In that movie, Sidney shows up promoting her book, single (something that was even loosely referenced by her publicist), guarded, talking about having “people I care about” being the extent of her personal reveals.

Continuity hounds like me are used to rolling with the punches in other franchises, but Scream has typically avoided that path (and been praised for it). But even when they do commit to a change in past entries, they’ve made perfect sense—for example, Wes Craven himself low-key confirmed Kirby’s survival in Scream 4 was always part of his plan, turning her fake-out, off-screen death into beautiful connective tissue that fulfilled the vision in Scream VI. This new daughter reveal feels far shakier. We’re asked to believe Sidney hid an entire family while casually dropping Easter eggs about her personal life. Sure, it’s not impossible to explain away in-universe, but it shifts how we view Scream 4 retroactively, and not in the organic way the best retcons land.

Another example comes from a moment meant to reference the original film while essentially disregarding a sequel. More specifically, in a promo clip, Sidney tells Gale, “She was the last friend I ever trusted,” referring to Tatum Riley in the first film. It’s a sharp line on paper: it needles Gale’s messy history with Sidney and instantly frames Tatum as the emotional reference point that still hurts the most. The problem is what it implies. Said out loud, it flattens the timeline and quietly shoves the beloved Hallie to the side, even though Scream 2 positions her as Sidney’s college roommate, friend, and someone who ultimately dies for her proximity to Sidney.

It’s not that the franchise shouldn’t dig into Sidney’s relationships with the dead. In fact, that’s actually part of the franchise appeal. But once you start making blanket statements about relationships and events, you’re basically inviting extra attention to continuity, especially from fans who can recite these films from memory.

Still, in the film’s defense, if the intention is that Sidney actually means “last friend from before everything changed,” or “last friend from home,” that kind of moment could have benefited from a small tweak to carry that same meaning. These details matter.

Over-Indulging in Nostalgia and Revisiting a Killer from the First Scream—Again

Then there’s the nostalgia dial cranked to eleven. We adore callbacks—Gale’s somewhat frustrating tendency to backslide after a “revelation” in a previous chapter, a cheeky reference to past kills, or even the leather jacket moment being teased that gives Sidney chills.

But the marketing blitz around Stu Macher’s house burning down and making a return (yes, Matthew Lillard is back, and the trailers are having too much fun with it) crosses into pure Stab territory. Regardless of if Stu is actually alive, a deepfake copycat, or something else entirely, the heavy teasing already feels like it was designed as a way to revive the hype of a former fan favorite character—even if it’s partially at the expense of the franchise. This level of fan service also risks tipping from loving homage into something the original Scream would have skewered mercilessly in its Stab series.

And we totally get it—we love Billy and Stu, we really do. But if the goal was another nostalgia tether, it would’ve been more interesting to pull from a different corner of the franchise. There are plenty of killers with unresolved fallout, and tapping one of those legacies (like Roman) could’ve expanded the mythology instead of looping back to the same two names we’ve come to expect. Hell, even another chaotic Maureen thread would’ve tracked naturally, but I digress.

Accepting the New Scream Because We Still Love the Franchise

Here’s the thing, though—we have to accept that the new Scream is something very different. The core DNA is still there—strong women, sharp dialogue, that signature tension—but the franchise has grown up, had kids when he didn’t even realize it (literally), and walked through some very real-world behind-the-scenes fires.

That said, I’m still here because after 30 years, Scream still matters to me. It taught us to question the rules, laugh at the absurdity, and root for final girls who refuse to stay victims. So Even if Scream 7 is starting to feel a little too Stab-coded, I’ve got too much history with this franchise to walk away now.

Scream 7 is in theaters everywhere.