Is 'Scream's Original Ghostface Killer Still Alive?

Because Hollywood is not unlike a knife-wielding slasher in its approach to fresh new ideas, we’re getting a fifth Scream movie next year, simply titled Scream because they just ran out of numbers, I guess. But before we get to the reboot, some of us still have pressing questions about what happened in the original movie, namely that Matthew Lillard’s character Stu, part of the original duo of Ghostface killers, might still be alive. Even Lillard himself speculated that Stu could have survived the seemingly fatal TV to the head.

This isn’t totally out of nowhere. For one thing, horror movie villains are generally harder to kill than a cockroach made of kevlar. But also, according to Lillard, Stu almost made a dramatic return to the franchise. While Scream 3 was ultimately a tongue-in-cheek Hollywood satire (one featuring not only Carrie Fisher’s doppelgänger, but also the comedic stylings of Jay and Silent Bob), apparently, it originally was going to reveal that Stu was the film’s big surprise villain, and had been plotting his revenge against Sidney Prescott from behind bars. But then the script was thrown out due to a tone shift following the Columbine school shootings.

Further pouring fuel on the fire of rampant speculation, attentive fans noticed that Matthew Lillard is actually in Scream 2. You can just make him out behind Jamie Kennedy for a split second during a party scene. 

So was it just a fun cameo between friends or proof that Stu is secretly biding his time in the shadows, waiting to strike? Maybe we’ll have to wait until Scream comes out to find out what happened in Scream, or maybe its sequel, which will presumably also be called Scream.

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Top Image: Dimension Films