Scream 7 Ending Explained

Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any mid- or post-credits scenes in Scream 7. The answer is yes! Rather than the credits outright halting, there is a comedic “during-credits” scene (think Principal Rooney on the bus in Ferris Bueller) that runs for a bit alongside the closing credits scroll.

Full spoilers for the movie follow!

It’s been an incredibly bumpy road for Scream 7 to arrive in theaters, with notably controversial and heated events behind the scenes that have included the film’s initial intended star being fired, the resulting fan outrage over that decision, another actor departing, its original director quitting, and the series’ creator and original star then returning to what was now a drastically overhauled story compared to what we would have originally seen.

But with the film now here, how does it all play out? Who’s behind the Ghostface mask this time, and what’s their motive(s)? Let’s break it down!

Is Stu Macher Actually Alive?

Announced early on, Matthew Lillard’s return to the franchise for Scream 7 has been a big deal. His murderous character, Stu Macher, from the first film way back in 1996 remains a fan favorite thanks to Lillard’s endearingly deranged performance. Stu’s potential return is a major plot point in this movie, as Sidney (Neve Campbell) begins to get video calls from the new Ghostface killer which show a taunting Stu on the other end, appropriately aged from when we last saw him, with his face covered in scars thanks to the TV set Sid dropped on his head at the end of the original Scream.

But as many characters in the movie note, we live in the era of deepfakes and AI. So did Stu actually somehow survive all these years and return to get revenge on Sidney, or is this an elaborate hoax by the real killers?

When Sidney goes to rescue her kidnapped daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), in the final act, the messages from Stu escalate to include other deceased faces from Sidney’s past claiming they’re behind all of this, including: Scream 2 killer Nancy Loomis AKA Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf); Scream 3 killer Roman Bridger (Scott Foley); and one of Sidney’s closest friends, the late Dewey Riley (David Arquette), in what is clearly meant to add to her anguish.

But while they keep the Stu charade going as long as possible, when Sid finally comes face to Ghostface and learns who the actual killers are, it turns out to just be that – a charade. None of these killers are Stu, who is (presumably) still quite dead and wasn’t somehow in hiding all these years. And it was indeed our greatest modern villain, AI, used to fake those messages to Sidney.

Who’s Really Behind the Mask(s)?

Scream 7 pulls a notable swerve from the usual formula about a third of the way in, when Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) makes her big entrance into the film by plowing down a Ghostface trying to kill Sidney, Tatum, and Sid’s husband, Mark (Joel McHale), with her van, outright killing the bastard. The mask is whipped off, and it’s…some random dude?

Okay, we did see this guy for all of 20 seconds earlier in the movie, glowering at Sidney at the coffee shop she owns, but that’s literally it, so the reveal is certainly confusing for both the audience and the characters. It turns out he’s an escaped mental patient named Karl who killed three women years before, which leads Sid and Gale to Fallbrook, the facility where Karl was locked up.

There, they meet Marco (Ethan Embry), who works at Fallbrook and has plenty of helpful info – not just about Karl, but also a mysterious, amnesiac John Doe former patient who Marco confirms to be Stu when shown a photo. Per Marco, this John Doe and Karl were close friends, setting up the idea that Stu had manipulated Karl into becoming his accomplice for these new killings.

It turns out that none of Marco’s story about Stu/John Doe is true, and Marco himself is one of the actual killers. But where Karl's reveal is definitely intentional as far as its “Who the hell is this?” feel, Marco’s unmasking seems like a step too far for a genuine, final showdown Ghostface reveal. That’s because Marco – a character I’m not even sure was named earlier – is literally only in the movie in that one sequence where Sid and Gale visit the mental hospital. It’s the kind of “oh, it’s that guy from that one scene!” reveal that Heart Eyes did in an intentionally jokey way last year, but it feels like there’s meant to be more weight behind it here.

To be fair, the most notable reveal is saved for last in terms of the character who actually had the most screen time and fits more of the old school “someone who’s been close to Sid for awhile now” vibe. The mastermind behind all of this turns out to be Jessica (Anna Camp), Sidney’s neighbor and friend. Even there, though, this feels pretty lackluster since Jessica only appeared a handful of times in the movie, and also because the movie had killed off or terribly wounded nearly every other possible suspect by this point – including the entirety of Tatum’s friend group, all of whom are murdered – leaving Jessica as one of the only viable possibilities…even if it’s an underwhelming one.

So What Was The Motive This Time?

Scream 7 is an entertaining movie with some fun kills, but it has an especially weak reveal when it comes to the killers, both in terms of who they are (and how little audience impact it has to learn their identities) and their motivations. Previous Scream killers have been motivated by revenge – more than once – but also by everything from the desire for a showy trial, to wanting to be famous for fame’s own sake, to nuclear-powered toxic fandom. This is a series that has always maintained its fun, skewed reflection of evolving pop culture and celebrity; unfortunately, Scream 7 feels very muddled in that area when it’s time for the killer to start monologuing.

Karl was apparently just a deranged stooge; he was already a killer, and he may have been a Stab movie superfan (though it’s hard to know if this was part of Marco’s ruse), but he was manipulated by the real killers that just aimed him in the right direction. He never has any unmasked dialogue, and the characters all know he couldn’t have been operating alone once he’s dead, so it feels okay to leave him as more of a cipher.

It’s with ringleader Jessica that things get dicey. She loved Sidney’s book, Out of Darkness (as introduced in Scream 4), about fighting through her traumatic experiences, and it empowered Jessica to do something about her abusive husband by killing him and covering up that murder. But then Jessica’s explanation takes another turn, as Scream 7 uses Sidney not going to New York in Scream VI to help stop that film’s killer – which, in real life, was because Neve Campbell had a pay dispute with the studio – as a plot point in this film’s story and Jessica’s motivation. As Jessica explains, Sid avoiding that fight in New York felt like a betrayal to Jessica, who saw her as someone who never backed down. So she decided she needed to get rid of Sidney for failing to live up to Jessica’s idealized version of her, but also planned to kill her in front of Tatum, who she thinks can then take her mother’s place as the new Sidney…or something?

It’s all very convoluted (obviously), and also feels like too much of an echo of what’s come before in terms of characters like Scream 4’s Jill trying to fashion herself as the “New Sidney” or Scream 5’s Sam finding herself thrust into that role. And while Jessica’s “I’ll solve my problems with a killing spree” approach is not unusual for this series, it just feels like too much crammed in too fast about a character we don’t know that well, especially because one of the victims in all of this was Jessica’s own teenage son, Lucas (Asa Germann)! She explains that she was just fine disposing of him because his interest in true crime and horror had her assuming that he’d turn out like his dad.

And then there’s Marco, who…well, who knows what his deal is. He met Jessica at Fallbrook after she checked herself in there as a patient and, amusingly, we are told he used to work at Google to hand-wave that he has the background to pull off the highly credible fake Stu AI videos. But why is he doing this? I guess because he liked Jessica a whole lot? The movie doesn’t seem too interested in Marco at all to really properly explain it.

Ghostface Loses Face?!

The final confrontation involves not just Tatum held prisoner, but Mark, who is not actually dead as it seemed earlier, but very badly wounded. Mark is able to help Tatum get free from her bonds, and Sid quickly shoots and kills Marco, taking him and his “I guess just because” motivation out quickly. Jessica makes a run for it, leading to a fight between her and Sidney where both women unleash on each other with various stabbings and bashings before Tatum shows up to save the day and shoot Jessica.

Of course, as established since the first Scream, you gotta shoot these suckers in the head to keep them down for the count, and when Jessica tries to jump Sidney and Tatum one last time, the mother and daughter both shoot her and shoot her and shoot her directly in the face, in the process turning that face into a bloody, disgusting pulp. It’s a pretty memorable exit for one of the less impactful Ghostfaces.

What's your favorite Scream movie?

Scream (1996)Scream 2Scream 3Scream 4Scream (2022)Scream VIScream 7

Does Scream 7 Have a Mid- or Post-Credits Scene?

As mentioned at the top, Scream 7 does have its own version of a mid-credits scene…or during-credits scene to be accurate.

After the initial primary credits, including the standard Scream main cast titles accompanied by imagery of each cast member alongside their name, the crawl with the rest of the end credits begins, but it’s accompanied by one additional scene running alongside it.

Though their fellow Core Four members Sam and Tara might not be present, the Meeks-Martin twins, Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown), return in Scream 7 and accompany Gale to town. It turns out that with Gale now doing her own true crime journalism show after her morning show ended, she’s using Chad and Mindy as her so-called interns, with Chad serving as her cameraman. Meanwhile, Mindy makes it clear she has her own aspirations as on-air talent, even attempting to sneak in reports away from Gale earlier in the movie only to be cut off by the savvy Ms. Weathers.

As is their lot in life, Chad and Mindy both get cut up by Ghostface along the way – though not nearly as brutally as last time out – and aren’t present for the confrontation with Jessica and Marco. But in the final proper scene of Scream 7, we see Gale telling an elated Mindy that she should be the one to file the report about what happened in the final showdown, as Gale instead goes to accompany Sid and Tatum to the hospital where Mark has been taken.

Who is your favorite Ghostface in the Scream film series?

Billy Loomis (Scream)Stu Macher (Scream)Nancy Loomis (Scream 2)Mickey Altieri (Scream 2)Roman Bridger (Scream 3)Jill Roberts (Scream 4)Charlie Walker (Scream 4)Amber Freeman (Scream 2022)Richie Kirsch (Scream 2022)Jason Carvey (Scream VI)Quinn Bailey (Scream VI)Ethan Landry (Scream VI)Wayne Bailey (Scream VI)

The closing credits show in-universe outtakes of Mindy and Chad as Mindy attempts to begin her intro, only to nervously and continually botch what she’s saying as Chad mocks his sister for even messing up her own name. Finally, she gets the intro right, presumably going into the full account of what happened as the sequence ends and the credits continue.

It’s an amusing little extra moment, though obviously nothing plot-significant. But it’s worth noting that Scream never had any sort of ending credits scenes at all prior to Scream VI, which had a super jokey, quick post-credit moment where Mindy mocked the very idea of post-credit scenes. So it seems that it’s now Mindy’s role to get increasingly longer, comedic bits for the Scream closing credits…