Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for Scream (2022) ahead!
While some fans were sad to see that Matthew Lillard’s Stu didn’t make an appearance in Scream’s 2022 reboot, the franchise now has the perfect opportunity to bring back the iconic villain in Scream 6. Director Wes Craven’s iconic teen slasher Scream was met with critical acclaim upon its 1996 release, with particular praise being offered to its stellar young cast. Among the fresh-faced stars who left an impression on reviewers were Scream’s two surprise killers, Skeet Ulrich’s brooding Billy and Matthew Lillard’s goofy Stu.
While the dreamy Billy was an obvious suspect from his first on-screen appearance, Stu was a genuine surprise for many viewers. The actor’s comedic timing made the supporting character a lovable goofball, and the revelation that he was a cold-blooded killer came as a shock to many viewers. As such, many franchise fans hoped that Lillard’s Stu would appear in 2022’s Scream reboot, and were understandably surprised when it was Ulrich who made a cameo instead.
With Billy canonically killed by a bullet in the head, few viewers expected him to appear in 2022’s Scream reboot. However, Scream 2022 established a new generation of heroes and victims who were related to Billy Loomis, Randy Meeks, and Stu, resulting in Billy making an appearance as a hallucinated ghostly father figure. Since Scream 2022 also kept Gale Weathers and Sidney Prescott around, the franchise is now perfectly primed to bring back Lillard’s Stu in Scream 6. Since Ulrich already returned as a forever-young CGI-assisted imaginary friend, bringing back the older Lillard as aging, out-of-prison Stu would be a perfect tribute to the character. Stu could have returned in Scream 2022 as a similar hallucination but, unlike Billy, he never died on screen and as such still has the option of returning as a living character.
The potential of Stu’s return is now particularly potent as Scream 6 could set him up as a suspect or kill him off, or both. Already, Scream 2022 laid the groundwork for this twist by both killing off Stu’s suspicious nephew early on and by heavily implying that Billy’s daughter was the reboot’s new killer. Since Sam’s good name was cleared by the end of Scream 2022, a clever way to build on this subversion would be to bring back the franchise’s only surviving killer and make the older Stu a genuinely innocent, repentant character.
The reboot focused not only on how Scream 2022’s returning franchise characters had changed but also on how Billy and Randy’s relatives are both similar to and different from the older characters they are related to. Thus, Scream 6 bringing an original Scream character back into the fray would give the franchise a chance to show how much its characters have grown while also reviving a much-loved slasher villain in the process. Scream 2022 proved that even Billy could be a good influence when the villain helped his daughter find her killer instinct during the finale, and Lillard’s fan-adored Stu deserves the same treatment from the next movie in the series. Thus, while he may not have made the cut in Scream’s 2022 reboot, Stu is better equipped than ever to appear in Scream 6.
