Scream 7 is in theaters and it keeps the franchise going with the potential for more films. In it, we see Sidney and her family, including daughter Tatum and husband Mark, as they face off against Ghostface. Each film comes with the usual set of questions and the biggest one is always the same. Who are the killers in Scream 7? Here’s what happens.
Sidney is living a quiet life in Piney Grove, working at a coffee shop and dealing with the woes of parenting a teenage daughter. Her kid Tatum is 17 and incredibly curious about her mom’s past, but Sid always shuts her out. Well, the doors soon blow wide open when Sidney gets a video call from someone who looks like an aged and battered Stu Macher. He is outside of Tatum’s school and begins his murdering spree.
Scream 7 Ghostface Killer #1: Karl, We Barely Knew You
Sidney, Mark, and Piney Grove PD arrive but not before Ghostface slices up a couple of kids. Later on, Piney Grove PD does a poor sweep of Sidney’s house to make sure no one is there. Surprise, Ghostface is in there and an intense chase scene happens that leads to Ghostface standing on their street. In cartoonishly fun fashion, an SUV barrels over Ghostface, killing the person under the mask. The driver is Gale Weathers, who arrives with the Meeks twins in tow. They apparently work for her now.
This is when we get the identity of the first (sorta) Ghostface killer. His name is Karl Gibbs and he’s an escaped patient from Fallbrook, a psychiatric hospital a couple of hours away. Sidney recognized Karl from earlier that morning when he picked up a coffee at her job and looked kinda creepy. He never even got a chance to speak, so no fun monologue for him. This leads Sidney and Gale to go to that location to find out more information about Karl.
Fallbrook Supervisor Marco Is a Ghostface Killer and Google AI Specialist
There, they meet Marco, a supervisor who reveals that Karl was a murderer. Sidney shows Marco a still from the Stu Macher call and, to her shock, Marco claims that guy was once at the facility. He went by “John Doe” due to amnesia and had spent years wandering the streets of California. This takes Sidney and Gale into a rabbit hole of how to determine if Stu was really alive or not.
And, the idea that Stu was one of the Ghostfaces was a part of the plot all the way up to the final scene. Two Ghostfaces hold Tatum hostage, taping her to a chair on the patio like Steve Orth. Sidney comes home and sees a video of several deepfake images of people like Mrs. Loomis, Dewey, Roman, and even Stu. Yep, Stu Macher is not alive and not the killer in Scream 7. It is Marco, the guy from that one scene whom we saw for three minutes. Marco explains that he is a tech genius who used to work for Google, so he was behind all that AI and deepfake foolery.
Sidney’s Neighbor Jessica Is the Main Ghostface Killer in Scream 7
And, the other killer is Jessica, Sidney’s seemingly friendly neighbor whose true crime obsessed son Lucas seemed like a more likely choice. We knew her slightly better after Sidney has a conversation with her about mothering at the coffee shop. She also briefly appears as a concerned neighbor after Karl’s vehicular manslaughter.
Jessica is the ringleader of this craziness and explains why she did it. She was in an abusive relationship with Lucas’ father and killed him after reading Sidney’s book Out of Darkness. If you remember, that’s the book she wrote about being a survivor in Scream 4. Jessica said Sidney’s solution to bad guys was to kill them, so she killed her husband. She ended up at Fallbrook, where she met Marco, to devise a plan. As far as I can tell, Karl was loosely tied to this plan as an accomplice and likely escaped with Marco’s help.
However, Jessica was disappointed that Sidney was mostly in hiding and didn’t even appear in NYC for the Ghostface killings. So she decided to move close to Sidney and orchestrate these killings to bring back Sidney’s inner Scream Queen. And Jessica wanted to kill Sidney in front of Tatum in hopes that she would birth a new generation of final girl.
Once Again, Every Ghostface Dies in Scream 7
Obviously, that did not happen. Sidney swiftly dispatches Marco with a shot to the head and both Tatum and Sidney shoot Jessica so much that her face falls off. Welp. Now Tatum is just like her mom with a host of dead friends and trauma that will last a lifetime.
So, there you have it. Jessica, Marco, and Karl (I guess…) are the killers for Scream 7 and get to add themselves to the long legacy of those who dared to don the Ghostface mask.