Sidney Prescott is back in Scream 2022, but her role in the story is very small and she doesn't have much screen-time either. Here's why.

Warning: spoilers for Scream 2022

Scream 2022 brings together the three survivors of the previous movies and a new generation of characters, but the franchise’s final girl, Sidney Prescott, isn’t in it much – and here’s why. Joining the ongoing trend of reboots/sequels (or as they called them in the movie: requels) is the Scream franchise with a fifth installment that arrives a decade after the release of Scream 4. Simply titled Scream, the movie is set in the same continuity as Wes Craven’s movies, and true to the style of its predecessors, it addresses new horror clichés, “rules”, styles, and even the topic of toxic fandom.

Set 25 years after the events of the first movie, Scream 2022 takes viewers back to Woodsboro, where a new Ghostface killer has begun a new murder spree. After her sister, Tara (Jenna Ortega), is attacked, Sam (Melissa Barrera) returns to Woodsboro to look after her and discover who’s behind the Ghostface mask. The killer is following new horror movie rules and going after those connected to past killers and murder sprees, which brings back Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Dewey Riley (David Arquette), and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) who join forces one more time to stop the killer.

As the Final Girl of the franchise, Scream 2022 wouldn’t have been complete without Sidney Prescott, but as a reboot of this universe, the movie also had to make way for a new generation of characters and a new final girl. Although Sidney was shown in the Scream trailers prominently, her role in the story was more of an elevated cameo than an active one, showing up in the final third of the movie and taking part in the final showdown against the killer, just to further settle her status as the franchise’s (first) Final Girl. Although it might be disappointing to some that Sidney doesn’t get much screen-time nor relevance in the story of Scream 2022, it was the best way to go with this “requel”.

Scream 2022 is the fifth installment in the franchise built by Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, but it’s also a legacy movie, meaning that it recalls older stories (as exciting as the story is, it ultimately follows the same pattern as the original one) and characters, but it also introduces a new generation of characters who can carry on with the franchise if the writers decide so. It makes sense, then, that Scream is moving on from Sidney, hence why she isn’t the lead now and instead left that spot to Sam, but at the same time, Sidney is the key to the Scream franchise, as she was at the core of every murder spree in the previous movies, and she had to be included even if in a minor capacity. The same can be said about Dewey and Gale, with the former coming out of isolation to apply everything he learned in the past so he could save as many lives as possible, and the latter showing up late as well but not as late as Sidney (and her role was ultimately smaller than Sidney’s).

Although many Scream fans surely expected to see more of Sidney Prescott, more so after how often she appeared in the trailers, her smaller role in Scream 2022 is far from disappointing, as it fits the legacy theme of the movie and honors her place as the franchise’s Final Girl, while also making way for new characters and survivors that ended up learning a lot from her, Dewey, and Gale.

Next: Scream 2022's Ending Finally Paid Off Wes Craven's Cruellest Trick