The new I Know What You Did Last Summer. Loosely based on the 1973 novel of the same name by Lois Duncan, I Know What You Did Last Summer capitalized on the revival of the slasher genre in the 1990s and introduced the audience to a group of friends haunted by a mysterious killer.

Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr), Barry (Ryan Phillippe), and Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) ran over a man and dumped his body in the water, but he was still alive. A year later, a killer in a raincoat wielding a hook targeted the group as he knew their secret, and only Julie and Ray survived. The sequel saw Julie and Ray confronting Ben Willis again and finally defeating him, but they will be pulled back into this nightmare in a new movie – or, at least, Ray will, and that’s why I need this new movie to avoid a legacy sequel tradition.

I Know What You Did Last Summer Shouldn't Kill Its Legacy Characters

I Know What You Did Last Summer Doesn’t Have To Follow That Legacy Sequel Tradition

I Know What You Did Last Summer was released in 1997 and got a sequel the following year, titled I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. In 2006, a straight-to-video standalone sequel, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, was released, and after a failed TV series on Amazon Prime Video, the franchise is coming back to life with a legacy sequel to the first two movies. Thanks to its place in the timeline, the new I Know What You Did Last Summer movie can bring back the survivors from the first two movies: Julie, Ray, and Karla (Brandy).

Freddie Prinze Jr. will return as Ray, while Jennifer Love Hewitt is still in talks to . Of course, it would be ideal to have both Ray and Julie back in the new movie, and even better if Karla returns (who was, arguably, the best part of the second movie), but just having Prinze Jr. onboard is enough for me to worry about I Know What You Did Last Summer 4 following what I think is the worst tradition in legacy sequels.

The biggest legacy sequels did the same at some point in their reboot timelines: killed legacy characters, in some cases just for the sake of shocking the audience.

The point of legacy sequels so far has been reviving franchises by bringing together a new generation of characters and original ones. The biggest examples of legacy sequels are Scream (2022) and Halloween (2018), which brought back its surviving main characters (Sydney, Dewey, and Gale in Scream, and Laurie in Halloween) and made them part of a new story with new characters. However, they did the same at some point in their reboot timelines: killed legacy characters, in some cases just for the sake of shocking the audience.

Scream 2022 killed Dewey in a way that was very hard to believe once the Ghostface killers were revealed, and the Halloween reboot waited until the second movie, Halloween Kills, to get rid of three legacy (minor) characters: Tommy Doyle, Sheriff Brackett, and Lonnie Elam. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise did the same with its 2022 legacy sequel of the same name, killing Final Girl Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) after only a couple of minutes of screen time.

There will have to be other reasons for Ray and Julie to be pulled back into the action as they might not be the targets this time.

I Know What You Did Last Summer 4 doesn’t have to kill its legacy characters to make space for the new generation – in fact, it would benefit a lot more from keeping them alive. Unlike Scream, Halloween, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the new I Know What You Did Last Summer movie won’t have Ben Willis (nor his son) back as the villain because he was killed in the second movie, so there will have to be other reasons for Ray and Julie to be pulled back into the action as they might not be the targets this time, only serving as “mentors” to the new characters.

Legacy Sequels Killing Their Original Characters Doesn't Always Work

Killing An Original Character Has To Be Properly Justified

Most of the above-mentioned deaths of original characters in legacy sequels were just to add drama to the story and didn’t really serve a purpose in the story, having little to no impact on the sequels. Dewey’s death was somewhat expected as he had been close to dying more than once in the previous movies, yet it was very hard to believe that the person who killed him did it so easily. Ultimately, Dewey’s death didn’t have much impact on Scream 2022 and Scream VI, with Gale briefly mourning his death and that’s it.

Killing original characters in legacy sequels has become a terrible tradition made just to shock the audience.

The deaths of legacy characters in Halloween Kills were even worse, as Michael Myers suddenly became supernatural (again) and rose again after being kicked, beaten, and shot multiple times to kill the Haddonfield mob around him, including Tommy and Sheriff Brackett. Killing original characters in legacy sequels has become a terrible tradition made just to shock the audience, but I Know What You Did Last Summer doesn’t have to follow that path.

The I Know What You Did Last Summer movies have been criticized for being unoriginal and predictable, so what better way to revive and, in a way, save the franchise than by avoiding killing Ray, Julie, and Karla and, instead, finally giving them the closure and happy ending they deserve after all these years. Ray, Julie, and Karla don’t need to die to make room for the new characters, instead being the link between different generations of viewers.