Summary

• Scream 7 won't continue the story of Sam and Tara Carpenter, leaving major questions unanswered.
• The absence of Sam and Tara's story in Scream 7 makes it unclear how the series will continue.
• The departure of Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega leaves numerous mysteries surrounding Sam and Tara unresolved.

Now that Scream franchise tradition, she survived both this intense ordeal and the rest of the plot. Sam and Tara made a formidable pairing, with the sequel Scream VI treating both characters as the movie’s dual protagonists.

However, the Scream 7 won’t be continuing their story. Barrera was fired from the sequel in November 2023 and Ortega exited the franchise shortly after due to scheduling conflicts with Wednesday season 2. As a result, Scream 7 will no longer have the story of the Carpenter sisters at its center. This is a major development since Sam and Tara were the heart of Scream 2022 and Scream VI, and on a more practical level, they were the main characters of both sequels. Without Sam and Tara's story, it is unclear how Scream 7 will continue the series. Furthermore, this leaves numerous Sam and Tara mysteries unresolved.

9 Sam & Tara’s Relationship

The sisters' emotional reunion at the end of Scream VI could have been strained by the aftermath.

Now that Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega are officially out of the franchise, some of Scream VI’s ending reunited them, it is impossible to know if this lasted.

8 Sam's Life In New York

The Scream VI heroine had no clear plans after the movie ended.

Sam’s paranoia was her biggest problem in Scream VI, and this would presumably only have gotten worse when Scream 7 forced her to find a job in New York City. Although she lived with Tara in the sequel, Sam freely itted that she didn’t know what her plan was for her future. While Sam’s visions of Billy in the Scream reboot movies were more pressing than her employment status in the last sequel, returning to relative stability meant she would have needed to find a solid life plan before Scream 7’s story began. Viewers will never know what that plan might have been.

7 Ghostface's Reason For Targeting Sam & Tara Again

Tara and Sam’s connection to Scream 7’s killer would be hard to justify.

Scream 2022 surprised viewers from its opening scene when Sidney Prescott wasn’t the first person targeted by the new Ghostface. The reboot’s villains sought out Sam and Tara precisely because they were only tangentially connected to one of the original movie's killers, Billy Loomis, while Scream VI’s killers attacked them because Sam and Tara killed a member of their family. As such, it is tough to see what personal connection Scream 7’s Ghostface could have had with the sisters. This means that the duo’s role in the franchise might have changed in the sequel.

6 Sam Or Tara Being Sidney Prescott's Replacement

Sidney’s role as the franchise heroine could have gone to either Scream reboot star.

Scream 7 could have transformed Sam and Tara into vigilantes like Scream 2022's Sidney, seeking out Ghostface instead of the killer hunting them down. One major trend in recent slasher franchise reboots is a tendency to transform reluctant, accidental Final Girls like Halloween’s Laurie Strode, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Sally Hardesty, or Scream’s original heroine Sidney into hardened, self-aware action heroines. Scream 7 could have revitalized Sam and Tara’s roles by making them proactive killer hunters, but the sequel’s failure to hold on to their actors makes this promising potential twist impossible.

5 Sam's Potential To Be Scream 7’s Ghostface

The Scream reboot heroine's killer instinct seemed likely to turn on her eventually.

Both Scream 2022 and Scream VI used Sam’s visions of Billy Loomis to imply that she might be the killer, only for both movies to later reveal that this was a red herring. While it seems obvious that the franchise’s new leading lady wouldn’t be its surprise killer, the Scream series pulled off this exact twist before when 2011’s Scream 4 revealed that Emma Roberts’s Jill was its villain, not its hero. However, despite all the reasons why Sam could be Scream 7's Ghostface, now that she won’t appear in the sequel, the foreshadowing in earlier sequels has been rendered pointless.

4 Tara & Chad’s Relationship

This promising pairing from Scream VI is now effectively over.

In Scream VI, Mason Gooding’s charming Chad begins a tentative relationship with the commitment-phobic Tara. This seemed like a rehash of Scream 2’s doomed Sidney romance and, indeed, Chad soon found himself on the business end of a hunting knife. However, Chad somehow survived his brutal stabbing and was in a stable condition by Scream VI’s ending. This means the relationship between him and Tara might have amounted to something more substantial if the series had continued to follow the story of Jenna Ortega’s character.

3 Christina Carpenter’s Scream Franchise Story

Tara and Sam’s mother will now never be explained.

Billy Loomis was revealed to be Sam’s father early in Scream 2022, adding further fuel to the fan theories about a potential villainous turn. However, neither the reboot nor its sequel ever explained much about Tara and Sam’s mother, Christina Carpenter. Scream VI shut down theories about Sam and Tara's mother when the pair said that she was no longer very involved in their lives, but her intimate connection to Billy remained a pretty major plot point. As such, it is unlikely that Scream 7 would have wholly ignored Christina, particularly when her return could have facilitated the comeback of Scream’s original villain, Stu Macher.

2 Sam & Danny's Relationship

Sam’s red-herring boyfriend from Scream VI won’t be explained in Scream 7.

Josh Segarra’s Danny was introduced in Scream VI and immediately became an obvious suspect due to his dour demeanor and unknown background. However, Danny turned out to be a red herring when Scream VI’s ending revealed that its family of killers was all related to one of Scream 2022’s villains. This left his relationship with Sam in a strange place. On the one hand, they could have grown closer after the sequel’s ending, since Sam somehow managed to form a connection with Danny while being stalked by killers. On the other hand, Danny could reasonably decide to end things since his girlfriend's sister openly suspected him of murder.

1 Sam & Tara's Possible Return To Woodsboro

The Scream heroines have no reason to return to the franchise’s original setting.

While Scream VI leaving Woodsboro was a surprise, this didn’t hurt the sequel’s reception. Since New York City proved unsafe for the Carpenter sisters, the next sequel could reasonably have seen Sam and Tara contend with whether to move home and confront their demons. However, Scream 7 can’t follow this story anymore since Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega's characters won’t be returning to the franchise.