Season one is set in Lakewood. Nina Patterson posts a video of Audrey Jensen kissing her girlfriend Rachel, and it goes viral. That night, home alone, Nina is taunted with texts from her boyfriend Tyler's phone. Tyler's severed head lands in her hot tub, and the killer slits her throat and throws her in the pool. The murder brings back the town's memory of Brandon James, a teenager with Proteus syndrome who killed five students in 1994 over a girl called Daisy. Daisy turns out to be Emma Duval's mother, Maggie, the town coroner. Emma starts getting calls, and the killer, wearing a mask based on Brandon's, makes it clear the game is about her.
True crime podcaster Piper Shaw comes to town. Rachel is hanged off her balcony and the death is staged as a suicide. The killer makes Emma choose which friend to save, and Riley Marra is stabbed to death on the roof of the sheriff's station. A video of Emma and Will leaks, Audrey's DNA turns up inside the killer's mask, and Emma learns Maggie had a baby with Brandon and gave it up. Will is killed by farm equipment rigged to split his head open while Emma watches. Teacher Seth Branson is arrested. Sheriff Clark Hudson is taken during the Halloween dance and later found tied to a tree, disemboweled. At the dock where Brandon's spree ended, Piper takes off the mask and says she is Maggie and Brandon's abandoned daughter. Audrey shoots her and Emma finishes her. Audrey then burns letters that tie her to Piper.
Season two picks up months later when Emma comes home from treatment for PTSD. Someone knows Audrey was in touch with Piper and starts blackmailing her. Jake Fitzgerald is hung upside down in a barn and cut open with a scythe, and the killer keeps texting Brooke as Jake until his body drops on her at a school pageant. Seth Branson loses a hand and later burns to death. Haley Meyers throws a party at an abandoned orphanage and is stabbed and hung under the banner. The killer buries Noah alive in a scavenger hunt, and while Emma and Audrey save him, his girlfriend Zoe Vaughn drowns in a box at Wren Lake. Mayor Quinn Maddox is run through with a pitchfork. Audrey's secret gets out, and Emma and Audrey become Lakewood's most wanted. At a movie theater the killer is unmasked as Emma's boyfriend Kieran Wilcox, who was Piper's partner. He shoots his cousin Eli and tries to pin it all on him. Kieran is caught and sentenced to life.
The two-part Halloween special jumps eight months. A courthouse guard is killed, and Kieran is murdered within the first ten minutes by someone in a Brandon James mask. On the anniversary of Piper's death, the survivors take a trip to Shallow Grove Island so Noah, Stavo and their editor Jeremy Blair can research the local killer Anna Hobbs. Emma falls for Alex Whitten, a young man living in the old family mansion. A killer in an Anna Hobbs mask murders Billie and a store clerk named Sid at a party, then the sheriff, whose head is left at the mansion. Alex is really Tom Martin, who killed the real Alex, took his name, and lured the group there because he was fixated on Emma. When she turns him down, he attacks her and she throws him off a balcony. Tom says he did not kill Kieran. Five months later Emma's father visits Kieran's grave, and a man calling himself Mr. James checks into a hotel.
Season three, titled Scream: Resurrection, drops Lakewood and starts over in Atlanta with the classic Ghost Face mask. On Halloween night in 2010, eight-year-old twins Deion and Marcus Elliot are attacked by a local legend called the Hook Man, and one twin dies. Eight years later Deion is a football star being scouted by a university. Mysterious notes land him in detention with musician Amir, horror fan Beth, activist Kym, her best friend Manny, and cheerleader Liv. Ghost Face starts taunting the group, and football player Avery is killed. Kym's neighbor is murdered, and Kym suspects drug dealer Shane, who is attacked and dies of an overdose.
On Halloween, Deion, Amir and Liv track down Luther Thompson, the Hook Man, who admits he hurt the twin that night. Ghost Face kills Luther, and Manny dies when a car explodes. At Manny's funeral Kym gets a note telling her to pick a friend to die. The group names Deion, and Amir, who went along with it, is killed in an elevator at Beth's house. Liv's father, Officer Reynolds, is attacked, and Ghost Face later goes after him at the hospital. Deion finds the mask in his half brother Jamal's trunk, and Jamal is wounded by Ghost Face at a party.
In the finale the truth comes out. The twins had switched costumes that Halloween, so the boy who died was really Deion. The survivor is Marcus, who has lived as Deion ever since, and not even their mother knew. Jamal has been Ghost Face, driven by jealousy over their father Earl. Beth, the goth horror fan, is his partner. She wanted a real horror story to star in. Jamal is left wounded and dies after telling Marcus the truth, and Marcus, Liv and Kym kill Beth. Months later Kym and Hawkins go to college together, Marcus heads to San Diego State with his mother and Liv, and when an unknown number calls, he lets it ring.
Episodes
Season 1
1. Pilot
June 30, 2015 · Directed by Jamie Travis · Written by Jill E. Blotevogel, Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie
A cyberbullying video humiliating Audrey Jensen goes viral, and that same night the girl who spread it, Nina Patterson, is stalked and killed in her own pool. The murders reopen Lakewood's memory of Brandon James, a disfigured teenager who killed five people twenty years earlier while obsessed with Emma's mother. Emma starts getting calls, and the killer makes clear the game is about her.
2. Hello, Emma
July 7, 2015 · Directed by Tim Hunter · Written by Jill E. Blotevogel, Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie
True crime podcaster Piper Shaw arrives in town to cover the murders. The killer, texting as Audrey, lures Rachel Murray onto her balcony, strangles her and hangs her to make it look like a suicide. Emma sees the killer at her work and takes a call.
3. Wanna Play a Game?
July 14, 2015 · Directed by Tim Hunter · Written by Jordan Rosenberg and Meredith Glynn
The killer uses Tyler’s phone to send the police the wrong way, then puts Emma on the phone and makes her choose which of two friends to save. She picks Brooke. Riley Marra is lured onto the school roof and stabbed to death. Flashbacks fill in the 1994 killings.
4. Aftermath
July 21, 2015 · Directed by Brian Dannelly · Written by Erin Maher and Kay Reindl
Emma, Audrey and Noah follow a clue to a derelict hospital and find what looks like the killer’s hideout. A severed heart arrives in the post for Emma. Audrey demonstrates a voice changer to prove anyone could be making the calls.
5. Exposed
July 28, 2015 · Directed by Brian Dannelly · Written by David Coggeshall
A sex tape of Emma and Will is leaked across the school servers, and Emma learns Will was part of a scheme to make money off it. A memorial is held. Noah traces malware planted on the school network. Kieran becomes the person Emma leans on.
6. Betrayed
August 4, 2015 · Directed by Julius Ramsay · Written by Jaime Paglia
Audrey’s DNA is found inside the Brandon James mask and she becomes the prime suspect, which splits the group apart. Emma and Kieran break into the old James house. Emma catches her mother with Sheriff Hudson.
7. In the Trenches
August 11, 2015 · Directed by Leigh Janiak · Written by Jordan Rosenberg and Meredith Glynn
Piper sends the group to an abandoned bowling alley where Emma meets the killer face to face for the first time. The killer then takes Will, rigs him into a farm trencher and puts Emma on a countdown to free him. She fails.
8. Ghosts
August 18, 2015 · Directed by Rodman Flender · Written by Erin Maher and Kay Reindl
Two weeks after watching Will die, Emma is back at school with insomnia and hallucinations of her dead father and of Will, and ends up in hospital. The biggest reveal is that Maggie had Brandon James’s child as a teenager and gave the baby up.
9. The Dance
August 25, 2015 · Directed by Ti West · Written by Jill E. Blotevogel, Dan Dworkin, Jay Beattie and Meredith Glynn
Seth Branson is in custody but the phone records do not add up, and Emma starts to think he is being framed. Piper tells Emma that Kieran is Brandon’s son. At the memorial dance the lights go out and a live feed shows Sheriff Hudson tied to a tree.
10. Revelations
September 1, 2015 · Directed by Jamie Travis · Written by Jaime Paglia
Hudson is found gutted and tied to a tree, Grayson is knifed at Brooke’s party, and the hunt ends at Wren Lake where Piper Shaw takes the mask off and says she is Maggie’s abandoned daughter by Brandon James. Audrey shoots her, Emma finishes it. Audrey then burns the letters tying her to Piper.
Season 2
1. I Know What You Did Last Summer
May 30, 2016 · Directed by Brian Dannelly · Written by Michael Gans and Richard Register
Four months on, Emma comes home from treatment to a Lakewood that has moved on. Somebody new starts blackmailing Audrey over her letters to Piper, and jumps her at the Zenith Theater. Jake, quietly extorting the mayor, is cornered in a barn.
2. Psycho
June 6, 2016 · Directed by Scott Speer · Written by Meredith Glynn
Noah chases a lead for his podcast to a seedy motel. Audrey, still being blackmailed, uses a voice changer to threaten the clerk. A message sends her to a storage unit where she finds Jake’s body.
3. Vacancy
June 13, 2016 · Directed by Jamie Travis · Written by Steve Yockey
Emma’s father Kevin turns up with an unsettling connection to Riley, the girl killed five months earlier. Audrey’s blackmailer moves from threats to violence. At the motel, Eddie Hayes is smashed with glass and finished with a corkscrew.
4. Happy Birthday to Me
June 20, 2016 · Directed by Daniel Stamm · Written by Brian Sieve
A surprise party goes wrong when the punch turns out to be dosed, and everybody trips through their worst memories. Police write Emma’s encounter with the killer off as a hallucination. At the school pageant, Jake’s body drops out of a banner in front of the whole room.
5. Dawn of the Dead
June 28, 2016 · Directed by Oz Scott · Written by Heath Corson
The school goes into lockdown after Jake’s body turns up, trapping everyone inside. Emma finds Jake’s phone planted in her bag. Noah finds proof that Audrey was writing to Piper, which makes her the accomplice.
6. Jeepers Creepers
July 5, 2016 · Directed by Evan Katz · Written by Anna Christopher
Noah arranges to meet Eddie, not knowing the killer is texting from the dead man’s phone. At the funhouse Noah is grabbed, but Audrey staged it to clear herself. She admits she brought Piper to Lakewood for a documentary and never expected murder. Elsewhere the killer takes Branson’s hand off.
7. Let the Right One In
July 12, 2016 · Directed by Rodman Flender · Written by Steve Yockey
Zoe pieces together Audrey’s link to Piper from Noah’s recordings. Ms Lang is thrown down a stairwell and survives. The killer traps Emma and Eli at a derelict estate and sets it alight.
8. Village of the Damned
July 19, 2016 · Directed by Gil Kenan · Written by Meredith Glynn
The centennial carnival goes ahead. The killer emails Emma a recording of Audrey’s confession. Kieran admits to a fatal car accident back in Phoenix. The burned remains of Eddie Hayes and Seth Branson are identified.
9. The Orphanage
July 26, 2016 · Directed by Leigh Janiak · Written by Brian Sieve
The leaked confession splits Emma and Audrey apart. At a party the two of them find Piper’s preserved body and learn that Piper and Kristen Lang were foster sisters at the Blessed Sisters Children’s Home.
10. The Vanishing
August 2, 2016 · Directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer · Written by Eoghan O’Donnell
The killer buries Noah alive in a coffin and makes Emma and Audrey answer riddles about his secrets against a dwindling air supply. They dig him out, and find the killer has sunk Zoe in a flooding coffin at Wren Lake at the same time. Flashbacks confirm Brandon James survived being shot.
11. Heavenly Creatures
August 9, 2016 · Directed by Jamie Travis · Written by Anna Christopher
The killer steals Emma’s dream journal, then hijacks Noah’s podcast feed to broadcast it along with Audrey’s confession. Kieran finds documents proving Mayor Maddox committed fraud, which Eli has been using against him.
12. When a Stranger Calls
August 16, 2016 · Directed by Patrick Lussier · Written by Eoghan O’Donnell
The killer wrecks the police car carrying Emma and Audrey and frees them into one last game. At the Zenith Theater the mask comes off and it is Kieran Wilcox, Piper’s boyfriend, avenging her. Emma chases him through the orphanage and takes him alive. In his cell he answers a call from someone claiming to be the real killer.
13. Halloween (Special)
October 18, 2016 · Directed by Oz Scott · Written by Jill E. Blotevogel, Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie
Eight months after Kieran’s arrest, a guard is killed and Kieran has his throat cut in prison. The group takes a Halloween trip to Shallow Grove Island to tour a murder house once owned by serial killer Anna Hobbs, and a brand new masked killer with no link to Lakewood starts picking them off.
Season 3
1. The Deadfast Club
July 8, 2019 · Directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer · Written by Brett Matthews
A 2010 Halloween flashback shows young Deion running while his twin Marcus is attacked by the Hook Man. Eight years later in Atlanta, Deion starts getting taunting messages and a Ghost Face killer works through the students stuck in his detention group. A silent disco where the whole crowd is wearing the mask ends in murder.
2. Devil’s Night
July 8, 2019 · Directed by Tanya Hamilton · Written by Leigh Dana Jackson and Kristi Korzec
Kym studies Halloween for tactics. The group decides Shane is the killer because his party mask matches, and lures him to the school to force a confession, and Ghost Face locks them all inside. Getting out, Deion sees the killer make a hand signal only his brother used.
3. The Man Behind the Mask
July 9, 2019 · Directed by Darren Grant · Written by Benjamin Raab and Deric A. Hughes
On the anniversary of Marcus’s death, Ghost Face blackmails Deion into a junkyard by promising the truth. They track down Luther Thompson, the real Hook Man, who says Marcus ran off and was later found dead in an abandoned car.
4. Ports in the Storm
July 9, 2019 · Directed by William Scharpf · Written by Penny Cox
Ghost Face herds the group into a trap and leaves them battered, then sends flowers with a note demanding they vote on who dies. Deion finds a burner phone in Liv’s drawer. The group learns Deion was voted to die, and that Amir cast the vote.
5. Blindspots
July 10, 2019 · Directed by Darren Grant · Written by Sherman Payne
Deion joins his half brother Jamal, who is DJing that night, and finds a Ghost Face mask in his boot. Kym and Beth come away convinced Liv is innocent. Deion races to the hospital to stop the killer reaching Liv’s father.
6. Endgame
July 10, 2019 · Directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer · Written by Brett Matthews
During the big game Ghost Face uses Jamal’s life to force a meeting, and the twist lands: Deion has been Marcus all along, because the twins swapped costumes in 2010 and the boy the Hook Man got was the real Deion. Jamal is the accomplice. Beth is Ghost Face, and she wanted to be the main character of her own horror story.
Release & Reception
- Runtime: 39 to 42 minutes per episode; 3 seasons, 30 episodes (the Halloween special counts as two)
- Distributor: MTV (seasons 1 and 2), VH1 (season 3); Netflix outside the U.S.
Season one ran on MTV from June 30 to September 1, 2015. Season two ran from May 30 to August 16, 2016, and the two-part Halloween special aired October 18, 2016. Season three, Scream: Resurrection, aired on VH1 from July 8 to 10, 2019.
The pilot drew 1.03 million viewers, the best of the run. Season one averaged 0.75 million. Season two opened at 0.40 million and averaged 0.38 million. Season three opened at 0.79 million, ended at 0.33 million and averaged 0.47 million.
Season one got mixed reviews: 57 on Metacritic from 21 critics and 53 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 43 reviews, with the consensus saying it leaned too hard on nostalgia for the films. The New York Daily News gave the pilot four stars out of five, and Variety praised the suspense and the music. The San Francisco Chronicle gave it one star out of four, and the Boston Herald gave it a C plus. Season two scored 92 percent from 12 reviews, the best of the three. Season three scored 40 percent from 5 reviews.
Awards: won 2015 TV Guide Awards for Favorite Horror Series, Favorite Villain for Amelia Rose Blaire, and Music Series of the Year. Nominated at the 2015 Teen Choice Awards for Choice Summer TV Show, Choice Summer TV Star: Female for Willa Fitzgerald, and Choice TV Scene Stealer for Bella Thorne. Nominated in 2016 for a Leo Award for Carlson Young and an MTV Fandom Award for Best New Fandom of the Year.
During season two MTV aired Scream After Dark, a three-part aftershow hosted by Jeffery Self. There was also a web series, Scream: If I Die, where the Lakewood survivors record last words before season two.
Netflix carried the show outside the U.S. starting October 1, 2015. In the U.S., season one reached Netflix on May 13, 2016, season two on September 30, 2016, and season three on September 1, 2019. Season three never ran on Netflix outside the U.S. because the Weinstein Company output deal ended.
Season 1. Rotten Tomatoes 52% from 42 reviews, average 5.45/10. Consensus: "Lacking truly compelling characters or scenarios, Scream is formed to trade too heavily on nostalgia for its big-screen predecessors in the franchise." Metacritic 57/100 from 21 critics ("mixed or average"). Season 2. Rotten Tomatoes 92% from 12 critics. Consensus: "Undeniably gripping and wickedly sharp, Scream returns with a killer sophomore season that manages to go further into its murderous ethos." Season 3. Rotten Tomatoes 40% from 5 critics. Notable reviews: David Hinckley (New York Daily News) gave four of five stars, praising "snappy, self-aware pop culture dialogue"; Brian Lowry (Variety) commended the suspense; David Wiegand (San Francisco Chronicle) gave one of four stars, calling the acting "bland, robotic, and uninteresting" and criticising the lack of racial diversity; Mark Perigard (Boston Herald) gave a C+, warning the series "risks putting viewers to sleep."
Deleted Scenes & Trivia
- Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, The Weinstein Company and Dimension Television were left off the season three credits after the 2017 allegations, even though they were involved in making it.
Trivia
- The show does not share continuity with the films.
- Several characters are built on film characters. Emma is based on Sidney, Noah on Randy, Kieran on Billy Loomis, Brooke on Tatum, Sheriff Hudson loosely on Dewey, Maggie on Maureen Prescott, Kevin Duval on Neil Prescott, and Piper on Gale Weathers and Jill Roberts.
- Every season two episode title, including the two Halloween parts, is the name of a horror or thriller film: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Psycho, Vacancy, Happy Birthday to Me, Dawn of the Dead, Jeepers Creepers, Let the Right One In, Village of the Damned, The Orphanage, The Vanishing, Heavenly Creatures, When a Stranger Calls, Halloween and Halloween II.
- Patrick Lussier, who edited the first three Scream films, directed the season two finale. Marianne Maddalena and Cathy Konrad, who produced the films, were executive producers on the show.
- Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, who later made Pet Sematary (2019), directed three episodes. Ti West directed The Dance, and Leigh Janiak, who later made the Fear Street trilogy, directed two.
- Sosie Bacon, who plays Rachel Murray, is the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick.
- In season two Noah runs a podcast called The Morgue, started after Piper was unmasked. Piper's own show was Autopsy of a Crime.
- Tony Todd's casting as the Hook Man was announced on October 12, 2018, almost a year after season three wrapped.
- The Deadfast Club, the season three premiere, mixes dead and breakfast and nods to The Breakfast Club.
- Wikipedia counts 30 episodes because it counts the Halloween special as two.
- Sources split on who led the season three killings. Wikipedia's episode list names Jamal as Ghost Face with Beth as his accomplice. Screen Rant calls Beth the main killer with Jamal helping.
- The person who killed Kieran was never revealed.
Connections
- Based on the Scream films created by Kevin Williamson, but set in its own continuity.
- Nina's opening kill re-creates Casey Becker's in Scream (1996).
- Season two opens with Lele Pons as Leah, an actress in an in-show film called Murderville, thrown off a house by a killer named Becca, a nod to Scream 2. Audrey's opening scene in the premiere also nods to the Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps opening in Scream 2.
- Paris Jackson's cameo as Becky in the season three premiere pays homage to the opening of the first film.
- Season three brought in the film Ghost Face mask and Roger L. Jackson's voice.
The Mask
- For two seasons this show did not use the Ghost Face mask, and that was not an accident.
- The mask in seasons one and two is called the Brandon James mask. It is a pale, weathered, close fitting face with black eye holes and a small round mouth, and the story says it grew out of the surgical masks Brandon wore between reconstructive operations. MTV teased it in November 2014 and showed it properly on June 4, 2015. R. J. Torbert at Fun World had already told fans in October 2014 that Ghost Face was not involved in the new show, which is the licensing side of the same story. Fun World went on to make the retail version itself, sold in Halloween shops from 2015 as the MTV Scream adult mask, item FW-93501.
- The official line was that it was a creative decision. MTV’s Mina Lefevre called it "a more organic looking and frankly darker version" of the film mask and said they were constantly asking how that mask became that mask. Showrunner Jill Blotevogel said it evokes the Jason hockey mask and the white Michael Myers mask but is still first and foremost evocative of the Scream mask. Executive producer Jaime Paglia put it plainly: the mask is so iconic that using it on a show following none of the film characters would mislead the audience.
- The practical reason is simpler. Ghost Face belongs to Fun World, and MTV did not have the license. They got it for season three, and the moment they did, the real mask went on and Roger L. Jackson came with it.
- Wes Craven approved the redesign at first, saying the new mask was cool and scary and took the series in a new direction. In his last interviews he sounded less sure, saying that across all the Scream films they never messed with the mask, that something was not broken so they did not fix it, and comparing it to his regret over redesigning Freddy Krueger for New Nightmare.
- The reaction on the day was not kind. Collider said it looked more like a bondage toy than a horror mask. Fun World went on to manufacture a licensed version of it for shops anyway.
Brandon James
- SPOILER ALERT This file gives away who the killer is.
- The 1994 killings, the boy blamed for them, and the thing the show waits two seasons to tell you.
- Brandon James grew up in Lakewood with an older brother, Troy, next door to a girl called Daisy Anderson, who later changed her name to Maggie Duval. He had Proteus syndrome, which deformed his face badly. He went through operation after operation, wore recovery masks in between, was home schooled by his mother, and had a father who was ashamed of him. Troy protected him.
- He and Daisy were childhood friends who became teenage lovers. He carved her a necklace and left her notes. She was pregnant at fifteen, and her family made her give the baby up. That baby is Piper Shaw.
- On Halloween night 1994 Brandon confronted Kevin Duval over how he treated Maggie at a school dance, and was beaten badly by Kevin’s friends. That night he killed five of them. He went after Kevin and failed. Police followed Maggie to a meeting at Wren Lake, where he is said to have told her that all he ever wanted was to be with her, and they shot him in the back. He went off the dock while she watched.
- The reveal, seeded through season two and paid off in the finale and the Halloween special, is that he did not die. Maggie and Miguel Acosta helped him survive and disappear, and they were the only two who knew. Maggie came to believe he had been framed for at least part of 1994. His old note to her turns up slashed with a bloody knife mark. Season two ends with a voice on the phone to Kieran in his cell: "Hello, Kieran. Who told you you could wear my mask?" At the end of the Halloween special Brandon James walks back into the show.
- One detail matters more than it looks. The mask was stolen from him about a year before the 1994 murders. That is the hook the whole framing argument hangs on.
The Killers
- Three seasons, four killers, and one of them is still the only person in the whole franchise to be murdered in custody.
- SEASON ONE. Piper Shaw, unmasked at Wren Lake in Revelations on September 1, 2015. She is Brandon James and Maggie Duval’s daughter, given up in a closed adoption and raised at the Blessed Sisters Children’s Home. Her motive is the mother who gave her away and the half sister who got the life she did not. She staged it as a reboot of her father’s spree and used her podcast as cover. Kieran Wilcox was her secret accomplice. Audrey shot her, Emma finished it, at the same spot where Brandon was shot.
- SEASON TWO. Kieran Wilcox, unmasked at the Zenith Theater in When a Stranger Calls on August 16, 2016. He carried on alone out of rage at Piper’s death and to bury anyone who could expose him, and by his own account because killing people is more fun than therapy. His father abandoned him in Atlanta to feed a pill habit, and his mother and stepfather died in a crash he caused. He is not killed. He gets ten consecutive life sentences.
- THE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL. The Shallow Grove Island killer is Alex Whitten, real name Tom Martin. Separately, an unidentified third person in a Brandon James mask cuts Kieran’s throat in his cell, which makes him the only killer in the entire franchise to be murdered in custody.
- SEASON THREE. Beth is Ghost Face, with Jamal Elliot as her accomplice. Beth has no revenge motive at all, which makes her the first in the franchise like that. She decided she wanted to be the main character of her own horror story, and she was jealous that Liv made friends without manipulating anybody. Jamal killed Tommy Jenkins, Avery Collins and the Hook Man, and his reason was that their father left his mother for the Elliot twins’ family.
Behind the Scenes
- Seven years from first announcement to last episode, two sets of showrunners, three networks worth of scheduling, and a mask license that arrived too late.
- MTV started developing a Scream series in June 2012 and greenlit a pilot on April 25, 2013, with Wes Craven in talks to direct it. He passed. Jay Beattie and Dan Dworkin were hired to write in July 2013, and Jill Blotevogel came in as writer and showrunner in April 2014. Jamie Travis directed the pilot instead.
- MTV ordered ten episodes straight to series on October 28, 2014. The mask was teased that November and shown on June 4, 2015. Season one shot in Louisiana from April to July 2015 and went out from June 30.
- Wes Craven died on August 30, 2015, two days before the season one finale, which was dedicated to him. He kept an executive producer credit posthumously. He never wrote for the show and has been described as not really involved in it.
- On November 9, 2015 MTV replaced showrunners Jill Blotevogel and Jaime Paglia with Michael Gans and Richard Register. Blotevogel stayed on as a consultant. Season two shot around New Orleans from February 16 to early July 2016 and ran twelve weeks from May 30, with a two hour Halloween special on October 18, a three part aftershow called Scream After Dark, and a short web series called Scream: If I Die.
- MTV renewed for six more episodes in October 2016, then in spring 2017 threw the Lakewood story out entirely and rebooted the show as an anthology. The whole cast went. Brett Matthews came in as showrunner and Queen Latifah joined as an executive producer. Season three shot in Atlanta from September 18 to November 11, 2017.
- Then it sat. Twenty months, unaired. The Harvey Weinstein scandal tangled the rights, since the Weinsteins and Dimension held them, and they went uncredited on the finished episodes. In June 2019, less than two weeks before it aired, Viacom announced the season would go out on VH1 instead, where it became that channel’s first scripted series in years. Six episodes across three consecutive nights, July 8 to 10, 2019. There was never a fourth season.
- Two crew names tie the show to the films properly. Marianne Maddalena produced all four Scream films for Craven and Cathy Konrad produced the first three, and both were executive producers here. Patrick Lussier, who edited Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 3, directed the season two finale.
The Numbers
- What people actually watched, and what the reviews said.
- SEASON ONE. The premiere drew 1.03 million live with a 0.45 rating in adults 18 to 49, and across repeats and three days of catch up MTV reported it reached about 6 million. The season sagged to about 550,000 before the finale rebounded to 0.76 million. The average was 754,000 with a 0.34 demo rating.
- SEASON TWO. The premiere opened at a series low 0.40 million with a 0.22 demo rating, and the season ran between roughly 270,000 and 500,000, averaging 377,000 with a 0.19. Less than half the first season. The Halloween special took 0.34 million.
- SEASON THREE. 0.79, 0.60, 0.40, 0.34, 0.38 and 0.33 million across the six, averaging about 474,000 with a 0.23. That is up about 26 percent on season two in viewers, on a channel with a smaller reach.
- THE REVIEWS. Season one sits at 52 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 43 reviews, with the consensus that it trades too heavily on nostalgia, and 57 out of 100 on Metacritic. Season two is the best reviewed of the three at 92 percent from 12 reviews, called wickedly sharp and a killer sophomore season. Season three sits at 40 percent from 5 reviews with a 31 percent audience score, and the negative reception is generally credited with ending the anthology plan.
Physical Media Releases
- One DVD. That is the whole physical history of this show.
- Scream: The TV Series, The Complete First Season came out on DVD from Anchor Bay and Dimension TV on May 10, 2016 at 34.98 dollars. All ten episodes, a gag reel, deleted scenes and a promotional gallery. It took about 251,650 dollars in American disc sales.
- That is it. There has never been a Blu-ray of any season. Season two, the Halloween special and the whole of season three have never been pressed on disc anywhere in the world. If you want them you are renting or buying them digitally.
- THE MUSIC. Jeremy Zuckerman scored all three seasons. There are three releases. Scream: Music from Season One, a song compilation from Columbia Records on August 14, 2015. Music from MTV’s Scream Season 2, nine songs from Island Records on July 29, 2016. And Zuckerman’s actual score for seasons one and two, twenty two tracks including the main theme The Rules, from Lakeshore Records on October 28, 2016. Season three never got a soundtrack.
- STREAMING. Netflix had it exclusively. Season one landed outside America on October 1, 2015 and in America on May 13, 2016. Season two rolled out weekly from May 31, 2016 abroad and arrived in America on September 30, 2016. When the Weinstein Company’s Netflix deal was terminated in July 2018 season three was stranded until a settlement with Lantern Entertainment in October 2018 let it on, on September 1, 2019. It left Netflix abroad on July 16, 2022 and in America on September 1, 2023, and because of the rights tangle it drifted for a while. Unlike the films, it is generally not on Paramount Plus. As things stand it is easy to find again: all three seasons, thirty episodes, are on Tubi for free with adverts.
What Never Happened
- The two seasons that were written and thrown away.
- The showrunners have talked about what season three was going to be before MTV scrapped Lakewood. Emma leaves for college and gets pulled back. Noah hallucinates the dead Zoe. Brooke and Audrey have an affair. Kieran runs murders from his cell in a Silence of the Lambs setup. And Brandon James comes back, not as the monster, but as a wrongly accused man protecting the people who need it.
- THE THIRD KILLER. Season two ends with somebody in a Brandon James mask cutting Kieran’s throat in his cell, and the show never got to say who that was. Bex Taylor-Klaus, who played Audrey, has since said it out loud on camera: "Season 3 was supposed to have this really cool reveal that Brandon James was innocent the whole time, and it was really Emma’s dad that killed everyone. And he killed Kieran." Kevin Duval. The father. The clip went round in April 2026 and no big outlet picked it up, so treat it as what it is, a cast member remembering a plan from a decade earlier rather than a script anybody can hold up.
- It does not fully square with what the showrunners have said. Asked the same question in March 2022, Michael Gans described a brand new character instead, "a really cool, very affluent party girl character who was going to come in and kind of give them all a run for their money, but also was going to be the best possible friend you could have," which he called a Tatum character but stronger. He also said they never got to pitch that version. Both accounts come from named people and they do not agree. What both agree on is that Brandon James was innocent.
- The rest of that season, from Gans and Register: Emma tries to leave for college and gets pulled back. Noah starts seeing the dead Zoe and talking to her about the killings and about the nature of evil, and you are meant to wonder if he is losing his mind. Brooke and Audrey begin an affair, which sends Stavo spiralling and makes the three of them look like they might be working together. Suspicion builds that Emma herself has finally snapped. The spine is a Silence of the Lambs structure, with someone killing at Kieran’s bidding and Kieran only talking to Emma, face to face, in prison, while the bodies pile up. Brandon James is alive and watching, taken away years earlier because they were afraid he would be blamed for everything.
- The finale would have ended in an abandoned farmhouse with Emma, Noah and an escaped Kieran. Noah dies. Emma kills Kieran. Then the camera pulls back and somebody shouts CUT, because it has all been a television set, and the actors hug and start talking about the wrap party. Then Amadeus Serafini, playing himself, is murdered for real in his dressing room.
- Season four was going to pull back and reveal the series as a show within a show, with the cast playing themselves, stalked by a fan obsessed with Scream. MTV rejected it as a betrayal of the audience.
- They pitched it to Bob Weinstein, who told them he thought they would be working together for many years. MTV’s drama head thought the meta turn would feel like a betrayal to an audience that had fallen in love with the characters. Gans put the real problem plainly: "They really wanted Pretty Little Liars, and we were like, well this is Scream, my friends."
- Nobody has ever said the season three scripts were written. What exists is a story bible and a pitch. Both showrunners have said they would go back and do it if anybody asked.
- Willa Fitzgerald found out in a coffee shop in New York in spring 2017, on a phone call, that the whole cast was being recast. She said she remembers being kind of devastated. Carlson Young said it was shocking, that they were told they had a third season and then it went quiet, and that what she would have wanted instead was an episode where everybody dies. "Why don’t you just kill everybody? It’s Scream."
- Noah Foster was originally going to be the second killer of season one. He was spared because the character tested too well.
- Dimension and MTV pushed the writers to change the killer’s identity part way through the first season. Jaime Paglia quit over the fights that followed and Jill Blotevogel was demoted to consultant.
- After Resurrection, the next screen productions were Scream (2022), Scream VI (2023) and Scream 7 (2026). Scream 7 was released February 27, 2026, directed and co-written by Kevin Williamson, with Neve Campbell returning as Sidney Prescott alongside Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown, and was reported as the franchise's highest-grossing entry. An eighth film was announced in early development by Paramount and Spyglass on March 31, 2026, with Lilla and Nora Zuckerman writing.
Things Worth Knowing
- The details that do not fit anywhere else.
- Bella Thorne turned down a lead to play the opening kill instead, because she thought the smaller part was more iconic. It was her first death on screen.
- Two parts were recast before shooting properly started. Amy Forsyth was replaced by Bex Taylor-Klaus as Audrey after the table read, and Joel Gretsch was replaced by Jason Wiles as Sheriff Hudson.
- Amelia Rose Blaire only found out Piper was the killer at the end of shooting the sixth episode, and said it completely changed the emotional life of the performance. She modeled the character on the podcast Serial. Amadeus Serafini found out about Kieran at the table read for the season two finale.
- Nearly every season two episode title is lifted from a horror film: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Psycho, Jeepers Creepers, Let the Right One In, Village of the Damned, The Orphanage, Heavenly Creatures and When a Stranger Calls.
- Noah Foster is the show’s Randy Meeks, and in the pilot he argues that a slasher cannot work as a television series.
- The killer’s voice in seasons one and two is Mike Vaughn, not Roger L. Jackson. Jackson only arrived in season three, with the real mask.
- The whole main cast were in their twenties playing high schoolers, with one exception. Brianne Tju was seventeen when she played Riley.
- Bex Taylor-Klaus came out as pansexual in 2016, which mirrored Audrey’s own arc. Audrey was one of very few openly queer leads in a network slasher at the time.
- Kieran Wilcox has at least eleven kills across two seasons, which is the highest body count of any single killer in the Scream franchise.
- The show never mentions Woodsboro or Sidney Prescott. It shares no continuity with the films at all.
- The season three killer was physically played by William Scharpf, who also directed the fourth episode.
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