I Know What You Did Last Summer’s Ending Finally One-ups Scream

Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending of the 2025 I Know What You Did Last Summer (and all previous installments).

The late-’90s slasher resurgence peaked the moment it started. Wes Craven’s era-defining Scream was a tough act to follow, thanks in large part to a sharp screenplay from Kevin Williamson, who understood how to mine humor from genre self-awareness without sacrificing scares. When he followed up that 1996 film with the more straightforward throwback I Know What You Did Last Summer in 1997, the comparisons were inevitable — and not in the latter’s favor. Whether or not IKWYDLS was trying to be the next Scream, it was forever linked with its predecessor and judged accordingly. That meant that despite being a hit that prompted a franchise of its own, reviews panned it as less clever, less original, and less fun than Williamson’s earlier effort. As the Gen-Z leads of the new 2025 iteration might say, IKWYDLS low-key wanted Scream’s nachos.

In its defense, IKWYDLS has always been its own beast, beginning as an ’80s-style slasher take on a 1973 YA thriller by Lois Duncan. But the series is certainly Scream-adjacent when it comes to its teen TV-star cast — Neve Campbell and Jennifer Love Hewitt both broke through on Party of Five — and its whodunnit structure. In contrast to the major slasher franchises of the ’80s, the Scream and IKWYDLS movies have relied on a third-act killer reveal, and on that front, the Fisherman can’t hold a candle to Ghostface. The first IKWYDLS delivered an impressively convoluted plot before landing on the killer being Ben Willis (Muse Watson), the man our ostensible heroes ran over in the film’s opening. The sequel, 1998’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, tried to up the ante by partnering Ben with Matthew Settle’s duplicitous Will Benson, whose surname tells you everything you need to know. Aside from the iconically stupid “Ben’s son” revelation, the climax is as forgettable as everything leading up to it. As for the 2006 straight-to-DVD sequel I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, the less said about the supernatural twist, the better.

At long last, the 2025 sequel gets it right. In the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson from a script she co-wrote with Sam Lansky, the Fisherman unmasking is a satisfying reveal that elevates the film around it — and also pulls off a twist the Scream series has never followed through on. The basic set-up of this IKWYDLS is the same as it ever was: A group of friends try to cover up their involvement in vehicular manslaughter, only to be stalked and killed a year later. In the latest version, Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Danica (Madilyn Cline), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) are a little less directly responsible for the inciting incident, but they’re brutalized by the Fisherman all the same. The fact that the threatening “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER” messages they’re receiving are identical to the notes from a 1997 murder spree invites the return of two survivors: Hewitt’s Julie James, who offers words of warning, and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Ray, who still lives in Southport and takes a more active role in protecting the new class of Fisherman victims.

It’s in the third act that things get really interesting. Milo and Teddy have both been murdered, along with multiple red-herring suspects: true-crime podcaster Tyler (Gabbriette Bechtel), Teddy’s real-estate mogul father, Grant (Billy Campbell), and creepy Pastor Judah (Austin Nichols). In a boat-set climax that echoes the original movie’s, the Fisherman reveals herself to be Stevie, one of the killer’s supposed targets. Never mind her own culpability in the death of Sam Cooper; Sam was her friend, and she blames the others for taking him away from her. At a low point, Stevie decided to transform her suicidal urges into homicidal ones. “Why would I kill myself when I could just kill all of you?” she tells Ava and Danica, the two remaining survivors. The twist of one of the core group turning out to be the murderer is nothing new — it shows up in nearly every whodunnit slasher, including the Scream movies and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (Ben’s son!). Nevertheless, Stevie is a particularly inspired choice as one of IKWYDLS’ potential Final Girls, recalling the all-time greatest Ghostface, Jill Roberts in Scream 4. Pidgeon also gives a go-for-broke performance of psychopathy that makes her heir apparent to Rebecca Gayheart in C-tier ’90s slasher Urban Legend. Her “Don’t do anything stupid, diva” line reading is an instant addition to the canon.

But IKWYDLS has another trick up its sleeve. Ray arrives on the boat in the nick of time — or a little late for Danica, who gets stabbed by Stevie and falls overboard. He’s at least able to shoot Stevie before she can get to Ava. In the aftermath, a shellshocked Ava wonders (along with the audience) how Stevie could have possibly pulled it all off. The answer, of course, is that she wasn’t working alone. The other Fisherman, as Ava realizes too late, is Ray himself. When Julie arrives, having also put the pieces together, Ray has already stabbed Ava, but she’s still hanging on. His motivation for donning the slicker and hook of the killer who twice tormented him is a bit muddled. It’s part revenge on behalf of Stevie, whom he’s formed a real (albeit twisted) bond with. “Nothing holds people accountable like a good old-fashioned murder spree,” he tells Julie. He’s also driven by outrage over the way Southport has all but erased the 1997 murders — he didn’t survive all of that and an ill-advised Bahamas-set sequel to be forgotten. Ultimately, however, the explanation for Ray’s heel turn may simply be trauma, as is so often the case in contemporary horror. Trauma changes you, Julie and Ray both stress. In his case, that transformation comes with a body count.

The choice to make one of the original film’s leads the killer is the most exciting thing IKWYDLS does. Stevie as the Fisherman is fun, but Ray as the Fisherman feels truly transgressive, a nifty little jab at anyone who views the 1997 movie (and perhaps even its 1998 sequel) as sacred. That provocation is underlined by the final exchange between Ray and Julie on the boat. “It’s 1997 all over again,” he marvels. “Isn’t that nostalgic?” Unmoved, Julie fires back, “Nostalgia’s overrated.” She then repeats her iconic “What are you waiting for?” line — except here she’s prodding Ava into action, and the new Final Girl fires a harpoon through Ray’s heart.

But beyond being a (mild! Loving!) “fuck you” to long-standing franchise fans, turning Ray into the Fisherman feels like the closest thing we’ll get to decades-long speculation that Sidney would eventually become Ghostface in a Scream sequel. Somewhere between internet gossip and wishful thinking, the Sidney-as-Ghostface theory seems to have emerged around the time of 2000’s Scream 3, in which Sid’s PTSD has forced her to fully retreat from her former life. Surely, someone tormented as often as she was might eventually snap. If you were on the right message boards, you could have become convinced that despite Neve Campbell’s stated absence from Scream VI, she would emerge from behind the Ghostface mask in the third act. When the movie hit theaters in 2023, audiences saw one of the actual killers shoot the idea down, noting that the Sidney as Ghostface idea never made any sense.

It would be fun, though, wouldn’t it? Perhaps not for the kind of Scream fans who are fiercely protective of its characters (far more so than they are of standard slasher cannon fodder), but certainly for anyone looking for genuine surprise and subversion in a long-running series. Ray as the Fisherman is not a one-to-one comparison — this would be a little more like David Arquette’s Dewey being revealed as Ghostface, a slightly less upsetting development. At the same time, it feels like the IKWYDLS series finally staking its claim on something. The Scream movies never pulled the trigger on making any of the original heroes the bad guy, and now the also-ran franchise has beat them to it. It doesn’t really make sense, as Scream VI warned about Sidney as Ghostface, but it’s certainly more fitting for this franchise, with its not-quite-so-beloved characters and more tenuous connection to reality. (Once you’ve confirmed I Still Know What You Did Last Summer as canon, you can basically do whatever you want.) Critics seem largely unimpressed by the new IKWYDLS, yet the film is doing something that no other sequel of its ilk has dared to. For that alone, attention must be paid.

At the very least, the Ray reveal is more interesting than the sequel teased in the movie’s denouement. First, there’s the closing scene between Ava and Danica, both recovering from their stab wounds, where the two besties casually discuss that Stevie is still alive and tee up her return in the inevitable follow-up. Then there’s the mid-credits scene, in which Brandy Norwood reprises her role as Julie’s college roommate Karla from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Julie shows up at her door bearing a photo of the two of them with Karla’s face crossed out and “THIS ISN’T OVER” written on the back. Rather than cower in fear, the two prepare to join forces to kick another Fisherman’s ass. The scene had my audience howling — and with good reason! A Julie-Karla team-up, much like Stevie being back for blood, is the obvious path for the series to take. However enticing these prospects may be, though, they can’t match the thrill of Ray breaking bad, a harpoon to the heart of nostalgia and a reminder that you can teach an old franchise new tricks.