The strengthened sister relationship between Jenna Ortega’s Tara and Melissa Barrera’s Sam in Scream 6 finally fixes a key problem with family in the Scream franchise. Since the very first movie, Scream has been notable for having complex and twisted family dynamics, whether that be Ghostface killers attacking their own relatives, long-standing familial grudges, or Ghostfaces targeting family members of past killers and victims.

 After Sidney and the Prescott family stood at the center of the first four Scream movies, Scream (2022) progressed the franchise’s blood ties by making Sam Carpenter the daughter of Ghostface killer Billy Loomis, Tara Carpenter the half-sister of Sam, and twins Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin the nephew and niece of Randy Meeks.

Familial relationships have never been more important in the franchise than in Scream 6, as the primary dynamics are between siblings Sam and Tara, Mindy and Chad, and the Bailey family Ghostface killers.

 While the concept of difficult family relationships has always been at the core of Scream’s Ghostface attacks, they rarely featured siblings, cousins, or parents and children working together in the past until Scream (2022). However, as the reboots continue to emphasize the notion of subverting expectations of the franchise, Scream 6 uses Tara and Sam Carpenter to finally change the longest problem related to Scream’s family theme.