Hayden Panettiere's Scream 6 Return Must Avoid A Cheap Horror Cliche
Now that Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby is back in Scream 6, the Scream franchise must avoid the slasher sub-genre’s worst cliche when it comes to returning final girls. It has been confirmed that Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby will return in 2023’s Scream 6. Panettiere’s charismatic horror nerd became a favorite among the franchise’s sizable fandom when she first appeared in 2011’s Scream 4. Although that sequel seemingly killed her off, Scream 2022 revealed that Kirby survived the movie’s events in one Easter egg.
This seemed to pave the way for Kirby’s Scream 6 return, but it was only a few months after Scream 2022’s success that Panettiere was confirmed to have signed on for the slasher sequel. Panettiere will be joining Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Mason Gooding as returning cast members for the upcoming Scream sequel. It's unclear if Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott will be involved in the story set to leave Woodsboro.
Related: How Scream 6 Can Perfectly Bring Back Matthew Lillard’s Stu
However, Scream 6 now needs to steer clear of a recurring Final Girl trope that has plagued numerous recent slasher reboots. Namely, Kirby shouldn’t be killed off solely for the sake of shock value. Kirby is one of the most beloved characters in the Scream franchise, and her return marks Panettiere’s first return to acting in years. As such, killing her off in smug subversion of audience expectations would be a woeful misstep for the franchise. The tonally awkward Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 did this with Sally Hardesty and was deservedly pilloried for it, as the sequel wasted one of the franchise’s most iconic returning characters for the sake of a cheap surprise. To a lesser extent, Halloween Kills confining Laurie
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