When Helen Shivers was murdered on July 4th, 1997, there was no doubt she was a goner. And yet, Sarah Michelle Gellar keeps getting asked if she will turn up in the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer. But the reason she won’t is precisely the same reason she wasn’t in the 1998 sequel. Yeah, she’s dead.
Sarah Michelle Gellar recently told People that there isn’t a chance she will turn up in the planned fourth installment in the I Know What You Did Last Summer series, bluntly confirming, “I am dead.” However, she’ll still have a role behind the scenes, saying, “My best friend [Jennifer Kaytin Robinson] is directing it, so we joke that I have an unofficial job, which is I am continuity. So I’m always the one telling her, ‘Well, that would happen, or that wouldn’t happen with those characters,’ so I do have kind of an unofficial job title.”
So while we won’t see Sarah Michelle Gellar on the screen, she does sort of hit on another point of sequels that come years and sometimes decades after the last movie: it’s not necessarily that we need another, it’s that the nostalgia brings us back to a time that that movie helps encapsulate. Let’s look at another horror franchise launched around the same time, also through the lens of some supporting characters. Did we need to see Randy in Scream 3? Possibly not but his video tape enhanced the movie and laid out what was truly at stake that time around. What about Billy Loomis turning up in 2022’s Scream? To me, it was pretty forced and tried to be a piece of fan service that the story could have survived without. Then again, this could in theory be an approach for the filmmakers to take if they really wanted Helen Shivers back for the next movie…
As of now, both Jennifer Love Hewitt (Julie James) and Freddie Prinze Jr. (Ray Bronson) are in talks to return to the franchise, while Brandy (sequel addition Karla Wilson) could also be making a return. With or without Sarah Michelle Gellar (and Ryan Phillippe), fans of the originals will no doubt be bumping this entry up on their list of most anticipated horror movies.
Do you think Sarah Michelle Gellar could somehow be utilized in the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel?