“My motive isn’t as ‘90s as Mickey’s. Mine is just good old-fashioned revenge.” – Debbie Salt, “Scream 2”
While “When a Stranger Calls” is the perfect scary movie-themed title for the season two finale of “Scream,” it’s not a perfect episode, though I was entertained well enough.
We rejoin Emma and Audrey where we left them last week – under arrest for the murder of Mayor Maddox, and under suspicion for all the other killings. But it’s not long before – in a sequence that reminded me of a similar one involving a cop car in “Scream 2” – their transport is run off the road by nuGhostface. After viciously stabbing the deputy to death (and I mean viciously, it’s a surprisingly brutal dispatching of a redshirt), nuGhostface advances on the helpless girls...but only to give them the keys to their cuffs. He still wants to play his game and, when he later makes contact with them, orders Emma and Audrey to avoid the authorities or he’ll gut someone else they love.
Speaking of whom, Maggie (in a great scene from Tracy Middendorf, sadly underused in the finale) is frantically worried about her missing daughter and outraged that Sheriff Acosta considers her and Audrey suspects, but there’s too much evidence for him to ignore the possibility. This is after another interview with a shit-stirring Ms. Lang, who theorizes that, unable to move past their trauma, her students are suffering from a shared psychotic break and “may not even be aware of what they’re doing.” But her theory ends up being false, nor is Ms. Lang involved with the killer.
Unsure of what to do, Audrey suggests she and Emma hide out in the closed movie theater, a decision I was psyched about since it’s a great set and the perfect place for some slasher hijinks. There, the girls reunite with the rest of the “Lakewood Six” (and sidebar – I liked that while Brooke believes Emma and Audrey aren’t the killers, and vehemently defends them to a suspicious Gustavo, she is very standoffish when she sees Audrey, which makes sense given her reaction to the video of her with Jake’s body. I dunno, it was just a very real response amidst the heighted circumstances). But when nuGhostface calls to verbally prod Brooke’s wounds, Emma has had enough and challenges him to come and face them.
That...goes about as well as you’d expect. This sequence drags at the start, with a too-long montage of them weaponing up and Noah having a meta stroke about the standoff being “the big finale.” But things pick up when something starts playing on the big screen. It’s footage from the murders, going all the way back to Nina’s in the pilot. Seeing their friends and love interests dying, hearing their screams, distracts the kids long enough for nuGhostface to attack. And because I’m a dork, even though I knew it was coming, I still literally screamed out loud when he jumped from the shadows and sliced into Brooke (though the stunt staging was a little weird, I thought). To my slight surprise, Brooke survives being stabbed, but it’s another win for nuGhostface.
The tables sufficiently turned, the killer abducts Audrey amidst the chaos in the movie theater and uses her as bait to lure Emma to the real final showdown, back at Blessed Sisters Children’s Home. It’s here where I’ll note that throughout “When a Stranger Calls,” Emma – to quote Mickey’s compliment to Sidney in “Scream 2” – has a real “Linda Hamilton thing going.” She doesn’t hesitate to grab the dead deputy’s gun when they escape from the cop car (I actually thought Audrey’s objection was kinda weird), or to use it when she sees nuGhostface standing over Brooke. And when she first gets to the group home and is ambushed by the killer, she basically shrugs off the bloody arm wound he gives her to keep pursuing him. That steel in her spine is a character trait of Emma’s I’ve always loved, and Willa Fitzgerald really sells it.
Anyway, there’s one more red herring to get through as Eli (boo!) shows up long enough to get shot (yay!). But his interference results in a costly slip of the tongue that makes a horrified Emma realize who the killer really is. So who was behind the Brandon James mask this year? Say it with me – Kieran Wilcox!
Metaphorically unmasked, Kieran gleefully confirms for Emma that he was Piper’s final surprise last season, that her boyfriend was “banging [her] crazy half-sister.” He goes on to explain that he and Piper met in Atlanta and that they bonded over being abandoned by their parents (Audrey’s mocking of his “messed-up daddy issues” motive is amusing, by the way) and the thrill of killing people. So they planned a massacre in Lakewood to make his sheriff father and her medical examiner mother look like fools before butchering them, and Emma. But Audrey showed up on the dock and ruined everything, which is why Kieran singled her out for torture this year.
Now, I said in my review of the season one finale – and I stand by it – that I personally prefer a reveal that, even if it’s not super surprising, makes sense given what we saw in the episodes versus one that’s pure shock value. And if you look at this episode (Kieran’s on guard duty by himself in the movie theater, and he’s not in the room when nuGhostface calls) and this season (if Piper, per Audrey, couldn’t have killed Rachel, it’s easy to believe Kieran did because she caught him on camera with Nina, which could have jeopardized his getting close to Emma) and even last season (Kieran conveniently slips away from the group right before Emma gets the call summoning her to the dock), it does make a good amount of sense. Also, it’s clear that the show was paying homage to Billy Loomis, the granddaddy of (nu)Ghostfaces, with Amadeus Serafini’s hair even drooping in front of his eyes during his villainous monologue just like Skeet Ulrich’s did in the film.
But all that said, I did find this unmasking less satisfying than the Piper one. Maybe because Kieran’s more divorced from the bigger Brandon James mythology than Piper was? Maybe because we spent two seasons with “devoted boyfriend Kieran” and only ten minutes with “psycho killer Kieran,” making it harder to wrap my head around the truth? Maybe because it’s tough to buy he could have kept up the deception, given how much longer and how much more intimately he had to get involved with Emma and the others than Piper did (and sidebar – thinking about it, it might have been interesting for Kieran to have developed some real feelings for Emma and his master plan to have been making her his new partner/Piper and turning her against Audrey)? I still don’t know.
More so, I was bummed that a lot of the season’s plot beats – the James family pig farm and Emma’s dreams about it, Emma’s dad being lured back to Lakewood, the mystery man in the photo with Emma, etc. – didn’t factor into the finale. It’s understandable that the show wanted to leave some meat on the bone for a possible third season, not to mention the Halloween special they announced during the after-show, but I feel like they left too many threads dangling. And then there’s Gustavo. Even if he wasn’t nuGhostface, given his behavior all season, he was certainly portrayed as a deeply troubled kid. But all it took was falling for Brooke, a cathartic cry, and a pat on the knee from his dad to seemingly cure him of all his issues? That’s weak.
Wrapping things up, Emma and Audrey work together and manage to get the drop on Kieran. But instead of shooting him, Emma decides to let him rot in prison, making Kieran the first killer in the “Scream” pantheon to end up behind bars instead of in a body bag. Three months later, life seems to be getting back to normal. But as Noah wonders on his podcast if Lakewood will always be “Murderville,” we see Maggie finding her note to Brandon James pinned to their tree with a knife and smudged with blood. And then a shackled Kieran is getting a phone call from a familiar voice. “Who told you you could wear my mask?” Cut to black.
So that’s a wrap on season two of “Scream!” My overall verdict – a great season that improved on the first, but a so-so finale. What did you think of “When a Stranger Calls,” the Kieran reveal, the cliffhanger call, and the season as a whole? Share your take on all things “Scream” in the comments section.
