We’ve been seeing a lot of Matthew Lillard again in the last few years. After being one of the most famous young actors of the 1990s, Lillard spent most of the 2000s and 2010s either playing Shaggy Rogers in live-action Scooby-Doo movies or voicing the character in various animatedprojects. However, in the late 2010s and 2020s, Lillard has jumped back on the scene, appearing in projects like the Twin Peaks revival or popping up in TV shows like Supernatural, FBI, Critical Role, Good Girls, Robot Chicken, Billions, and more.
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Lillard has also made a return to the horror genre that helped launch his career, as the antagonist in the horror game adaptation Five Nights at Freddy’s . Now he’s returning to the film that made him a horror icon, with a role in the upcoming Scream 7 . The question everyone is wondering is: how?
Matthew lillard in Five nights at freddy’s / Universal Pictures
Lillard was one of the pioneering villains of Wes Craven’s first Scream movie (1996). His character, Stu Macher, fiendishly partnered with Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) as the Ghostface Killer, confounding investigators (and audiences) and forever cementing Scream as a smart meta twist on the slasher-horror genre. That said, Stu was very much dead by the end of the film, as Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott dropped an entire television set onto his head. So, how is Lillard coming back for Scream 7, and will “Stu Macher” be the character we get onscreen?
For his part, Matthew Lillard isn’t spilling any of the company tea before Scream 7 is released – not even to his closest loved ones. “Not even my wife. Not even my kids,” Lillard told EW. “One of the joys of this franchise is sitting in the dark with the entire world discovering what the twist is this time. To ruin that for anyone is to ruin one of the great joys of going to the cinema.”
Lillard has been unabashedly public when it comes to campaigning for a return to Scream over the years. That enthusiasm hit a bump when Scream franchise writer-turned-director Kevin Williamson teased that Scream 7 didn’t need legacy characters like Stu. However, it turned out to be a subterfuge: Williamson secretly reached out to Lillard with the casting call to return. “I will say this: It didn’t really matter to me in what capacity Kevin wanted me to come back,” Lillard explained. “At the end of the day, I think the reason I was so excited about it was ’cause I had been fighting to come back. I was openly campaigning for years.”
How Stu Macher May Be Returning In Scream 7 (Theory)
Matthew Lillard in Scream (1996) / Dimension Films
There have been a lot of theories about how Stu is returning in Scream 7. Lillard’s co-star Skeet Ulrich has already made a return in Scream V and Scream VI, as a ghostly hallucination of Billy Loomis, speaking to his daughter, Sam (Melissa Barrera). That could be a way for Stu to come back; we could get the classic slasher twist of the killer not really having been dead, or something entirely more ambitious.
Scream is a meta-layered franchise that has even had its own parallel movie-within-a-movie with the “Stab” franchise, which dramatizes the events of previous Scream movies. Lillard could easily return as an actor playing a fictional Stu Macher – maybe even going all the way meta by playing himself, “Matthew Lillard” playing “Stu Macher” in some kind of Stab legacy sequel event. That would explain how other Scream veterans like Scott Foley’s Roman Bridger (Scream 3), or even David Arquette’s Dewey Riley (killed in Scream V), are all returning.
Based on what Matthew Lillard teases about the “gamble” of his return, all of the above could be possible. “There was so much anxiety, so much fear, so much insecurity about stepping back into something that, frankly — and it’s yet to be determined — could go really poorly,” Lillard says. “I mean, if people hate the movie, hate me, hate Stu, question why I came back, all of that weighs on me heavily… It’s a gamble of legacy. I wouldn’t want to hurt the legacy at all. And if I thought it would, I wouldn’t be here.”
Scream 7 will be released on February 27th. Discuss the 2026 year in horror with us on the ComicBook Forum!
