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Plenty of bodies drop in Scream: The TV Series, and all the deaths are striking in one way or another. Some deaths are gruesome due to their sheer brutality, some are satisfying due to irony or karma, and some are emotionally devastating. The way that the show defies standard tropes makes a lot of the deaths incredibly shocking as they both make sense and seem to have come out of nowhere. The most important thing about a fictional death is the impact it has on the audience.
7 Riley Marra
Riley was by far the sweetest popular kid in the show. She followed the rules and was brilliant and nerdy. She also had genuine feelings for the geeky outcast, Noah. Riley had all the makings of a final girl.
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When the killer threatened to kill either Riley or Brooke, it seemed like a no-brainer that the latter would be the one who died. At that point in the series, Brooke was vapid and shallow and had literally handcuffed herself to a bed while waiting to have sex with her teacher. That’s at least three horror no-nos. When Riley was stabbed and died on top of the police station while on the phone with Noah it was the worst kind of irony. Her last line before she died, “I can see our stars,” only added to the emotional gut punch.
6 Clark Hudson
Clark Hudson wasn’t a bad person, but he was pretty darn incompetent. He left Riley, Brooke, and Emma alone in the police station with a killer on the loose. He even waited an extra day that he did not have to launch a murder investigation into Rachel Murray’s death. While he certainly didn’t deserve to die, the town really needed a new sheriff.
His death is retroactively even worse once the audience knows that it was his own son who disemboweled him and left him for his girlfriend to find. Maggie trying to save him and accidentally hastening his death was awful for her as a medical professional. It really drove home how much the killer hated Maggie and Emma right before they headed for their final confrontation.
5 Eli Hudson
Eli’s death was one of the cleanest in Scream: The TV Series; just a few gunshots in the chest. What made it a great death were the circumstances. He spent the whole season trying to get close to Emma only for her to be manipulated into mistrusting him. Even worse, he never stopped believing in her for a second, even when she was accused of murder and on the run from the police. When he tried to find her, Kieran stabbed him. He had the opportunity to run but instead followed Kieran to help Emma, and then she shot him.
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Even then, he still tried to save Emma by playing dead and jumping Kieran when he admitted to being the killer. Kieran shot him again and he finally died. The fact that he went so far as to protect someone who never appreciated him when he was alive made Eli’s death pointless and tragic and drove home how ruthless Kieran was.
4 Jake Fitzgerald
Jake was one of the Lakewood Six, a survivor of the first season’s killing spree. He started season one as a complete jerk, and although he didn’t mature as much as Brooke, he clearly cared about her a lot. He even made a deal with Brooke’s dad to burn down his failed housing development, hoping that would make him like Jake enough that Brooke could go public with their relationship.
Jake still went through with the plan after they had a huge argument, and it got him captured by the killer. There was a fake-out where it looked like he was going to escape, but the killer was only messing with him and proceeded to knock him out, hang him upside down, and slice him open with a scythe. The message to the audience was clear: The season one survivors aren’t safe. Anyone can die. What a way to kick off season two!
3 Tom Martin
Tom Martin, who went by Alex Whitten for most of the episode, was the antagonist of Scream’s Halloween special. Obsessed with Emma, he staged a murder spree so he could “rescue” her and be her hero. The whole episode was about Emma wanting to be someone else, but Tom’s rampage helped her come to terms with whom she really was.
The set-up and payoff were an absolute joy. Noah mentioned towards the beginning of the episode that Emma took jiu-jitsu, which means that among other things, she knew how to use her opponent’s momentum against them. As soon as she had her back to the balcony and Tom charged her, it was wonderfully clear what was going to happen and the way she dodged and pushed him over the balcony was a thing of beauty. Tom’s death was the first in the series that can be completely attributed to Emma. It’s a shame that her story wasn’t continued. Watching Emma beat up unsuspecting killers would’ve been great.
2 Will Belmont
Will’s death was particularly terrible for Emma because not only did she have to watch, but she inadvertently caused it. The killer left a tripwire and when Emma walked into it, she triggered the trencher that he was tied up under. Emma froze and Will couldn’t move, so she had to watch him be sliced in half in front of her eyes.
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Although Emma had already experienced trauma, having essentially killed Will is what sent her over the edge. She needed medication for sleep and anxiety and kept hallucinating Will everywhere. The killer later used her PTSD and hallucinations to gaslight her in season two. Will himself pulled a lot of crap, but he was trying to do better, so his death further reinforced that the show was not playing by typical horror rules.
1 Zoe Vaughn
The killer was manipulative and a liar, but what happened to Zoe was completely unprecedented. There was no other death like it before or after. The setup itself was nightmare fuel. Zoe was trapped in a coffin that slowly filled with water. Noah, meanwhile, was buried in a separate coffin while he bled out from a stab wound. The killer used a livestream of him to taunt Audrey and Emma, which was always one of his favorite ways to mess with people.
After Audrey and Emma found and dug up Noah, they found a phone with a livestream of Zoe and went to find her, forgoing any sort of medical treatment for Noah. They found the coffin and dragged it out of the water, but when they opened it, Zoe was clearly dead. Noah’s face when he looked at her body and then his phone and realized that the video was actually an old recording, not live, was heart-wrenching. Zoe’s death was the only one that felt truly unfair. It was jarring, unsettling, and kept the audience from becoming immune to the constant murders.
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