Sam Carpenter (Scream Franchise)

Samantha Carpenter (preferably known as Sam) is the main protagonist of Scream (2022) and Scream VI. Having run from a troubled past, the former Woodsboro resident returns to her haunted small California hometown to aid her younger sister Tara Carpenter against a new Ghostface entity.

At age 13, she discovered the secret of her birth origin — she is the biological daughter of original Ghostface serial killer, Billy Loomis who derives from the original Scream (1996). Correspondingly, this also makes her the paternal granddaughter of the first copycat Ghostface killer, Nancy Loomis, who appeared in Scream 2 (1997).

After her legal father's abandonment due to her birth origin revelation, she spiralled into a life of and crime. This dismayed soon-Sheriff Judy Hicks, who Sam would babysit the son of (one of these duties was during the second Woodsboro Murders). At age 18 (likely almost 19) — with Woodsboro no longer serving her any good — she abandoned it in favor of another California town.

In her departure, Sam did not say goodbye to her mother or baby sister (then age 13). Upon arriving in her new town, she met Richie Kirsch and began dating him. Due to her punk nature and craving for attention it wasn’t very hard for Sam to convince Richie to have sex with her and vice versa. During her time in her new home town, she started taking pills to help her with her hallucinations of her biological father haunting her. Now 5 years later, Sam is confronted with both her troubled teen past and birth origin — she is Ghostface's primary target. Now a 24-year-old bowling alley attending, she joins forces with original legacy franchise survivors, Dewey Riley, Gale Weathers and Sidney Prescott, to stop the new killer.

In the end, Sam proves to embody the rules of a real-life horror movie legacy "requel" (reboot and sequel); she is both the descendant of a legacy character, and the new Ghostface entity is her own boyfriend, Richie whom she is able to kill (staying true to the original Sidney-Billy dynamic), as well as his accomplice who lives at 261 Turner Lane, Woodsboro (Macher residence), Amber Freeman.

Approximately six months later, Sam gets disowned by her mother after telling Tara the truth about Billy, as Tara disowns her mother back for what she did to Sam, as they both move to New York City along with their two close friends Chad and Mindy, but for Sam to keep an eye on Tara, as Sam became more defensive and not let anyone not even her own friends or sister push her around anymore ever since the attack with Richie and Amber. That’s where she also meets her new boyfriend Danny, but keeps their relationship a secret from everyone. About six months after she moved to New York, new Ghostface killers emerged to finish what Richie and Amber started. It turns out that the killers were Richie’s family, and they were trying to kill Sam to avenge their dead brother. In the end, the killers once again end up dead, and everyone survived this time around.

She is portrayed by Melissa Barrera