‘IKWYDLS’ Features [Spoiler] Back From the Dead in Surprise Cameo 

The new I Know What You Did Last Summer featured more familiar faces than anticipated.

Warning: Major spoilers below for the plot of IKWYDLS 2025: 

The latest iteration of the beloved slasher flick, which hit theaters on Friday, July 18, follows a group of teens who find history repeating itself when they accidentally kill a man on the 4th of July. When a masked fisherman begins to murder them one by one, they enlist the help of Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Julie James and Ray Bronson, the original survivors of the 1997 attacks.

Hewitt, 48, and Prinze Jr., 49, both starred in IKWYDLS alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe, with the latter two not making it to the sequel. Gellar’s onscreen death in particular has been lauded as one of the best in horror movie history, with many fans wishing her character, Helen, made it out alive after nearly escaping the fisherman’s clutches.

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Director and cowriter of the 2025 film Jennifer Kaytin Robinson clearly understands the love for Gellar’s character, honoring her in various ways in the new film. Madelyn Cline’s Danica is clearly meant to be Helen 2.0, a beauty queen and overall diva (in the best way). The new cast makes a stop by Helen’s grave amid the chaos, and podcaster Tyler (Gabbreitte) sports a Helen Shivers T-shirt throughout the film — “Oh god, isn’t she so hot? Sucks she’s dead,” Tyler says.

Tyler and Danica also have attack sequences that mirror Helen’s incredible fight for her life in 1997, although this time, Danica makes it out alive — but not before she’s visited by Helen herself.

In a shocking cameo appearance, Gellar reprises her iconic role and comes to Danica in a dream sequence. “You’re Helen Shivers,” Danica says in shock, to which Helen replies, “And don’t you f***ing forget it.” Dressed in her croaker queen dress, she warns Danica she’s going to die, telling her, “Stay in the dream as long as you can. Nothing good is waiting for you on the other side,” before she begins to bleed and transform into a ghoulish figure.

Prior to the IKWYDLS hitting theaters, Robinson swore she “tried” her best to get Gellar to return for the movie to no avail.

“I harassed her! But she is dead,” Robinson told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. “I tried to pitch some crazy s*** too. I was like, ‘What if it’s like you weren’t dead and you’re actually alive, but in hiding?’ And Sarah’s like, ‘I was on ice. I was the most dead a person could be. You can see my frozen body.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but what if?’ And she said, ‘I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.’”

With real-life husband Prinze Jr. back in action as Ray, however, Gellar did get to fly to Australia with the couple’s kids (Charlotte, 15, and Rocky, 12) to visit the set and serve an important role for Robinson.

“My best friend [Robinson] is directing it, so we joke that I have an unofficial job, which is, I am continuity,” Gellar joked to EW. “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.”

Prinze Jr., for his part, didn’t give any inclination his wife would be reappearing in the new film while speaking to Us earlier this month — but stood firm on the opinion that Helen had to die back in 1997.

“If she would’ve made it out, I don’t think people would be talking about it the way they do now,” the actor exclusively told Us Weekly. “That is one of the greatest chase scenes and death scenes in the history of horror films. And that’s all due to  Jim [Gillespie], the director, Denis [Maloney] the DP and Sarah the actor in it. And the way they put that scene together.”

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Prinze Jr. noting that giving the audience “that much hope” that Helen would make it out alive — she nearly escapes to the 4th of July parade before the fisherman takes her down in an alley — only adds to the iconic moment.

“I love that it gets people worked up. It gets me worked up just talking about it now. Because it’s such an exciting scene to watch. I love that she died. I love the way she died. I love that audiences wish she didn’t die. That just means the director was right. That just means you wanted her to live so much because they executed at such a high level for you to believe she was gonna make it. … That’s what I love about horror films, is when I know they can make people talk about them this many years later.”

I Know What You Did Last Summer is in theaters now.