5 takeaways from the ‘Scream’ Halloween special

“Scream” was back for one night only Tuesday (Oct. 18) with a killer Halloween special to tide us over until the third season (premiere date TBA).

It was a fun couple of hours with laughs and scares, but here are the five biggest takeaways from the special. Warning: Do not keep reading if you haven’t watched it in its entirety.

1. ‘Scream’ nailed the plot

We were really wondering how “Scream” was going to pull off a Halloween special without diving back into the Brandon James mystery, but it managed to both invent a new, one-off legend and killer, but also to tie it in to the Lakewood massacre by having Tom (Alexander Calvert) be Emma’s (Willa Fitzgerald) crazed, obsessed fan.

RELATED: ‘Scream’s’ Amadeus Serafini says ‘it’s so fun’ playing a psycho

It created a mystery more akin to “And Then There Were None” (which even got a shout-out) than the typical teen slasher flick, which made for a nice change, but it was also awesome to see a few shout-outs to the original movie, like when the killer called Emma and told her to turn on the back porch light.

2. The show can still surprise us

Color us shocked that Kieran (Amadeus Serafini) was the opening scene victim. Maybe it should have seemed obvious after the phone call he received in the Season 2 finale, but we expected Kieran to break out of prison and work with the killer still at large, not be slaughtered in his holding cell. Bravo, show.

3. Emma’s dad is involved

We decided a while back that Emma’s dad (Tom Everett Scott) had to be involved in everything to a much greater extent than we know — maybe he even committed the 1994 murders and pinned them on Brandon James.

Kevin standing over Kieran’s grave lends some weight to that theory. The EPs told us after the Season 2 finale that he person who called Kieran in prison could be connected to Kieran “beyond he or she being [Kieran’s] accomplice.”

Maybe Kevin is the caller, he’s connected to Kieran somehow and he took Kieran out before the connection could be discovered.

This Halloween special, via Noah’s (John Karna) voice over, would have you believe Kevin took our Kieran because he “hurt” him, a.k.a. Kieran hurt Emma and Kevin was out for revenge. But that seems a bit simple, especially since it was fed right to us via voice over.

4. Brandon James appears to be back (in some form)

The final scene shows someone who we are 99 percent sure is not Kevin Duval checking into a hotel. Is it the real Brandon James, who has been alive this whole time? His face doesn’t look disfigured, so maybe it’s Brandon’s brother Troy, whom Maggie (Tracy Middendorf) used to take Emma to visit out at the pig farm.

Could the brothers be working together? Or is Troy the real psychopath from 1994 and Brandon will be revealed alive in his quest to stop Troy from killing again?

5. Six episodes doesn’t seem like enough

It’s great news that “Scream” is renewed for a third season, but six episodes doesn’t seem like enough time to get through everything. The EPs told, “There’s only like one-fifth of [the Brandon James story] that the audience knows,” so either they are going to be cramming a lot of events and information into what are presumably the final six episodes or the story is going to be truncated, which would be a bummer.

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