The director of 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer has explained how its legacy characters have survived. The legacy sequel, which features a brand-new young cast that includes Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, and Tyriq Withers, also sees original stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. reprising their roles as Julie James and Ray Bronson. However, their presence in the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer seemingly contradicts the ending of the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which saw the hook-wielding killer attacking them in their home.
Entertainment Weekly recently spoke with director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson about I Know What You Did Last Summer. During their conversation, she explained how legacy characters Ray and Julie are still alive in spite of the implication that they had been killed. She shared that “we have continued the tradition” of the franchise, because the original 1997 movie featured a closing sequence that implied Julie had been killed after the killer burst through a bathroom mirror, only for that scene to be retconned as a dream sequence in the beginning of the next movie. Read Robinson’s full quote below:
So the way that I’ve approached the franchise is that I feel like those final scenes in the first two movies live outside the canon, because in the first movie she gets attacked through the shower, through the glᴀss door, and in the second movie, she gets pulled under the bed. So they’re both alive and well, and what I will say is that we have continued the tradition in our film.
What This Means For I Know What You Did Last Summer
One Other Major Plot Point Could Also Have Been Retconned
As Jennifer Kaytin Robinson points out, the presence of Ray and Julie in the I Know What You Did Last Summer cast makes sense considering the precedent that was already set by the earlier branch of the franchise. Additionally, retconning the final scene of the movie does not mean that the entire 1998 sequel was retconned, so Julie and Ray’s experiences with thwarting the franchise’s fisherman killer second rampage, during which he tricked Julie and her friends into going on a trip to The Bahamas, most likely still happened in the universe of the new movie.
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer was followed by the 2006 sequel I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, which did not feature Julie or Ray.
However, there is one important element of the sequel that could also be retconned in the legacy sequel. The beginning of the 1998 movie showed that Julie and Ray’s relationship was on the rocks, while the final scene revealed that they had moved into a house together after their ordeal. If that scene proves to have been a dream, their romantic reunion may never have taken place. This potential fate for the couple is underscored by the fact that they were not depicted onscreen together in the I Know What You Did Last Summer trailer.
Our Take On Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s Comments
Ray & Julie Could Reunite Properly In I Know What You Did Last Summer
Considering the fact that Robinson has stuck with franchise tradition in this case, it seems possible that she will continue to do so with Ray and Julie’s depictions in I Know What You Did Last Summer. This means that they may begin the movie apart but rekindle their romance over the course of the story. That approach is also quite similar to the original movie’s 1990s slasher predecessor Scream, which saw characters Gale (Courteney Cox) and Dewey (David Arquette) locked in a cycle of breaking up and getting back together over the course of its sequels.
Source: EW
