‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Twists & Cameos Revealed

SPOILERS: This post contains details about I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

As I Know What You Did Last Summer slashes its way into a new generation, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson‘s requel has plenty of surprises in store for fans of the OG.

The latest horror franchise to come back from the dead, amid the likes of Halloween and Scream, the followup to the 1997 slasher flick and its ’98 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer takes some big swings with its killer reveal, as well as some top-secret cameos that longtime fans will appreciate.

With Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. reprising their roles from the previous two films as survivors and high school sweethearts Julie James and Ray Bronson, nostalgia was inevitably going to be a major factor in this new installment, which also boasts a young cast of new potential victims (and suspects), including Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers and Sarah Pidgeon.

In addition to several Easter eggs—including a freight elevator, a parade float, a steamy gym locker room and a Scooby Doo reference—the sequel keeps longtime fans hooked with a few massive twists.

Read on for some major SPOILERS about I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025).

Long live the Croaker Queen

“I am dead,” Sarah Michelle Gellar previously offered as a response to whether she’d reprise her role from the OG as Helen Shivers, following her family’s set visit in Australia with husband and former co-star Prinze.

A close friend of the director, it turns out Gellar was just playing coy about the fact that she makes a digitally de-aged cameo as Helen’s snarky ghost in a dream sequence of the guilt-laden Danica Richards (Cline), a fellow former Croaker Queen. Her cameo follows some heavy references to the doomed beauty queen, including a visit to what was once Shivers Department Store.

The moment earned a passionate response from the audience at the movie’s world premiere this week in Los Angeles, and it’s sure to have the same impact in theaters on opening weekend, ahead of Gellar’s highly-anticipated return to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

College reunion

Stick around for the credits, as a stinger brings back another survivor of the franchise, Brandy Norwood‘s Karla Wilson from the ’98 Bahamian-set sequel, a cameo Robinson also teased.

Reacting to the news of another vengeful massacre in Southport, North Carolina, Karla receives a menacing knock at the door. Could it be… Nick Fury? No, it’s Julie warning her with another letter she received, along with a throwback photo of them, featuring a red X over Karla’s face.

With a couple of new ‘final girls’ joining the franchise, Julie and Karla seem poised to team up against the remaining killer for another potential installment.

Killer reveal

Following a pretty similar plot and format as writer Kevin Williamson and director Jim Gillespie’s feature adaptation of Lois Duncan’s 1973 novel, Robinson and co-writer Sam Lansky took a big swing with the reveal of their requel’s killer, one that no other horror franchise has taken, at least in recent memory.

Avenging the death of her spiritual peer and sober buddy, Pidgeon’s Stevie Ward reveals in her big menacing monologue that she decided to take revenge on the group of former friends who covered up his death, after previously deserting her during her darkest days.

What first seems heartbreaking for Ray, who is established as Stevie’s employer and father figure, soon turns out to be an even more shocking reveal. Coming face to face with Julie, he confesses to guiding Stevie’s murderous impulses to take revenge on the gentrified town that erased the trauma he endured (and for which he has apparently never sought help) nearly 30 years before.

With Julie and Wonders’ Ava Brooks defeating Ray, his homicidal protege is still out there and ready to take revenge in another installment.