Characters / Scream: Sam Carpenter

Main Character Index
Movies: Recurring Characters (Sidney Prescott | Gale Weathers | Dewey Riley | Sam Carpenter) | Ghostface (Scream 4 Mastermind) | Scream (1996) | Scream 2 | Scream 3 | Scream 4 | Scream (2022) | Scream VI
TV Series: MTV Series | Resurrection

As Sam's true parentage is such a big part of her character, tropes related to the identity of her father are unmarked to prevent entire sections of whited-out text.

Samantha "Sam" Carpenter

"Are you telling me that I'm caught in the middle of fan-fucking-fiction?"

Played By: Melissa Barrera

Appearances: Scream (2022) | Scream VI

"Look, I'm sorry about what this has done to your lives. But no matter what you or the killer or anyone says, this isn't my story."

A bowling alley attendant living in Modesto, California who's dating her co-worker Richie, Sam left Woodsboro the moment she became an adult and never looked back, spending the rest of her life trying to outrun her past.

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A-M

• Action Girl: As per series tradition, she dishes out a lot of licks against Ghostface.
• Affair? Blame the Bastard: Both Sam's mother and stepfather appear to have deeply resented her for her parentage, despite her mother choosing to keep her.
• Affirmative-Action Legacy: Sam, a Latina woman with mental health issues, takes over as the protagonist of Scream 5 and VI from the Caucasian and neurotypical Sidney.
• Agonizing Stomach Wound: Technically, Sam gets stabbed in the hip near her stomach by Richie (which is how he reveals himself as a killer), though the injury is still serious enough to cause her major pain as she tries to escape the killers. It is later patched up after the killers are taken out and emergency services arrive.
• Aloof Big Sister: In 5, Sam is shown to be very distant from Tara, but she's actually doing this to protect her (and because of her secret that they are actually half-sisters). In VI, she goes the opposite direction and refuses to let Tara out of her sight, something that greatly annoys Tara even though she understands where her sister is coming from.
• Anti-Hero: She's very much a good person and a loving big sister, not just to Tara, but the rest of the Core Four. Her kindhearted nature is indeed genuine, but VI proves that a little bit of her father's evil is in her blood. As she mentions to her therapist, killing Richie felt right to her, and that terrifies her. Once she's finally face to face with the new Ghostfaces, she shows herself to be more than willing to exact thorough, messy revenge.
• The Atoner: It's clear that Sam's protectiveness of Tara is partly to make up for running out on her a few years prior.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Sam may have been angry at Gale for making her sound like an unstable psychopath in her book, but she's still distraught when Gale is nearly killed by Ghostface later in the movie, even to the point of refusing to leave her side when the medics arrive.
• Ax-Crazy: Sam is a genuinely good person, but she struggles with darker aspects of her nature, on top of mental health issues. Her hallucinations of Billy actively encourage her to kill, and when Sam unleashes her rage on Richie and Bailey, she stabs them dozens of times, even sporting a terrifying Slasher Smile as she kills the latter.
• Bastard Bastard: Worries that she may be this, since she's the illegitimate daughter of Billy Loomis. A great deal of her character arc is about her being afraid that his serial killer nature is In the Blood, and she's inherently dangerous to be around. In the end, she proves that she can be quite dangerous, but only if provoked. But if she is, boy howdy...
• Batman Gambit: When trying to escape from the killers, Sam purposely leaves a blood trail from her stab wound to an upstairs closet. Predictably, when the killer opens that door, Sam jumps out from another closet and tackles them. Notable for the fact that Sam is copying the same tactics that this film’s Ghostface had used only minutes before.
• Berserk Button: Hurting Tara or trying to do so is a good way to bring out Sam's dark side. Do so and you'll be very lucky if you just get away with getting tazed in the genitals rather than getting turned into a human pin cushion.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Despite her Dark and Troubled Past and fears about her nature, Sam is a kindhearted person and a Cool Big Sis to Tara and her friends and is remembered fondly by them. But don’t fuck with those she cares about, because she is a force to be reckoned with as one of the killers finds out.
• Big Damn Heroes: Sam saves Mindy’s life in the fifth film when the latter is attacked. In the sixth film, Sam and Tara manage to save Gale’s life after she too is attacked.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Sam has noticeably dark, full eyebrows.
• Big Sister Instinct:
  • The moment she learns that Tara has been attacked by a masked killer, Sam returns to Woodsboro after a five-year absence. This was deliberately exploited by the two Ghostfaces to get her back there so they could frame her. In Scream VI, this is taken to almost overprotective levels, which causes Tara to be angry with her. However, their relationship fully heals after the Final Battle with Ghostface.
  • This also extends to Tara’s friends as she feels a need to protect them from the killer too. And reinforced in the sixth, especially with the Meeks-Martin twins.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: Sam ends up covered head to toe in Richie’s blood after brutally taking him down.
• Bond One-Liner: After blowing Quinn's brains out in front of her stunned father.
  Sam: Always gotta shoot 'em in the head.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: When the killer taunts her during the Motive Rant, Sam tells them “fuck you” — a catchphrase Sidney typically uses against the killers. This is lampshaded by Richie, of course.
• Butt-Monkey: As with Sidney, Sam ends up becoming the new target of the Ghostfaces' collective rage, with the added bonus of being a Hero with Bad Publicity who is distrusted by all except her sister and closest friends.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: Sam takes a few puffs after Anika and seemingly Quinn are killed in VI.
• The Coats Are Off: In VI, Sam removes her jacket to signify the start of the final act, when the group is planning to lure the killer to the shrine.
• Combat Pragmatist: When battling one of the killers, Sam resorts to biting them in order to escape. Her stabbing another multiple times while they're wearing a vest allows her to find the weak spots shortly after when taking out another one who's also wearing a vest too.
• Composite Character: Appears to be a combination of Sidney and Dewey. Like Dewey, she is a mid-20s person known by her nickname, trying to protect a teenage sister (in Dewey's case, Tatum, in Sam's case, Tara). Like Sidney, she is the stoic protagonist, and the main Ghostface target due to the legacy of her deceased parent (in Sidney's case, her mother, in Sam's, her father).
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
  • To the franchise's previous lead, Sidney Prescott. Sidney was a white teenager at the start of the series while Sam is a Latina woman in her mid/late twenties when we meet her. Sidney was raised as an only child while Sam has a sister. Sidney was the same age as her friend group while Sam is quite a bit older than the other Core Four and acts an older sister to all of them as well as Tara. Sidney was a well-behaved teen who never got in trouble while Sam had a reputation as a rebel and had brushes with the law that she is still judged for years later. Sidney, aside from her mother's murder, came from a fairly stable family and was close to her father while Sam had a very tense relationship with her own mother and is descended from not one but two murderers. While Sidney put down her enemies, she never enjoyed it or was at risk of hurting anyone else while Sam admits to having enjoyed doing so and is greatly troubled by such a feeling and her impulses. And while Sidney's innocence and true nature was never really in doubt during the media attention she received throughout the series, Sam is unfortunately subject to harassment and conspiracy theorists who believed she was the real killer, even ending up as a suspect in the sixth film. Their outfits during the climax also contrast: Sidney can usually be seen wearing jackets (especially leather jackets) while Sam goes the Ellen Ripley route and wears tank tops.
  • To the first Ghostface killer, her own father, Billy Loomis. Both had parents that left their families because of their spouse’s infidelity. Neither Billy nor Sam dealt with this sudden change with a degree of healthiness, though Billy decided to give into his murderous thoughts and kill people while Sam actively resisted her darker tendencies and even left Woodsboro to avoid harming her family further. Billy had a mysterious, threatening but ultimately harmless persona above his actual personality that made him suspicious, while Sam appears like a generally kindhearted person with a checkered past that makes her look like a suspect. Billy was a Red Herring who turned out to be the killer who wanted his girlfriend dead and her father framed for the murders, while Sam is the protagonist on the verge of being framed as the killer by her own boyfriend. The fact that Billy is Sam's biological father and pops up in Sam's occasional hallucinations furthers emphasizes the differences, especially as Sam tries to resist being the Bastard Bastard people and (seemingly) the vision of her dead serial killer father expect her to be.
  • To Scream 4's main Ghostface, Jill Roberts. Jill was an unrepentant sociopath who killed several people to gain fame as a Final Girl and Sole Survivor, while Sam is a kindhearted individual who wants to avoid being a Final Girl but is ultimately forced to fill in the role. Where Jill willingly gave into her violent tendencies, Sam actively tries to resist them. Jill had the outward appearance of a Nice Girl who was never accused of being the killer up until The Reveal, while Sam is genuinely a good-hearted person with a troublemaking past suspected of being the killer, though she actually isn't. Jill's feelings for her family were superficial at best and downright murderous at worst, but Sam's feelings for her family are loving if sometimes conflicting. While Jill wanted to kill Sidney to replace her, Sam receives help from Sidney to end the killing spree. Whereas Jill killed her boyfriend with the intent of framing him, Sam kills her boyfriend when he turns out to be the Ghostface of the fifth killing spree. Finally, after the events of 5, Sam has become a Hero with Bad Publicity, the inverse of Jill's 15 Minutes of Fame as a Villain with Good Publicity at the end of 4.
  • To Cotton Weary. Despite neither being bad people, they had their reputations smeared thanks to their connection to Billy Loomis. However, Cotton always had Gale's support in the media, since she correctly believed him to be innocent of the crimes of which he was accused, whereas Gale knows for a fact that Sam isn't a bad person, yet it doesn't stop her from writing a book in which she characterizes Sam as violent and unstable. Cotton sought fame and became a celebrity for his part in stopping Nancy Loomis; Sam doesn't give a damn about being famous, but becomes so anyway thanks to her family's bloodthirsty legacy.
• Cool Big Sis: Sam acts as this trope to both her sister Tara and her friends, some of whom she babysat when she was a teenager and they were young children.
• Cop Killer: A heroic version. Sam takes out Detective Wayne Bailey, the lead Ghostface of the NYC murders, by cornering him and stabbing him over two dozen times and finishing off with a stab to the eye.
• Cosmic Plaything: Like Sidney Prescott before her, life seems to make a game out of kicking Sam around: at 13, she learned that her biological father was a serial killer, a revelation that led to her father walking out on the family, for which Sam's mother blamed her. Sam developed mental health issues and descended into drug abuse afterwards, leaving town at 18 with a decidedly mixed reputation. As an adult, Sam deals with her sister being attacked by a Ghostface killer, her seemingly-loving boyfriend being one of the Ghostface killers (who only hooked up with her in the first place to frame her for murder, several friends and acquaintances being brutally murdered, nearly dying herself, and having to kill the aforementioned evil boyfriend. The sixth film just piles on more trauma for Sam, as she's publicly harassed because of rumors that she was the mastermind behind the previous movie's killings, completely disowned by her mother, rejected by therapists during genuine attempts to seek help (one of whom violates her confidentiality and tells the police that she "made threats"), ends up the target of yet another Ghostface (three of them, in fact), nearly losing all of her friends to the killer, experiencing even more betrayal (not only from the killers, but from Gale, who profited off Sam's trauma like she did Sidney's), and, once again, nearly dying and having to put down her would-be killers.
• Coup de Grâce: Both of the Ghostface masterminds who found themselves at Sam's mercy got a brief grace period before Sam finished the job: she paused from stabbing Richie long enough to hear his last, pitiful pleas before cutting his throat, and after stabbing Bailey over 30 times, she briefly considers sparing his life, but, recalling his previous remark about killing those who went after his family, stabs him through the eye to put him down for good.
• Dark Action Girl: Make no mistake, she's a good person at heart, but she's got a troubled past and clearly struggles with her darker impulses seemingly inherited from her father Billy Loomis and her grandmother Nancy Loomis. Case in point, she embraces that bloodthirsty streak within her to kill Richie in extremely violent fashion, stabbing him 22 times, slashing his neck, and finally shooting him three times, splattering his brain all over the floor. In the following film, Sam ups this by stabbing Bailey about 30 times and finishing him off with a stab wound through the eye, all while wearing her father's Ghostface costume, even using the same menacing phone call tactic.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She ran away from home the moment she turned 18 and had multiple run-ins with drugs and the law even before that.
• Dark Secret: Sam's biological father is the original Ghostface mastermind Billy Loomis; her father learning this caused him to abandon his wife and daughters, and the stress of both this and Billy being her birth father weighed heavily on Sam for years to come. As of Scream VI, her parentage is publicly known, and Sam catches no end of grief because of it.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: Sam taunts Richie for being stupid enough to believe she'd trust her boyfriend of six months over her sister.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father left the family when she was a teenager. Her biological father is also one, having died before she was born.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": It's subtle but her distinct annoyance and Ghostface intentionally doing it to rattle her indicate that she really doesn't like being called by her full name, Samantha.
• Double Tap: After stabbing Richie 22 times and slitting his throat with the same hunting knife he threatened her with, Sam follows Sidney’s advice and grabs the revolver from Gale to shoot Richie’s corpse three times, the final time being a headshot.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: In the climax of VI, Sam blows Quinn's brains out in front of her father Bailey and prepares to do the same to him, only to hear an empty click when she pulls the trigger.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Sam ends the sixth movie in a pretty happy place all things considered. She's managed to eliminate the entire Bailey clan, found a genuinely decent and loving boyfriend in Danny, all her closest friends have survived, and she's repaired her fractured relationship with her sister with the two coming to an understanding. Finally, despite continuing hints that she enjoys killing the bad guys a little too much, she manages to put away her darker impulses for the sake of her sister and drops Billy's mask at the scene of the crime, content for the time being and accepting that she doesn't have to end up like Billy.
• Establishing Character Moment: Sam's first scene involves her finding out Tara was attacked and immediately deciding to head to Woodsboro to check on her. Even with some of the things that come out about Sam later, her introduction solidifies her as a caring big sister first and foremost.
• Et Tu, Brute?:
  • Sam feels betrayed when Gale walks back on her promise not to write a book about Richie and Amber and goes the extra mile by describing Sam as "unstable" and a "born killer."
  • Sam is devastated when she believes the third killer, by process of elimination, to be Mindy, especially since Chad was brutally stabbed only moments before. It's actually Quinn, who faked her death with the help of her father Bailey.
  • To a lesser extent, Sam is disgusted when her therapist declares that he will report her to the police for confessing that killing Richie felt good, telling him, "You're just like all the others."
• Everyone Went to School Together: Sam attended Woodsboro High with Kirby Reed, being a freshman while Kirby was a senior.
• Evil Feels Good: Sam, with deep discomfort, admits to a therapist that killing Richie felt "right". Said therapist, proving himself utterly useless, ends the session and reports what Sam said to the police. She also takes a little too much glee shooting Quinn and stabbing Detective Bailey in the eye.
• Evil Me Scares Me: Sam is very worried about her dark side taking over, to the point that she abandoned her sister out of fear for her safety. Subverted at the end of VI, where she fully embraces the role of a slasher to protect herself and Tara from the Bailey family and clearly relishes doing so. However, she manages to keep it in check due to Tara and her friends surviving.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Sam's hair is longer and darker in the sixth film, symbolizing her growing fears about letting her dark side take over.
• Expy: Sam is one to Jamie Lloyd. Just as Jamie replaces Laurie as the protagonist, Sam takes Sidney's spot as the main character. Likewise, Jamie and Sam are related to their franchises' slasher antagonists, Michael and Ghostface respectively, and have hints of murderous urges due to their lineage.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge:
  • Sam kills Richie in self-defense by stabbing him a total of 22 times, unleashing all her rage upon him for both the attack on her sister Tara and the plan to frame Sam for his and Amber’s killings.
  • In Scream VI:
    • Sam stabs Detective Bailey over thirty times after he and his children carried out a plan to, like Richie, frame Sam as a Ghostface and utterly destroy her reputation before killing her, her sister, and their friends.
    • She also hits Ethan in the head with a brick and stabs him five times in the chest, though he surprisingly doesn't die.
• Fall Guy:
  • She was intended to be this for Richie and Amber. Their plan was to frame Sam for their murders, exploiting her status as Billy Loomis’s illegitimate daughter so that she would be cast as the villain in the Stab movie that would be an adaptation of their killing spree.
  • The rest of Richie's family attempt this again in VI although they also plan to blame her death on a deluded conspiracy theorist.
• Famed In-Story: Similar to the predecessor, Sam becomes famous after the events of the Woodsboro requel murders. However, unlike Sidney, Sam is largely demonized online and offline because of her relation to Billy Loomis, especially by a bunch of “Woodsboro truthers” who believe Sam is the actual killer. Doubly so when she is publicly listed as a prime suspect in the NYC Ghostface killings.
• Family Extermination: A heroic version. Sam kills the entire Bailey family, with the exception of Ethan. All of them were psychopathic killers who tried to hurt Sam, her sister, and their friends, so they definitely had it coming. Also the rare case of this trope being executed in self-defense.
• Family of Choice: Sam's family, with the exception of Tara, has been a dramatic disappointment; her father abandoned his wife and daughters when Sam was a teenager because he learned that her biological father was psychopathic serial killer Billy Loomis, for which Sam's mother blamed her. Over the course of the fifth and sixth films, Sam, along with Tara, forms a strong familial bond with Chad and Mindy, ultimately identifying the three of them as her family, with fellow survivors Gale and Kirby, as well as Sam's boyfriend Danny, also being treated as part of the group.
• Final Girl: Like Sidney, Sam is a subversion of this trope. She is a kindhearted and intelligent young woman with a dark past, including trouble with the law, psychiatric issues, and a broken family. Sam also doesn't fit the virginal aspect of this trope, as it is mentioned that she and Richie have had sex. Additionally, Gale, Sidney, Tara, and the Meeks-Martin twins survive alongside her.
• Fire-Forged Friends: A Freeze-Frame Bonus of Sam's phone contacts shows that she kept in touch with Sidney after the events of 5.
• Former Teen Rebel: Sam used to do drugs and get in trouble with the law when she was in her teens, though has reformed by the start of the film. Sheriff Hicks remembers her and thinks she and Richie should leave town because she believes Sam will cause more trouble for Tara if she is around.
• Genre Blind: In the fifth film, she tells Richie, "You know that part in horror movies where you want to yell at the characters to be smart and get the fuck out? This is that part, Richie. You should get the fuck out." She's right in that this is a horror movie and one of them should get out of Woodsboro — but it's not Richie, who is one of the Ghostfaces. It should probably have been Sam, given that Ghostface explicitly tells Sam that Tara got attacked in the first place just to get Sam in Woodsboro.
• Genre Savvy:
  • After Dewey's death in 5, Sam prepares to leave Woodsboro with Tara and shoots down Sidney and Gale's attempts to get her to stay.
  • She also learns from her experiences with Richie and Amber that the only surefire way to bring down a Ghostface is to shoot them in the head, which she puts to good use with Quinn and nearly Bailey in VI.
  • She knows right away that Jason and Greg being acquaintances of Tara who were killed while living in the same city isn't a coincidence. Sam quickly tells Tara to pack a bag and be prepared to evacuate the city in ten minutes.
• Gone Horribly Right: The victim of this. The killers in 5 want to make her the villain of their new murder spree while the ones in VI who are Richie's family label her a monster. Both times, Sam fully adopts the Ax-Crazy killer role... against them.
• Good Counterpart:
  • To Ghostface. While Sam proves to be just as capable of extreme violence as any of the Ghostfaces (including her own father and grandmother), she has a conscience, which is more than can be said for just about anyone who has donned Ghostface's mantle, and only kills evil people and only in self-defense. Even when she puts on Billy's old Ghostface mask and costume and uses his knife in the sixth film, the only person she kills while wearing it is Detective Bailey.
  • To Roman Bridger. Both are The Unfavorite to their respective mothers, and both of their motivations revolve around their more mentally stable half-sisters. The difference is that Roman was Driven by Envy and wanted to kill Sidney whereas Sam only wants to protect Tara.
• Good Is Not Soft: Her method of killing Ghostface, who turns out to be Richie, is to stab him repeatedly with a knife and then slash open his neck, instead of the quick kills that Sidney and others usually gave to the previous villains. She's no less brutal when it comes to dispatching Richie's father, Detective Bailey, stabbing him dozens of times before putting him down with a knife through the eye.
• Hallucinations: Sam suffers from hallucinations of Billy that encourage her violent impulses.
• Has a Type: Based on her two on-screen love interests, Richie and Danny, Sam is partial to tall, scruffy Nice Guys, which Richie pretended to be and Danny legitimately is.
• The Hero: Sam has the largest focus of 5's new cast with her character arc contributing the most to the narrative, though Sidney still acts as the Big Good protagonist. She fully takes the role of The Protagonist in the next film after that.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Downplayed. Sam is a heroic figure, though is not liked by Sheriff Hicks for her past as a Former Teen Rebel, while Tara's friends have mixed feelings about her, as Sam returned after being estranged from Tara and the rest of their family for five years. In Scream VI, this is a much more prominent part of the plot. Ghostface spreads a rumor online that Sam was the true mastermind behind the "requel" killings, after her true parentage became public knowledge. That Gale wrote a book about the killings where she described Sam as "unstable" doesn't help matters.
• Heroic Bastard: Her father was Billy Loomis, with her having been conceived as a result of an affair Billy had with Sam’s mom before dying at the end of his murder spree. Thankfully, by the end of 5, it’s clear that she isn’t the other kind of bastard, as she takes down Ghostface herself.
• Heroic Build: Sam has a muscular build, as shown when she sheds her jacket just before the climactic fight in VI. She helps rescue her sister by taking down two Ghostfaces and stabbing the shit out of the third during said fight.
• Heroic Sacrifice: After Gale is nearly killed in VI, Sam tearfully offers to give herself up to Ghostface to protect Tara and anyone else from dying. Tara thankfully talks her out of it.
• I Am a Monster: Because her father and grandmother were both serial killers, she assumes she has this darkness in her as well, and skipped town when she was 18 because she was afraid of hurting Tara.
• I Am Not My Father: Sam actively tries to not be like her biological father Billy Loomis. In the end, however, she plays around with this trope: while she does kill someone in brutal fashion like Billy, it is to stop their killing spree and to save her sister.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Sam is Sidney Prescott's successor as the main protagonist of the Scream franchise. She doesn't appear in the series until its fifth installment.
• Improvised Weapon: She throws a lamp at Ghostface in defense of Mindy when she’s attacked by the killer. In VI, she hits the killer with a knife block to save Mindy and Anika, and later hits Ethan in the head with a brick when he stabs Kirby.
• In the Blood: Sam is terrified that she will end up like Billy and her grandmother, from whom she inherited her violent impulses, and is doing everything she can to avoid it, even if it means cutting herself off from those she cares about.
• I Shall Taunt You: Sam is really good at trash talking the killers so they'll let their guard down long enough to give her the advantage. Especially when the killers are Richie's grieving family.
  Sam: [Richie] was a limpdick little fuck who cried before I slit his throat.
• It's All My Fault:
  • She fully blames herself for her family falling apart, since her (step)father abandoned them after she accidentally made him aware of her true paternity. Tara points out that leaving was his decision; she only blames Sam for when she left.
  • She blames herself for the death of Anika and Ghostface targeting her friends because they want to make her pay. As well as for re-entering Tara's life and forcing Tara to choose sides which caused their mom to sever ties with both of them. Danny, Tara, and Gale are quick to assure her that none of these things is on her.
• It's Personal: Richie spent six months in a relationship with Sam to psychologically break her, and he and Amber tried to kill Tara multiple times in addition to roughing her up so bad she is confined to a hospital bed. The Baileys spread a rumor about Sam calling her a killer which led to her being harassed in public for the better part of a year, all so they could get revenge on Sam for rightfully dispatching their equally psychotic family member, Richie. Needless to say, Sam does not hold back when facing any of them, shooting Quinn an angry Death Glare upon learning the truth and granting two of the three male members of the family extremely painful deaths while they scream in agony.
• The Killer in Me: Spends most of her scenes with Billy actively fighting the darkness she thinks is in her thanks to him and Mrs. Loomis. She embraces it in the final confrontation with Richie. While she and Tara do end up saving the day, the experience unnerves her. When she asks Sidney if she'll recover from this, all Sidney can say is, "Eventually".
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Her connection to Billy is a twist revealed in the first half of Scream 5. As such, it's openly discussed in the second half of the movie and throughout Scream VI.
• Legacy Character:
  • In-universe, the killers intended to exploit the fact that she is the daughter of an infamous serial killer to revive the Stab franchise by framing her for the murders. In a meta sense, Sam seems to be poised to follow in Sidney’s footsteps as the new Final Girl. In Scream VI, she follows further in Sidney's footsteps, donning a Ghostface costume to attack the lead Ghostface just like Sidney did in the first film.
  • In Scream VI, the killers are out to invoke this as their master plan, having posted rumors online about Sam being the real mastermind of the Woodsboro killings and intending to frame her as the new Ghostface attacking people in New York. Detective Bailey even demands that she don her father's Ghostface costume so that he can kill her while she wears it to complete the frame up. Sam does put the costume on eventually, but it's to kill Bailey for his attacks on her and her Family of Choice.
• Like Brother and Sister: She becomes a surrogate big sister to Chad, who she babysat when he was a kid and cares about as if he were her own family.
• Like Parent, Like Child:
  • Like her mother Cristina, Sam has a history of addiction, as well as unknowingly sleeping with one of the Ghostface killers, though Sam managed to avoid becoming pregnant by Richie.
  • The killers of 5 and VI plan on framing her for the murders with this as her motive. And when she fights back, she displays a brutality that would make Billy proud.
• Like Parent, Unlike Child:
  • Unlike her mother (who blamed Sam for Cristina's husband leaving due to Cristina's affair with Billy Loomis), Sam, despite her issues, never foists blame on anyone else, and she eventually kicked her drug habit; by contrast, in the fifth film, Tara expresses surprise that her mother would ever attend an NA or AA meeting.
  • Unlike her biological father or her paternal grandmother, Sam, while capable of violence that matches or even exceeds that of any Ghostface, has a solid moral compass and has only ever even tried to kill people who were actively trying to kill her, Tara, and their friends.
• Long-Lost Relative: She's Billy Loomis' biological daughter. When she found out and confronted her mother about it, it destroyed her parents' marriage and marked her Start of Darkness.
• Made of Iron: She doesn't come off too bad from receiving an Agonizing Stomach Wound courtesy of Richie in 5. She's still able to put up a solid fight that she wins and, a little later, is walking around with barely a hint of pain.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Sam's father believed that she was his until Sam was 13, where she discovered her mother's brief affair with Billy Loomis and realized that Billy was her biological father. Sam's father overheard her confront her mother about it, took the revelation poorly, and abandoned the family. Sam's mother, naturally, blamed Sam for the whole thing.
• Meaningful Name: Her surname is the same as John Carpenter's. This is a significant parallel, considering that her father has the same surname (and she has the same first name) as Sam Loomis, one of the protagonists from John Carpenter's Halloween. In Scream VI, one of the conspiracy theorist posts that Sam shows her therapist actually refers to her as Sam Loomis.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Sam seems to suffer from a form of mental illness, possibly Schizophrenia, that causes her to have vivid hallucinations of Billy, encouraging her violent impulses.
• Missing Mom: Her mother Cristina is at a conference in London during the events of the film. In the sixth film, it's mentioned that Cristina had cut ties with Sam entirely for telling Tara about Billy Loomis being Sam's father.
• Mocking the Mourner: Sam spitefully (and accurately) tells Richie's family that he died whimpering in terror while she killed him. Given that Richie's family are actively trying to kill her and Tara, and have tried to frame Sam for several murders, this is much less mean-spirited than most examples of this trope.
• Ms. Fanservice: Aside from being played by the beautiful Melissa Barrera, Sam strips down to tank tops in the finale of both films to show off her impressive muscles.

N-Z

• Never Accepted in His Hometown: Sam is described as being a former troublemaker with the law, thus garnering the sheriff's contempt, and many of the teens don't seem to trust her when she returns. The fact that she is Billy Loomis' illegitimate daughter is implied to be a factor in this, since several people (including the killers) are apparently aware of this.
• Nice Girl: She's a Former Teen Rebel with a Dark and Troubled Past, but aside from that she's very much a caring and kindhearted Cool Big Sis to Tara and the rest of her friends, who's just doing her part to be a good person, and attempts to curve and suppress the darker tendencies she openly fears she inherited from her father. That said, if you're a killer, particularly a Ghostface, coming after anyone she cares for, especially if that someone is Tara, you'll learn quite quickly, to never fuck with the illegitimate daughter of a serial killer.
• Official Couple: With Danny at the end of VI.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Sam's troublemaking past doesn't endear her to anyone in Woodsboro, especially Judy Hicks. In VI, her brutal killing of Richie in self-defense (exacerbated by an Internet rumor accusing her of having masterminded the 2022 murders) has turned her into a pariah even living on the other side of the country in New York.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: She's exclusively called Sam by her friends. The only one to ever call her Samantha is Ghostface to try and antagonize her.
• Open Secret:
  • Played with; although Sam believes it to be a closely guarded secret, her parentage has apparently gotten quite a ways around Woodsboro thanks to her mother's drunken ramblings. That said, it's still a surprise to the rest of the main cast.
  • In Scream VI, Sam believes her romance with Danny to be a total secret. Her friends can barely even pretend to be surprised when she tells them about it.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Her brutal killings of two Ghostfaces, Richie and his father, have her stab each one multiple times—which she non-lethally does to Ethan too. In addition, she taunts the Baileys about Richie being pathetic and shoots Quinn in the head.
  • She also tases a guy in the crotch for trying to date rape Tara.
  • Sam's treatment of Detective Bailey warrants special mention; after Bailey is knocked out while fighting her, Sam could have killed or restrained him while he was unconscious, but she opts to don a Ghostface costume and inflict on him the same torment he and his children subjected her and her friends to, taking special satisfaction in Bailey's fear and frustration before attacking and killing him.
• Phrase Catcher: "Hello, Samantha..." Fitting her status as a Good Counterpart to the Ghostface killers, Sam gets to turn it back on the Big Bad of Scream VI, with her own voice-changer accented "Hello, Detective Bailey...".
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Dishes one out to every Ghostface she kills.
  Richie: What about my ending?
  Sam: Here it comes. (slashes his throat)
  Sam: (to Quinn, before shooting her in the head) Looks like you're down another brother.
  Sam: (to Detective Bailey, before stabbing him in the eye) But you did fuck with our family, so...
• Promoted to Parent: Becomes this in the sixth film after Tara cuts off ties with their mother. This drives their interpersonal conflict during much of the film: Tara wants independence, while Sam wants Tara to be safe and to deal with her trauma.
• Properly Paranoid: In the sixth film, she has multiple locks on her apartment door and makes Tara carry around a taser. After everything they went through, it's completely justified.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Despite being a Former Teen Rebel, Sam is treated poorly by both Amber and Judy Hicks, who remember her troublemaking days all too well. Subverted with Amber, who is intentionally trying to make Sam look bad to set her up as her and Richie's slasher movie villain.
• Refusal of the Call: See the page quote. Sam wants nothing to do with Ghostface and denies Sidney and Gale's offer to remain in Woodsboro to help stop the killer (albeit because her top priority is making sure Tara gets safely out of dodge).
• Reluctant Psycho: Sam knows there's something mentally wrong with her, and takes anti-psychotics to try to suppress it. The reason she left Tara is because she was worried about possibly harming her sister.
• Remember the New Guy?: Though not mentioned in Scream 4, she is revealed to know both Judy Hicks in 5 and Kirby Reed in VI. Justified as she and Judy presumably knew each other after the events of 4, and she and Kirby went to school together (though, as Sam herself says, she was a freshman when Kirby was a senior).
• Revenge is Sweet: She has no problem killing Richie or his equally crazy family members. In fact, she does so with glee. By the time she faces Quinn, Ethan, and Bailey, she outright revels in their agony, taunting them about Richie's pathetic final moments, happily gunning down Quinn after taunting her, and finally giving Bailey the most prolonged painful death in the film.
• Right Behind Me: When she told her mother that she knew who her real father was, she didn't realize that her father was listening until it was too late. He didn't know until then, and he did not take it well.
• Screaming Warrior: After discovering her gun is empty, Sam simply says, "Fuck it" and charges at Bailey, screaming all the way.
• Secret-Keeper: For the first third of the film, Sam hides the fact that she is Billy Loomis' daughter. Tara initially does not take it well (though mostly because Sam ties this reveal in with the reason why she eventually left Woodsboro, and thus Tara and their mother), but soon reconciles with her sister once the shock subsides.
• Secret Relationship: She starts dating her neighbor Danny in Scream VI. Sam is the only person who thinks it's a secret.
• Serial-Killer Killer: Will work outside the law if she has to when it comes to taking out Ghostfaces. One she kills by shooting her in the head after taunting her and viciously stabs the other two to death—while non-lethally stabbing a third multiple times in an effort to kill him too.
• Shadow Archetype: To Sidney herself. Both are the protagonists of their stories with troubled pasts, act as a Final Girl and a subversion of the trope at the same time, whilst also being genuinely good people despite what they go through and are manipulated and betrayed by a boyfriend. But there are also differences: Sidney's past relates to the actions of her mother, whilst Sam's relates to the actions of her father. Sidney was mentally stable for the most part, whilst Sam's mind is more fractured. Sam is unloved and often distrusted, whilst Sidney is famous and always seen in a good light by everyone aside from Ghostfaces. Familywise, both are fractured, but Sam's sisterly relationship with Tara survives, whilst Sidney's brother and cousin turn out to be the Ghostfaces of their films. Both have mothers with traumatic pasts, though Sidney eventually accepted that her mother was a flawed person whereas Sam is currently estranged from hers. Finally, whilst Sidney had a good father that was momentarily suspected to be the killer, Sam's father is Billy Loomis, the actual killer of the first film. Also, unlike Sidney (who typically dispatches the killer using guns, giving them quick deaths), Sam tends to go for long, drawn-out knife stabbings, ensuring her victims' deaths are slow and painful.
• She Who Fights Monsters: This is heavily teased throughout the films for Sam. She's no less than Billy Loomis' daughter and Nancy Loomis' granddaughter, after all. In the sixth film, this is eventually Deconstructed and Subverted. Sam uses her late father's Ghostface mask, costume, and knife, as well as using the iconic voice changer to taunt Detective Bailey, whom she goes on to kill in a manner that rivals, if not exceeds the brutality of any Ghostface killing, and when all is said and done. She frightens even the Baileys, but this is shown to be a heroic thing, and Sam not letting everyone's perception of her as someone who might snap and end up an evil serial killer stop her from doing what she needs to do to protect her loved ones. She seems briefly tempted to keep Billy's mask, but she instead drops it and walks on alongside Tara, showing that she is choosing not to follow in her family's footsteps.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Both her love interests are kind-hearted and supportive types who don't judge Sam for her flaws. Richie it turns out is anything but that, but it ultimately holds true of Danny.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Sam's biological father was Billy Loomis, the original Ghostface mastermind, and for simply being his illegitimate daughter, Sam catches no end of grief, whether it's from her parents, strangers, or even new Ghostface killers; Richie and Amber considered her the perfect "villain" for their movie because she's Billy's daughter, and the sixth film's killers taunt Sam endlessly that she's a killer, just like her father.
• Slasher Smile: She gives a truly horrific one against Ghostface during the final confrontation of VI, that even they are taken aback in terror of her.
• Swipe Your Blade Off: She wipes her blade with her bare hand after slashing Richie's throat.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: She's a rough, blue-collar Action Girl, and when she gets into it in the third act, she sheds her jacket for a gray tank top.
• Teen Pregnancy: Sam is the result of one, resulting in her parents marrying after high school.
• Terror Hero: She stops bothering to hide her dark side when facing Richie's murderous family in VI, instead fully adopting the role of a slasher herself.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: A surprisingly heroic example. In Scream (2022) and VI, Sam is extensively treated like she's a monster because she's Billy Loomis's daughter, which is part of Richie and Amber's plot to make her the scapegoat villain of their murders. Especially in the latter, where Malicious Slander has labeled her near-murderer Richie as a victim of Sam's murderous rampage that she then pinned on him. It takes a toll on her throughout each movie. She embraces that dark side of herself to kill Richie, and then becomes a full-on slasher herself against his family that's trying to kill her, giving out a terrifying Slasher Smile, even donning her father's old costume to kill Bailey personally in the most violent manner seen in any kill up to that point.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • She stabs Richie 22 times, cuts his throat and then fires three rounds into his corpse (the last one in the head) just to make sure. The overkill comes back to bite Sam in the sixth film; Detective Bailey, Richie's vengeful father, explicitly says that seeing the state of Richie's corpse is what convinced him that Sam needed to die.
  • She kills Richie's father, Detective Bailey, by stabbing him dozens of times in the gaps of his bulletproof vest and finishing him off by stabbing him in the brain through his eye socket.
• Token Good Teammate: Of the Loomis family. Her father was a serial killer, her grandmother also a murderer who refused to accept responsibility for how Billy turned out and her paternal grandfather, while not a killer, cheated on his wife and tore his family apart with little apparent remorse. Sam, while she has her dark side, is also genuinely trying her best to be good and take responsibility for her actions and those around her and is a sincerely kind-hearted and caring person through it all.
• Token Minority: Due to her mother being Latina, Sam is the only non-white member of the Loomis family seen so far.
• Tomboyish Name: Befitting for a Final Girl, Samantha Carpenter is usually called "Sam".
• Took a Level in Badass: Sam's first encounter with Ghostface has her fleeing in terror and calling for the police to help. By the end of 5, she's holding her own against the killer and proceeds to turn him into a human pincushion.
• Undiscriminating Addict: In Sam's words to her own sister explaining that she's Billy Loomis's biological daughter, she would do every drug she could get her hands on.
• The Un-Favorite: Sam's mother blames her for her father leaving the family, and their relationship is strained at best because of it. It's also strongly implied that Sam's mother holds Sam being Billy's daughter against her, despite being the one who slept with Billy in the first place, with the affair coming out being the reason her husband left her. By Scream VI, she's cut all ties with Sam, blaming her for Tara finding out about about Billy being Sam's father.
• Villain Killer: By the end of Scream VI, Sam has slain no fewer than three of the five Ghostfaces she's gone up against, including the masterminds of the killing sprees in the fifth and sixth films.
• Villainous Lineage: The first two Ghostface sprees were masterminded by her father and paternal grandmother.
• Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about Sam without mentioning that she's the illegitimate daughter of Billy Loomis, to the point where the subsequent film treats it as a Late-Arrival Spoiler.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: It turns out she has a real penchant for knives, particularly hunting knives like the kind used by her father and his successors. While not above using guns or the odd improvised weapon, she's most effective with a knife in hand and will go for one whenever sensing danger. Quite fitting really for someone who is functionally the Ghostface of Ghostfaces. Notably, when Ghostface attacks her apartment in VI, and she finds that someone had already taken and hidden all the kitchen knives to render them defenceless, she actually stumbles over what to do without one before resorting to the less effective blunt force weapon of the knife holder.
• We Used to Be Friends: Her relationship with Gale falls apart after Gale describes Sam in unflattering terms in her book after promising she wouldn't write about the latest Ghostface murder spree. Sam refuses to even take her call when the murders start up again in New York and immediately tries to punch Gale in the face the next time they meet up. Fortunately, their friendship starts to mend when Gale assures Sam she's not to blame for Tara falling out with their mother and when Sam saves Gale's life after she is attacked.
• When She Smiles: Sam is usually pretty reserved or angry due to being pushed to her breaking point by Ghostfaces or being publicly harassed for her Villainous Lineage but when she's happy and smiles, such as with Tara or their friends, she's absolutely radiant.
• White Sheep: Of the Loomis family. Of the members who are prominently featured within the narrative, Sam is the only one who actively resists the darker tendencies of her psyche until she has to channel them into stopping the killing spree and saving her sister.

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"Never fuck with the daughter of a serial killer."