Let's Unpack Those 2 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Cameos

There’s been much publicity about the return of original stars Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt for 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer (now in cinemas), Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s sequel-cum-reboot to the ‘90s horror franchise. But in addition to Prinze Jr. and Hewitt reprising their roles of Ray Bronson and Julie James, respectively, there are two more stars of the original franchise who return for surprise cameos in the new film. Read on to find out who comes back from the dead. Spoilers abound.

Is Sarah Michelle Gellar in I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)?

For much of the runtime, the audience is teased with the presence of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Helen Shivers, who met her end midway through I Know What You Did Last Summer. Several times, we glimpse pictures of Helen, and at one point, Danica (Madelyn Cline) points out that they were both crowned Queen of Southport in their teen years. The punchline to all of this comes just ahead of the third act, as Danica dozes off in the police station and has a disturbing dream featuring a reincarnated Helen, played once again by Gellar.

In the dream, Danica finds Helen presiding over a Queen of Southport set on an abandoned stage and wielding the fisherman’s hook synonymous with the franchise’s cloaked killer. As she stands over the mutilated body of Danica’s former fiancé, Helen promises her that she and her friends will pay for their moral oversight with their lives. As Helen begins to morph from a beauty queen into a decayed corpse, Danica wakes up.

Though the sequence is a dream and therefore Helen remains dead in the franchise’s universe, the scene provides a nifty way to reintroduce Gellar back into the film. The surprise cameo comes after Gellar repeatedly denied she would have a role in the film, despite teasing that she would be involved in an “unofficial” capacity. As she’s married to Prinze Jr., many understood her comments to mean she’d be supporting her husband behind the camera.

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Does Brandy Norwood return for I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)?

The final surprise cameo comes in the middle of the end credits and seems to set up an as-yet-unconfirmed sequel. After the events of the film, in which Julie once again foils the hook-handed killer, we cut to Karla (Brandy Norwood) and her husband watching a news report about the latest massacre.

“Wasn’t she your college roommate?” Karla’s husband asks, and indeed she was. Though Norwood didn’t appear in the original film, she starred opposite Hewitt in the sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), which followed the characters on a Bahamian getaway which is foiled by inclement weather and, more notably, the murderous fisherman. Karla survived alongside Julie, but there’s no mention of the former throughout the new I Know What You Did Last Summer…until the closing credits.

After finishing the news report and lamenting that Julie “just can’t catch a break” when it comes to mad slashers, Karla hears an ominous knock at the door. She slowly creeps to open it, revealing a ludicrously be-hatted Julie carrying an envelope. Julie opens it to reveal a photo of herself and Karla from back in college, with Karla’s face ominously crossed with a red X. On the blank side is written, “It’s not over.”

“I need you to help me,” Julie tells Karla, to which her friend responds: “Who are we gonna f--k up this time?” Roll credits.

Norwood previously told Entertainment Tonight that she would “hopefully” return to the franchise, though, “I don’t know how [Karla] would come back.” Norwood added: “I haven’t thought about that yet, but I know that she should come back. She should definitely come back.”

Miraculously, the filmmakers were able to keep Gellar and Norwood’s involvement a secret right up until the movie’s release, and they seem to have sparked the intended reaction. At a relatively muted early screening, both moments provoked enthusiastic cheers—the only ones of the evening. Though a potential sequel is still up in the air, presumably to be determined after the reboot’s opening weekend, another Norwood/Hewitt pairing indicates many directions in which the follow-up might go. At least we know the fans are into it.

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