Sidney Prescott is in trouble. The night after two of her classmates get murdered by a masked killer, this Neve Campbell heroine has been summoned to speak with her principal. The Woodsboro Sheriffs department, it seems, wants to ask Sid about the murders and their similarities with her own mothers violent end. Unnerved, Sidney enters the office looking for a familiar face. She finds one in her principal (Henry Winkler), and another in the sheriffs hapless deputy, the older brother of her best friend Tatum (Rose McGowan). Dewey, she smiles while greeting him.Thats Deputy Riley in here, Sid, the babyfaced man in a uniform nervously answers.This scene from 1996s Scream establishes the eternal struggle of Deputy Dewey Riley, one of the mainstay characters of the iconic slasher franchise. Played by David Arquette, Deputy Dewey always wanted to be a hero but could never could get the respect he craved or needed to become that guy. And with good reason, given his tendency to bumble around the various Ghostfaces instead of actually stopping them. Even so, Dewey endeared himself to audiences because he always tried his best and always did the right thing. It was such a winsome vibe that audience love for the character in test screenings caused Wes Craven to change the ending so Dewey survived his stabbing at the climax of the film. The quality also won the heart of the cynical newscaster Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox).That good-hearted affability didnt even go away after his marriage to Gale evaporated in the sequels, leaving him a burnout who drinks away his troubles at a trailer park in the 2022 requel, Scream. But the dissolution of the Dewey-Gale partnership did change the trajectory of the character, making someone who was created to be comic relief a suddenly grizzled, serious figure, who heroically sacrifices himself to help sisters Sam and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) escape.Deweys death in Scream 5 was powerful, painful and absolutely wrong-headed. So wrong, in fact, that it might be a great idea to bring Dewey back for the upcoming Scream 7.Its easy to see why online fans have initially been skeptical about Deweys return since it was revealed to the trades yesterday. After all, the first Scream announced itself by killing a familiar face immediately, removing someone we know from the movie, not by adding someone. Furthermore, the sudden infusion of classic characters missing from recent moviesincluding Neve Campbells Sid and Matthew Lillards long-deceased Stu Macherfeels like an attempt to distract from the absence of the new cast the series built up. (Barrera was fired from the series due to voicing her political views about the war in Gaza, and Ortega swiftly followed her out the door, albeit some sources claimed at the time Ortega was always intending to exit.)Still, if theyre going to bring Dewey back, at least they have the chance to do him right. Dewey as a character and Arquette as a performer works best as a sad-sack; a loser who cannot get anything right. Hes even part of the comic and meta-textual nature of the story since doofus cops have been part of creator Wes Cravens approach to horror, beginning withThe Last House of the Left in 1972.Making him into a grizzled veteran for the 2022 movie never sat right. It stripped away the warm, comedic elements that Arquette brought to the franchise and replaced with a dour weight which didnt fully work. He felt like a lesser version of the traumatized version of Laurie Strode that Jamie Lee Curtis played in 2018s Halloween, a trope that has aged even worse after similar versions in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Exorcist: Believer.When Dewey died, he wasnt himself. He was a different type of character, one that Arquette couldnt play effectively and one that wasnt needed for the story. His unlikely return in Scream 7 can work, as long as we get more of the bumbling, lovable Dewey we know from the first four movies, leaving that mournful Dewey dead in the past.