I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) Ending Explained

By Andrew Pollard / July 21, 2025

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

Synopsis:

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they’re forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer…and is hell-bent on revenge. As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help.

With the new I Know What You Did Last Summer movie now in theatres worldwide, many horror fans have been left asking what's next for the franchise following how things wrapped up in this Jennifer Kaytin Robinson-helmed offering.

Here, we've got you covered with a breakdown of what went down at the end of I Know What You Did Last Summer, and what that could mean for the future of the franchise moving forward. It should go without saying, but there will be heavy spoilers for this 2025 picture from here on out. Don't say you haven't been warned...

What Went Down

After its opening act tragedy, I Know What You Did Last Summer focuses on our core group of characters - Ava Brucks, Danica Richards, Teddy Spencer, Milo Griffin, and Stevie Ward - one year after that incident, with a brutal Fisherman now causing chaos and hunting them down one by one. Also along for the ride, we've got supporting players in horror podcaster Tyler Trevino, Teddy's town official father Grant, local pastor Judah Gillespie, and of course appearances from returning faces Julie James and Ray Bronson.

In terms of the carnage of the movie, the first person killed 'one year later' is Wyatt, Danica's new fiancé, who's brutalised with a spear gun in his own home. Next up, Tyler is killed at the derelict shop that used to belong to the original movie's Elsa Shivers - the sister of franchise fave Helen Shivers, with Sarah Michelle Gellar actually making a cameo appearance as Helen later on during a dream sequence - and Tyler's corpse is hung out on display for the whole of Southport to see. Then, it's the turn of the first of our main group to bite the bullet, with Milo strangled to death with a rope in his car outside Danica's lavish home. However, that body doesn't actually turn up properly until a little later in the film, with Milo's friends unaware he's been killed and still receiving text messages from his phone. Teddy and his dad, Grant, are up next on the menu, where they're slaughtered on their property, despite Teddy initially putting up a good fight. The police then happen across the dead body of Pastor Judah, and that's when we get to I Know What You Did Last Summer's first big reveal.

That initial reveal? It's that Stevie Ward is the film's killer, with Stevie revealing herself to Ava and Danica when they set sail in Teddy's boat. In terms of a motive, it's explained that the person killed in the opening scene, Sam Cooper, was a close friend and seemingly an on-off boyfriend of Stevie's. As is detailed earlier in the movie, Stevie is a recovering addict who'd struggled after the death of her own father, and in Sam, she had somebody there to lean on when her other friends weren't there for her. Pushed over the edge, Stevie resurrected the town's infamous Fisherman persona to exact her revenge one year later.

Moments after that reveal, Ray turns up to try and talk sense to Stevie, with her having a close relationship with him due to working at Ray's bar. Despite this, Stevie slices Danica, causing her to fall into the water, supposedly dead, which in turn forces Ray to shoot Stevie, who likewise falls into the ocean, supposedly dead.

Pulling off a double-twist - and one some may have seen coming, particularly Scream fans - we then get the reveal, at Ray's bar, that the murders of the film were carried out by Fishermen rather than a singular Fisherman. Well, a Fisherman and a Fisherwoman, I guess. With Ava locked in Ray's bar, a wound on his arm mirrors a blow Ava dished out to the killer earlier in the movie, meaning that, yes, I Know What You Did Last Summer switched Ray Bronson from one of the heroes of the first two pictures to now the villain of this fourth film. He and Stevie had worked together, with Ray putting the blame for his villainous ways on how Southport had tried its best to erase the town's 1997 murders from the history books, with those events ignored as the area tried to make itself more marketable to tourists.

It's here that Julie James comes back into the frame, with Jennifer Love Hewitt's character having largely been on the sidelines throughout the bulk of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Julie is nowadays a college professor whose main role in this new Last Summer was to offer a few words of advice to Ava, but she's at a point in life where she's very hands-off and has zero interest in returning to Southport. However, the final act sees Julie piece together that Ray is a second killer, with the penny dropping after a comment from Ava about how surprised she was that one person could carry out such acts. And wouldn't you know it, the final girl of the first two movies turns up at Ray's bar just as he's about to kill Ava with his trusty hook; somehow getting there in barely two minutes, despite it being earlier established that Julie lives an hour or so away. But, slasher movie logic, right?

With Julie asking how Ray - the two having long had a bitter divorce - how he could use what happened to them as the blueprint to carry out his own set of murders, he again points out how, not only did he want to help Stevie heal from the death of Sam Cooper, but he wanted to ensure that Southport didn't forget what happened to them back in 1997 and beyond; events that have since become almost an urban myth.

With Ray on the brink of killing his ex-wife - complete with a "What are you waiting for, huh?" callback - he's shot from behind with a speargun, courtesy of the now-recovered Ava. And with that, I Know What You Did Last Summer switches to a shot of Danica washed up on the local beach, not dead, but in need of medical attention. So, we then get a few minutes with Danica and Ava at the hospital, where they swear, if Stevie is alive, they'll track her down and kill her - this coming after it was alluded to that Ray shot Stevie with a blank earlier.

Roll credits...

That Mid-Credits Scene

Prior to I Know What You Did Last Summer's release, Jennifer Love Hewitt had been very vocal about making sure fans stick around for the end credits. And for franchise fans, man, was the film's mid-credits sequence a whole lot of fun!

In that sequence, we're reintroduced to Brandy Norwood's Karla Wilson, Julia's college roommate and a fellow survivor of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. As she and her husband watch a news broadcast, Brandy sees a report about the incidents in Southport, that Ray Bronson was behind these murders, and that Julie had survived this latest killing spree.

Perfectly timed, a knock at the front door reveals Julie standing there, where she pulls out a picture of her and Karla with a red cross drawn through Karla's face, and an accompanying note that promises "It's not over". Julie asks if Karla is up for the challenge should more attacks start up, to which the response is an extremely adamant 'yes', before the rest of the end credits kick in.

What's Next For The Franchise?

So, coming out of I Know What You Did Last Summer, there are plenty of questions about where the franchise goes from here.

According to director and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, while a sequel has certainly been teased, it isn't a given that we'll get a follow-up. Essentially, Robinson said it all depends on how fans react to the 2025 movie. If the film is well-received and brings home a solid box office haul, that obviously increases the chances of Sony Pictures pushing forward with a further movie. Should the fan response and box office numbers for I Know What You Did Last Summer prove negative, that will likely rule out any imminent new outings for the property.

For those wondering, the picture is closing in on $28 million at the worldwide box office as of this writing, from a budget in the region of $18 million. As for reviews, they've generally been mixed so far.

Speaking of reviews, you can find our I Know What You Did Last Summer review below:

Should a new sequel be greenlit, there are certainly a few interesting chess pieces on the board to play with. We've got Danica having survived alongside Ava, Julie James has reunited with Karla for what appears to be the first time since their college days, and we've also the prospect of Stevie Ward still being alive out there somewhere. And with I Know What You Did Last Summer introducing the concept of dual killers, that also shakes things up if and when any future movies come down the pipe.