Emma Duval

"I don't need a hero! I'm Emma Duval! I don't need you!"

- Emma Duval to Tom Martin Emma Duval is the main protagonist of the original Scream television series.

She is portrayed by Willa Fitzgerald.

Description
Emma Duval is a popular 16-year-old who's a little too introverted and intellectual to be a social butterfly, but has nevertheless been anointed by the popular crowd to be one of their own. She feels guilty that she has drifted away from her former best friend, Audrey, but at least she's got a 'Gilmore Girls'-esque relationship with her mom, Maggie, to keep her sane. In the first season of Scream, Emma starts off as a popular, fun-loving and affable teenager who is very aware of the town Lakewood's murderous past. However, the Brandon James Copycat Killer (Ghostface) begins to stalk and murder Emma's friends one by one as Emma slowly become brave and resourceful in facing off the Lakewood slasher in the finale.

Emma Duval is a popular 16-year-old, introverted girl from Lakewood. She was friends with Tyler O'Neill, Nina Patterson, Riley Marra, Jake Fitzgerald, Brooke Maddox & Will Belmont who actually used her as a bet. Emma got close with the 6 and became included in their populair friendgroup. After Tyler, Nina and Riley were killed the truth came out Will used her and had a relationship with Brooke. Emma got close again to her former bestfriend Audrey Jensen after her girlfriend got killed and framed by a suicide. In the meantime Audrey got close with Noah (former boyfriend from Riley) and the three started hanging out. Emma also got a new "friend" who were into town to write about all the killings around Lakewood, Piper Shaw, who turned out to be Emma's half sister (to Maggie Duval and Brandon James).

Kills Committed

 * Piper Shaw
 * Tom Martin

Relationships

 * -|Kieran Wilcox=

"I don't want to lose you"

- Emma to Kieran

Kieran comforts Emma after she reveals that her "perfect boyfriend", Will Belmont, cheated on her. They share a passionate first kiss, but days later Emma assures Kieran that she was just upset. Even though the pair do end up dating, their relationship becomes complicated when Emma admits she still harbors romantic feelings for Will, and then again after the incidents with the Lakewood Slasher. Emma decides she needs time to heal from the events in Season 1 and breaks up with Kieran, leaving for a three month retreat that begins to help her heal emotionally from the suffering she endured.

They start up their relationship again at the beginning of Season 2. However, it becomes complicated further when Kieran tells the police Emma has the deceased Jake Fitzgerald's cellphone. Their relationship gets worse when Kieran goes behind her back and tells the police about the encounters she had with the Killer, and Emma starts to hang out with Kieran's cousin, Eli Hudson. They appear to have an "on and off and on again" relationship.

Eventually, after Kieran's "abduction" by the Killer, the two appear to have made up again after Kieran reveals the truth about the car accident and Emma keeps her distance from Eli, not trusting him anymore.

Their relationship comes to a final end in When a Stranger Calls when Kieran is revealed as the Killer, having only pretended to love Emma.


 * -|Audrey Jensen=

"You broke my heart! I loved you, OK? And you broke my heart. The worst part was that you didn't even know you were doing it"

- Audrey to Emma

Emma and Audrey were best friends since the third grade. However, when they entered high school they grew apart and eventually stopped talking to each other. Despite that, when Emma found a suspicious recording of Audrey she trusted her enough to give it back to her and lie to the police about it. They bond further as the Lakewood Slasher rampages, with both losing people they love. In the end, Audrey saves Emma's life when Piper almost kills her at the dock by shooting her in the chest.

However, in Season 2, their relationship becomes impeded in many ways. Audrey trying to keep her secret causes Emma to distrust her, and she expresses discontent upon hearing that Emma's father, Kevin, came back to Lakewood (It is currently unknown why). Eventually, Emma finds out about Audrey's secret and ends their relationship, shoving her against a locker. Audrey constantly attempts to get Emma to forgive her, only to be rebuffed every time.

Eventually, Emma officially forgives Audrey after she reveals that the reason Audrey pushed Emma away is because she loved Emma when she was younger and that Emma "broke her heart". After Emma risks her life to save Audrey from Kieran, now revealed as the killer, they work together to stop him. The struggle ends with Audrey harmlessly restraining Kieran while Emma hands him to the police. They are now officially best friends again, bonding as they are seen watching a movie together.

Quotes
"That means that someone at school must've put it in there."

- After showing Jake's phone to Kieran. "Wow. All right, enough with the eggshells. Let's go."

- Emma to Noah, Audrey and Brooke "I'm tired of all these secrets"

- Emma to Maggie "If what I saw last night in the woods is real, there's a new killer out there, and all of that, is happening again."

- Emma to Eli "Are you supposed to like your friends in high school?"

- Emma

Trivia

 * Emma is the daughter of Maggie Duval and Kevin Duval who were both survivors of the Brandon James murders.
 * While appearing more afraid at the start, Emma slowly becomes braver against the Lakewood Slasher.
 * Emma is the first lead (female) shown in the TV series and in the franchise, is the second, preceded by Sidney Prescott from the films (up until Scream 5) and succeeded by both Marcus Elliot from Season 3 and Samantha Carpenter in Scream (2022).
 * Emma has many traits identical to Sidney.
 * Her boyfriend was killed right in front of her, just like Sidney in Scream 2.
 * The scene where she slapped Haley Meyers in Dawn of the Dead, resembles the film scene of Sidney punching Gale in Scream and Scream 2.
 * Like Sidney's best friend Tatum from Scream, Emma is devastated to see her best friend Riley's lifeless body on the police station rooftop.
 * Like Sidney in Scream 2, Emma is traumatized by the Lakewood Murders but while Sidney was more emotionally traumatized, Emma has become more mentally traumatized by flashbacks and hallucinations and disturbing nightmares of childhood past with the James family.
 * Like Sidney in Scream 3, Emma deals with nightmares about her past, especially in Season 2, which each hint at the return of their killers.
 * This trait is also shared with Marcus Elliot in “The Man Behind the Mask”, which is a reference to Emma’s nightmare in Season 1 in “Betrayed”, as both are stabbed by the killers who, in their nightmares, are unmasked to reveal themselves, albeit more complex for Marcus (who had stolen his dead twin brother’s identity; much like Sidney’s use of the alias “Laura” or Emma’s mom, Maggie, as “Daisy”)
 * Emma has had a fractured relationship with her father since she and her mother have not spoken to him for a long time.
 * She is the first person in the series to get a call from the killer.
 * The phone call scene at the end of Hello, Emma with Emma and the Lakewood Slasher took only one take to film.
 * Emma and Brooke share a similar experience in the discovery of the dead bodies of their former boyfriends. In the case of Emma, she witnessed the end result of Will's death and his bifurcated body in the episode, In The Trenches. For Brooke, she saw Jake's disembowelled body in Happy Birthday to Me.
 * Emma's half-sister was revealed to be Piper Shaw in Revelations.
 * Emma and Piper’s antagonistic same sex sibling (one long lost and one former) duo is the first in the franchise, suceeded by Marcus and Jamal Elliot in Season 3, and by both Samantha and Tara Carpenter in Scream (2022).
 * This antagonistic half sibling duo is an homage to both Sidney Prescott and Roman Bridger’s duo in Scream 3.
 * In Season 1, a video of her first time with ex-boyfriend Will Belmont was leaked by Audrey and Noah.
 * In Season 2, it is shown that she is having hallucinations. She could possibly be suffering from PTSD.
 * This makes Emma officially the first character in the franchise to be shown taking medications for her mental health, succeeded by Liv Reynolds in Season 3 and Samantha Carpenter in Scream (2022) and the films, which each female sharing the similarity but differences for each (less Liv, due to the fact that she isn’t a lead).
 * She is best friends with Brooke Maddox and close friends with her former best friend Audrey Jensen and Noah Foster.
 * This is an inverse of the original friends of Sidney from Scream, which included Randy Meeks and Tatum Riley, before they were both replaced by Dewey Riley and Gale Weathers as the true friends when her friends Hallie and Derek (boyfriend) were killed in Scream 2.
 * Similar enough to Marcus’s remaining friends at the end of Season 3 which included Kym, Hawkins, and Liv Reynolds.
 * She suffered a deep slash wound across her stomach by Piper Shaw during their showdown on Wren Lake.
 * She suffered a cut on her arm by Kieran Wilcox during their showdown at Blessed Sisters Children's Home in When a Stranger Calls.
 * Emma is one of the members of the Lakewood Six.
 * She is ranked first by Gustavo Acosta.
 * She found Jake Fitzgerald's phone in her backpack in Happy Birthday to Me.
 * She currently works as a barista/waiter at the Grindhouse Cafe.
 * Emma is officially the fifth blonde female character in the franchise to not be killed, preceded by real life actresses within the franchise (meta) such as Tori Spelling, Heather Graham, and Alicia Silverstone; as well as both film characters Murphy and Kirby Reed, and then by Maggie Duval, Brooke Maddox, Ava Miller, and Becky from the TV series.
 * In Heavenly Creatures, she was arrested along with Audrey Jensen after a wrong accusation of killing Mayor Quinn Maddox.
 * The situation was later resolved after she, along with Audrey, subdued Kieran Wilcox, Quinn's actual killer in When a Stranger Calls.
 * Her student ID number is 30284.
 * She is one of 4 characters to have appeared in all episodes.
 * She has a tattoo on her left wrist that reads, 'DUVAL', her last name.
 * Out of the 3 killers from the show, Emma has killed 2 of them, Piper Shaw (her half-sister) and Tom Martin.
 * She spared Kieran Wilcox (her ex-boyfriend) because she wanted him to rot in prison, though he was murdered by The 3rd Killer eight months later.
 * All four of her romantic relationships/love interests were killed.
 * These include Will Belmont, Eli Hudson, Kieran Wilcox and Tom Martin, respectively.
 * Two of these were murderers, who unsuccessfully tried to kill her.
 * It should be noted that the only one Emma was truly devastated about was Will.
 * She participated directly or indirectly in all of the deaths except for Kieran's.