Sidney-Mark Relationship

The relationship of Scream franchise protagonist, Sidney Prescott and Detective Mark Kincaid begins implicitly in Scream 3 (2000 film). It is re-addressed in Scream 5 (2022 film) almost 22 years later as an Easter egg for long-term fans.

It reveals they eventually married and had at least three children between the events of the fourth and fifth film, sometime in the 2010s decade. Sidney had previously been single in the fourth entry of the series (and possibly broken up with Mark sometime beforehand).

The development of their relationship is almost entirely off-screen in the Scream film series, due to the eleven year release gaps between Scream 3 (2000) to Scream 4 (2011) as well as Scream 4 to Scream 5 (2022). The two characters in the third film bond over their dark, haunted lives (Sidney as a survivor of serial killing sprees, and Mark a homicide detective). Mark flirts with Sidney, and Detective Wallace picks up on this.

Approx. Early-2000
In in the third film, Sidney and Mark are acquaintances. Sidney is now an almost 22-year-old woman, and Mark is approx. 30. He is assigned to the Cotton Weary murder case and demands to know Sidney's whereabouts due to her mother's photograph being attached to the crime. Mark shows a very subtle interest in Sidney during the film. Even so that Detective Wallace mocks him for it, saying he is going to get her flowers and candy. They share a common thread in leading disturbed lives, as Mark is a homicide detective in Hollywood, describing himself as haunted by it. Sidney asks him a question before he leaves his office saying, "What's your favorite scary movie?" He replies, "My life." She pauses and replies, "...Mine too" after he leaves.

Later, when Gale and Dewey are captured and held captive at the mansion, she gets a call from the killer and grows suspicious of him thinking he has plotted the whole thing as the killer. It takes Kincaid fighting off the killer at the mansion to restore some belief in his innocence.At the end of the movie, he is at her house in Monterey, California, with the now-engaged couple, Gale and Dewey (who, according to the fourth film, will marry in one year, by 2001). Having survived the ordeal, he invites her to sit down to watch the movie with them, indicated to be a double-date. They are clearly friends as it is, but as later revealed, at the very beginning stages of a new romance.

2000—2011
Mark and Sidney dated sometime in this decade-long period, it is unknown how short or how long the relationship lasted, but they had a break-up, at least according to the fourth film revealing Sidney was single.

2011
By the fourth film, the young publicist Rebecca Walters complains that Sidney, now 32, "never gets laid", indicating she is abstinent and has not been in a relationship for a while. Sidney also does not have a phone in the film, indicating that she is still somewhat shut-off and disconnected from people naturally, despite the progress she has made to move on in the past almost twelve years.

The fifth film reveals fan suspicions of the romance were true between Sidney and Mark (though it was always an intended storyline to use, but Dempsey's unavailability prevented it from being continued in the fourth film). As such, Sidney being no longer in a relationship with Mark in the fourth film was discarded for this reason. In canon continuity, this indicates they broke up between the events of Scream 3 and Scream 4. However, after the Second Woodsboro Murders which saw Sidney nearly die and stay in the ICU, they clearly reconnected.

However, Sidney is also no longer in possession of the Greek letters necklace, belonging to her deceased college boyfriend, Derek Feldman, indicating she is ready to move on.

2012—2015
The birth of Sidney's daughters (mentioned as schoolgirls in the fifth film), telling us they are at least 6 years old. Therefore, Sidney gave birth to her younger daughter in 2015 at the latest. This tells us that they reconnected sometime after the events of the fourth film, and had their firstborn daughter, possibly as early as 2013.

2021
In the fifth film, it is now October 2021. Dewey Riley contacts Sidney, asking how Mark is. Sidney says, "I think I'll keep him" (possibly indicating she did not beforehand). She is trying to have an exercise run before she takes her grade-school daughters to school. Given the timeline, Sidney and Mark became parents around 2013 at the earliest, and their second-born daughter is born around 2015 at the latest.

She has a twin baby stroller with her, indicating she has an infant child, on top of her two older daughters. She is on a run, and after no longer being in possession of a phone in the previous film, she appears in possession of one again, that has a pink phone cover.

Amid the Third Woodsboro Murders / Woodsboro Legacy Killings, Gale asks how Mark and the kids are doing, as Dewey has just been murdered. Sidney says they are safe, and she is back in Woodsboro, California to make sure of that. Sidney states she has children, and Gale also asks how the kids are doing. While a general, neutral statement, it may suggest Sidney and Mark's sleeping infant child in the stroller (approx. 3 years old at maximum) is a boy.

Behind the Scenes

 * Mark and Sidney were in a relationship in early drafts of Scream 4 (2011) but Patrick Dempsey had scheduling conflicts due to his role in Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), so he did not return.
 * This element was later used in Scream 5, and they are a married couple with three children off-screen.
 * Neve Campbell was unaware Mark was Sidney's husband when she spoke the dialogue for the scenes she shot in the fifth film.
 * Mark is Sidney's first relationship since Derek Feldman, her college boyfriend who was murdered.