There's no denying that Dewey goes out with a bang, but his death is no less frustrating. The film already takes his status as a sheriff away, forcing him into retirement — which is the reason he goes hardcore vigilante in the first place. After coming to save Tara (Jenna Ortega) like a badass, Dewey kicks the living daylights out of Ghostface, even getting a few rounds into the killer. Yet he makes two vital mistakes that he should have known better than to do: He doesn't take off Ghosty's mask, or go in for a headshot when he has the chance.
Yet after clearing everyone out, he recklessly goes back to "shoot him in the head, or they always come back." It's not even the death itself, but the fact that had he followed his own rules, Dewey would have survived. Instead, he gets stabbed as blood pools out of his mouth and he's spread out on the hospital floor like a fallen angel with teddy bears strewn around him. The kicker? Gale calls while he's bleeding out, and her reaction to his death is heart-wrenching.
The one redeeming moment after this bummer of a sequence comes at the end, when Gale refuses to write about the fame-seeking Ghostface killers. She says, "Those f***ers can die in anonymity." Instead, she wants to write a story about a good man who used to be the sheriff of Woodsboro (cue the waterworks.) However, David Arquette told Looper in an exclusive interview that Dewey was never originally supposed to survive the first film, so the audience can take solace in the extra four films we got with him.
