WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Texas Chainsaw Massacre, now streaming on Netflix.
Halloween (2018) did something fresh for the franchise: it wiped the slate clean. All of the convoluted mythology and nonsensical plot developments of the sequels and remakes were gone. Instead, 2018's Halloween was a direct sequel to the first Halloween (1978), going so far as to bring back the original final girl, Laurie Strode. Forty years later, Laurie is a gun-toting survivalist with a long-lasting grudge against her former tormentor, Michael Myers.
Netflix's Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) followed suit by being a direct sequel to the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), ignoring prior sequels and reboots. It also brought back the original final girl, Sally Hardesty, who is now a gun-toting survivalist with a grudge against the man who murdered her friends and brother four decades ago. With Leatherface returning to his Sawyer family home in the post-credits scene, it seems like the film's also leaving room for a potential sequel.
This approach worked for Halloween because ignoring the events of Halloween II allowed the filmmakers to sidestep the development of Laurie Strode being Michael Myers' sister. Rather, it explored the psychological toll a random, violent murder spree would have on the sole survivor, and how it could still affect them decades later. Laurie is demonstrably paranoid to the point that her family is worried about her well-being. But when Michael Myers finally does show up, Laurie is ready with a few tricks up her sleeve.
There's no such humanity in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Sally Hardesty shows up for a few minutes, looks at a picture of the original cast, then has her long-awaited showdown with Leatherface. And she loses almost instantly. Not only that but she's practically disemboweled by Leatherface's chainsaw and is subsequently tossed aside into a literal pile of garbage. Miraculously, she survives and gets a few shots in at Leatherface before succumbing to her injuries.
The biggest difference between the two is that Laurie Strode survived while Sally Hardesty did not. Killing off Sally removed the possibility for character growth should Texas Chainsaw Massacre make sequels, and it also undercut her heroic escape from the cannibal family in the first film. Maybe TCM is planning on bringing back the new final girl in a sequel, but audiences don't have the same emotional connection that they shared with Sally finally escaping her brutal captors at the end of the original.
Another baffling detail is that the TCM franchise already tried this with Texas Chainsaw (2013). That film also ignored every sequel, picking up directly after the events of the original. It was followed by a prequel, Leatherface (2017), which still maintained the continuity of the 2013 timeline and acted as a proper Leatherface origin story. Now in 2022, TCM hit the refresh button again but with more gravitas -- Sally Hardesty is back to have a rematch with her arch-nemesis, Leatherface. It's sure to be a slam dunk, right?
The sad truth is, Texas Chainsaw Massacre could have pulled it off. Sally Hardesty could've had a similar character arc as Laurie Strode, slowly overcoming her past trauma and learning to confront it head-on. But Texas Chainsaw Massacre wasn't interested in fleshing out Sally's character, instead opting for a gratuitous slice-and-dice slasher with Sally as a complete afterthought. To be fair, that's exactly what Halloween Kills (2021) ended up doing, but even then, the filmmakers didn't make the fatal mistake of killing off the original final girl. As it is, Texas Chainsaw Massacre's latest sequel was a classic case of wasted potential.
To see Sally face-off against Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is streaming on Netlfix.