After releasing a new movie every few years for over a decade, Final Destination became surprisingly dormant, with the fifth installment dating back to 2011. Since then, horror fans have broken down every apparent plot hole, contradiction, or vague rule stated in the movies to figure out Death’s design. Final Destination Bloodlines hits theaters after almost fifteen years to deliver a new batch of logic-defying deaths that elevate the franchise to new critical heights. However, the movie deserves special praise for tackling the franchise’s confusing mythos head-on, determined to fill in some glaring gaps and explain how every Final Destination story fits together.
Warning: Spoilers below for Final Destination Bloodlines
Final Destination Bloodlines subverts expectations by setting its initial premonition in 1968. As the movie explains, a woman named Iris (Brec Bassinger) correctly predicted that a restaurant built atop a concrete tower would crumble, killing hundreds of people. Of course, all these survivors are put on Death’s list, as the mysterious force starts to plan outlandish accidents to set the universe straight and eliminate all people who were meant to die. The twist of Final Destination Bloodlines is that so many people got out of the Sky Tower unscathed that Death takes years to track everyone down, giving some people time to build families. That means now Death has to deal with all the living people who shouldn’t have existed in the first place. This new knowledge becomes key to understanding the entire franchise.
Final Destination Bloodlines Clears Up the Rules of Death’s Design
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The first Final Destination explains that people who cheat Death are doomed to die horribly, as it will come back for survivors and eliminate them one by one. Every sequel builds on this foundation, showing how survivors lean on their premonitions and the mysterious signs they see to buy themselves more time. However, until now, there has been no official explanation for how people can challenge Death or why the signs matter so much in the face of an unstoppable force.
Final Destination Bloodlines explains how Iris began to study Death’s design once she noticed a pattern of bizarre accidents. She compiled all the information she found into a book that anyone can use to stay one step ahead of Death. The fact that this is even possible is because Death, for some reason, is limited by a precise set of rules. The accidents it causes are not random, but derive from a specific combination of elements interacting with one another. As Iris’ granddaughter, Stefanie (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), explains, Death’s design is like math, and there’s a formula people can learn to anticipate the results of each equation.
That means the survivors of previous Final Destination movies detected these patterns once they came across Death, acting on instinct to visualize the outcomes of each murder attempt. We still don’t know why exactly Death must follow these rules. Maybe there are some universal constraints to Death’s action, or maybe Death is just obsessive and can’t act if it doesn’t follow step-by-step instructions. Honestly, there’s something comforting in imagining how one of the most powerful beings is neurodivergent like some of us.
Final Destination Bloodlines also explains that Death is a vindictive force who acts out of spite. If people interfere with its objectives, Death is not above putting bystanders on its kill list. One of the new death scenes was built entirely to explain this, as Erik (Richard Harmon) is crushed by an MRI at the hospital after trying to cheat death to save his half-brother, Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner). Erik was not on Death’s list, as he is not a direct descendant of the Sky Tower survivors. Still, protecting Bobby made Death angry enough to kill him, too. That helps explain why Death lures Molly Harper (Emma Bell) into Flight 180 at the end of Final Destination 5, despite her surviving the bridge collapse during the premonition scene.
Bloodlines‘ most significant contribution to the Final Destination lore is the revelation that every survivor killed in the previous movies was a descendant of someone who survived the Sky Tower accident. Iris’ book contains detailed tracking of Death’s actions to wipe out the bloodlines of every survivor, and these newspaper scraps retell the bloody events of previous movies. That explains why Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) captured signs of Death in her photographs even before her premonition, in Final Destination 3, because she had already been ensnared in Death’s design since before she was born. This also explains why Death is so relentless, chasing down survivors months after they initially escape its grasp. Its primary goal is to fix the Sky Tower accident, however long it takes.
There Are Still Unanswered Questions After Final Destination Bloodlines
Although Final Destination Bloodlines does a marvelous job of clearing the confusion caused by previous movies, there are still some open questions that the franchise hasn’t solved. Above all else, Final Destination still has not disclosed where premonitions come from. We could argue that the survivors of the previous movies were more sensitive to premonitions because they were born on Death’s list as descendants of the Sky Tower accident. However, that doesn’t explain why Iris had the first confirmed premonition in the Final Destination timeline.
It seems that a force opposing Death’s design granted Iris’ vision to disrupt its plans. Since then, the descendants of the Sky Tower survivors have been having visions at key moments. Perhaps so they can help prevent the deaths of other people dragged into Death’s design due to its obsession with fixing the Sky Tower’s kill count. With so many questions already answered, digging deeper into the premonitions seems like the best bet for an eventual Final Destination Bloodlines sequel.
Final Destination Bloodlines is currently available in theaters.
Do you think a future Final Destination movie will solve the franchise’s biggest questions? What are your theories about the nature of premonitions? Join the discussion in the comments!
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