Final Destination 6 Trailer Is a Nod to Unused Alex Fate

Talk about fan service. “In death there are no accidents, no coincidences, no mishaps, and no escapes,” morbid mortician Bludworth (Tony Todd) says in 2000’s Final Destination, the first in the phobia-inducing franchise about seemingly freak accidents that gruesomely kill survivors who cheat Death. In the just-released teaser for the new movie Final Destination Bloodlines, it’s an ill-fated tattoo artist (Richard Harmon) who can’t escape Death’s design when he’s imperiled by a ceiling fan.

The tattooist narrowly escapes being hanged from a chain that is entangled in the turning blades of the fan, only to fall through a glass case as he desperately attempts to dislodge the chain that attached itself to his nose ring as if by the hand of some unseen force. He’s hoisted in the air above flames ignited by a toppled lamp that makes contact with a pool of spilled fluids, and manages to free himself just as the ceiling fan comes crashing down. While he avoids impalement from the whizzing blades of the ceiling fan, he can’t avoid his true fate: burning alive.

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In the original Final Destination, high school student Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) has a premonition of a plane exploding during take off on a class field trip to Paris. His vision spares the lives of classmates Clear (Ali Larter), Tod (Chad Donella), Carter (Kerr Smith), Billy (Seann William Scott), Terry (Amanda Detmer), and their teacher, Ms. Lewton (Kristen Cloke), who cheated Death by getting off the plane. Alex is then tasked with figuring out when Death is “coming back at you,” as Bludworth explains, and outsmart Death’s new design for those fated to die aboard Flight 180.

By the end of the first film, only Alex and girlfriend Clear have survived the increasingly grisly series of “freak accidents”: Tod is strangled by a clothesline in his bathtub, Terry is struck by a bus, Ms. Lewton is stabbed by a kitchen knife before her house explodes, Billy is decapitated by shrapnel flung by a passing train, and Carter is crushed by a falling sign.

2003’s Final Destination 2 reveals that Alex died shortly after the events of the first film — killed by a dislodged brick in an alleyway. Clear, now the sole survivor of Flight 180, then committed herself to a psychiatric facility, where she’s visited by Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook), another visionary and a survivor of the Route 23 pileup.

Clear shows Kimberly a photo of Alex’s face-down body taken at the scene of the “accident,” but her wall papered with newspaper clippings contains traces of an unused Alex death from the original script.

Clear’s timeline of victims lists Alex’s cause of death as “ceiling fan (head trauma)”, with the questions: “Was he killed? Was it suicide? Did he just give up?” The Final Destination 2 script has Clear showing Kimberly a photo of Alex with “the blade of a f—ing ceiling fan in his head,” although no such line appears in the final cut.

Instead, when New York State Trooper Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) investigates the deaths of the Flight 180 survivors, he uncovers a report about Alex’s death under strange circumstances:

“Alex Browning, 19, was found dead in an alley off Sycamore and Edinburgh, the victim of an apparent freak accident involving a falling brick,” the newspaper reads. “Police were called to the scene by local merchants, who heard screams from Browning’s girlfriend, Clear Rivers, who was with him at the time of the accident. Although the official cause of death has yet to be determined by county officials, officers at the scene believe a brick from the adjacent building became dislodged and hit Browning in the face, killing him instantly.”

In Final Destination Bloodlines, college student Stefanie is plagued by a violent recurring nightmare and “heads home to track down the one person who might be able to break the cycle and save her family from the grisly demise that inevitably awaits them all,” according to the official synopsis.

The cast includes Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Rya Kihlstedt, Anna Lore, with Brec Bassinger, and the late Tony Todd, who reprises his role as Bludworth. Final Destination Bloodlines is only in theaters May 16.