‘Final Destination Bloodlines’ Directors Reveal If the Death Map Includes Past Franchise Victims [Exclusive]

Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for Final Destination Bloodlines.

Every installment of the Final Destination franchise has been about connection. Not just the connection between the folks who cheat death, but the connection that death makes when it comes to collect. But Final Destination Bloodlines takes the idea of connection one step further, as it centers around an entire family that shouldn’t exist. Aside from the familial tie between the Campbells, audiences were speculating about another bond that might link Bloodlines to the five films that came before it — the wall of newspaper clippings.

Taking up quite a bit of space, the craft looks like something straight out of the Pepe Silvia episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, as it chronicles the eventual deaths of those who were meant to perish in the Skyview Restaurant collapse that never happened. The complex wall of names and gruesome deaths has brought speculation in the fandom, with many wondering if any of the previous Final Destination films featured family trees from the almost-incident.

Ready to set the record straight, the film’s co-directors, Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky sat down with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff to chat about the newspaper clippings. And, we’ve got some bad news for those out there who were hoping it was all connected, because the duo quickly shot down the theory. Happy to clear up any confusion, Lipovsky said:

“So, we spent a long time on that wall. If anyone wants to freeze frame, there’s a lot of detail in there as to what went down, but I think there is a bit of confusion about the origin of Bloodlines and how that relates to the rest of the franchise. One of the things we all debated early on was, obviously, when you have something that starts so early, you’re like, ‘Oh, could this be the origin of all the other movies?’ We debated that for a second, but then we realized none of those other characters’ parents died, so it can’t be.”

Further breaking down exactly why the incident at the Skyview couldn’t have had a hand in the other movies, Stein added, “It would just break the canon to do that. Because in FD2, you meet their parents. You meet parents in FD3 and FD1. It would just break those movies to do that, so that’s ultimately why we didn’t go that far. But Iris has studied those other premonitions. Iris has studied all those deaths to build her book so that she knows how Death works, partially because of her being an FD fan, studying all the previous ones.”

Death Always Collects in the Final Destination Universe

Some might feel a little let down by that big reveal, but fear not, because the specifics of the newspaper clippings are an impressive and giant Easter egg all unto themselves. Leaving no stone unturned and no detail untouched, Lipovsky explained how the eventual deaths of the survivors mirrored the ones they dodged on that fateful night.

“One small fun detail, though, that’s in there is that we decided that a lot of the people die later on in similar ways to how they died at the Skyview. So, there’s lots of newspaper articles that homage how they died in the Skyview, how they were later killed in either the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s. They’re all kind of related to rollerblading accidents in the ‘90s, and all kinds of specific things like that.”

Getting more specific with it, Stein pointed to the one character who we can all agree got what was coming to him, adding, “For example, the Penny Kid, who gets crushed by a piano, if you find his newspaper obituary, it says, ‘Pickpocket Killed by Piano Moving Truck’ … The woman who gets lit on fire is like, ‘Socialite Dies in House Fire.’ That one maître d’ dies in an elevator accident. Death took them in ways that were appropriate.”

As for Iris (Gabrielle Rose), the Campbell family matriarch who experienced the premonition and held off death from destroying her family for as long as possible, we know that death caught up to her in the form of cancer. But, while attempting to convince her granddaughter (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) of the curse following the family around, she met a much more gruesome end — one that also paralleled how she was meant to go all those years ago, with Lipovsky explaining:

“And Iris is sort of similar. In the premonition, she dies kind of skewered through the neck on this piece of rubble, and then the weathervane skewers her through the neck in kind of the exact same spot. So, Death’s coming to get its collection exactly the way it wanted it.”

Check out Nemiroff’s full chat with Stein and Lipovsky below and catch Final Destination Bloodlines now in cinemas.