‘Saw X’ – It Isn’t Game Over for the Franchise’s Best Relationship

Editor’s Note: The following contains Saw X spoilers.

The Big Picture

• Saw X
  brings back the dynamic duo of John Kramer and Amanda Young, exploring their unique relationship that was never replaced in the franchise.
• The early villains of the franchise, John and Amanda, felt more human and vulnerable compared to later successors like Detective Hoffman.
• In
  Saw X
  , John and Amanda face new traps and tests, showcasing their loyalty and bond as they navigate the deadly games created by Jigsaw. They are an impenetrable team with their own moral codes.

Live or die, make your choice – again! With Saw X, the Jigsaw traps are back and so is the dynamic between John Kramer (Tobin Bell) and Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith). The most recent Saw movie delivered a reunion between these characters that fans haven’t seen for years. Kramer and his loyal apprentice were taken out of the franchise early on, and this return explores their unique relationship that was never replaced. Ten movies in, we don’t need to keep Jigsaw in the shadows. Saw X can gets right into the gore and the emotional core of Kramer’s “most personal game.” Having Smith by his side, Bell is not a solo horror villain and before their time was up in the franchise, Saw X sees why they make for a dangerous pair.

What Happened to Amanda in the Early ‘Saw’ Movies?

In Saw, Amanda has a small role but for what is an iconic horror movie moment. As a drug addict, she’s captured by Jigsaw for being unappreciative of life and given a chance to redeem herself, if she can escape from the reverse bear trap. The deadly contraption is strapped to her face and when the timer runs out, will rip her jaws off. The only features exposed on her face are her eyes, wide and panicking. Minutes later, she does succeed in getting out of the trap, which Jigsaw’s deep voice congratulates her on, “Most people are so ungrateful to be alive, but not you, not anymore.” The survivor does feel redeemed, rising to be a promising apprentice behind the scenes of this movie and the follow-up.

In Saw II, Amanda is placed in a new series of Jigsaw games along with a group of subjects, and if you pay close attention, you will notice she’s not affected by the slowly released nerve gas making everyone around her ill. While she’s been treated with the antidote, in no way does that mean she’s immune from harm. Like with the reverse bear trap, she faces another harrowing Saw test when she’s thrown into a pit of used needles, seeing them poke out of her skin will give plenty of people nightmares. By the end, she locks up the corrupt detective who falsely imprisoned her, declaring the franchise’s one-liner, “Game over!” At last, we get to Saw III where John and Amanda get their biggest screen time as partners, each with conflicting beliefs over what the Jigsaw title stands for. Amanda had wanted to carry on Kramer’s work, but her emotions and personal agenda got the best of her.

Amanda tampers with traps, causing them to be unwinnable as she wants to punish those she deems unworthy of redemption. This friction gets worse after she kidnaps a doctor, unable to see the bigger plot unfolding. While John Kramer expresses himself with words, Amanda chooses terror to get her point across. Just as tense as their stance on the Jigsaw legacy, is Kramer’s declining health, leading to a graphic, distressing scene without a trap involved. John needs emergency brain surgery and Amanda stares in fear of seeing her mentor with exposed grey matter. In a high-tension finale, Amanda learns she has been tested by John for the entirety of Saw III, doubting her in taking on his legacy, a test which she fails. She ends up getting killed and Kramer is killed not long after. Due to their deaths, later appearances of John and Amanda are limited to flashbacks.

Different Jigsaw Killers Can’t Beat ‘Saw’s Original Duo

The franchise shifted to Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) who goes solo in taking over Jigsaw’s legacy while trying to avoid detection. He became a nearly unstoppable killer, akin to Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, minus Hoffman reaching the status of supernatural feats. Jigsaw and Spiral had a mastermind, but they work better as standalone movies. For how long Hoffman’s arc went, he had no kind of vulnerability like the franchise’s early villains: John suffers from debilitating cancer and Amanda is her own worst enemy. Unlike Hoffman, those two felt very human, which helps the early movies feel grittier. Going by the theatrical release, this brings us to Saw X, a sequel-prequel taking place in between the first two Saw movies.

How Does ‘Saw X’ Bring Back John and Amanda?

John is frail, his shaky hands trying to steady as he looks over his last will. “So your advice for me is to die easy?” he asks a doctor, who doesn’t know what else to say. With no options left for help, John eagerly accepts a miracle cure surgery down in Mexico. He finds out too late he’s been scammed, relapsing from gaining hope to living in bitterness. His Jigsaw persona takes over, transforming the factory where the scam happened into a place of lethal games for the guilty responsible for the scam. The Saw body count is about to earn some new numbers. Amanda helps apprehend the new subjects and there are signs the apprentice is straying from the mentor’s plans.

John may be bitter, but he’s reserved too. He fixes the bike of a young boy when he can’t sleep on the day of the planned surgery. He extends this “helping” attitude to the captured subjects, stoically telling them the rules of the games. When he gets upset, he collects himself. Amanda, meanwhile, is blunt and highly reactive. While there are no signs of her self-destructive tendencies shows, like drug addiction (Saw) or self-harm (Saw III), she remains blunt and reactive. She tells a victim about the consequence of losing their game, “The cliff notes version? It’s going to cut your head off.” She tasers another victim in his face when he swears at her. Looking out at the terrified faces, she already picks the ones she believes aren’t worth being tested. John and Amanda are united by Jigsaw, the man and method, but they can’t hide their differences.

The sweaty, jittery Gabriela (Renata Vaca) is an addict who did her part in the medical scam, and for Amanda, it’s like looking in a mirror to see her old self. She tries to delay Gabriela’s game for as long as possible, but her connection with John is stronger than acting on her own will. John goes through many emotional ordeals in Saw X. Putting the fake surgery side, he acknowledges his borrowed time with Amanda. The movie takes a break from the horror for an emotional moment, to have the two talk about John’s inevitable death, coming together for a tearful embrace. They do this to fool someone watching nearby, but it’s obvious the emotions are from a real place. The sequel-prequel takes its time to get to the traps, enjoying the screen time it can get out of Bell and Smith. They are as much a mentor and apprentice as they are a surrogate father and daughter. Eventually, their relationship will spiral into tragedy, but in Saw X, they confront their polar oppositse, a duo without the loyalty Amanda and John share.

John and Amanda’s ‘Saw X’ Return Gives Us New Jigsaw Traps

Jigsaw abducts some really terrible people. In this movie, that would be the greedy doctor who has no regret for her part in the medical fraud. Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund) lies about having a cure for John’s cancer, doing so to steal his money. She’s a perfect villain for the Saw franchise. Getting to her phone before Amanda stops her, Pederson sends a call to her partner in crime, Parker Sears (Steven Brand), who played his role as a cured patient. He arrives at the factory, fooling John and Amanda into trapping themselves and freeing Cecilia. Where Dr. Pederson shows her heinous nature is how she lures in a local young boy, the one whose bike wheel John fixed, and forces him into a trap. She wants John to experience the pain of knowing he’s causing the boy’s suffering. That’s where John and Amanda differ from these con artists. Cecilia has no moral compass, she kills a severely injured Gabriela out of spite and uses the boy as a means of revenge. In each of these moments, John and Amanda look at her in disgust.

Cecilia only cares for her well-being, which is what John counts on. The doctor might have been lazy in covering up her tracks, never having accomplices make a real surgical cut into patients to help in hiding the lie, but Kramer never fakes anything. Having Amanda and himself be caught is exactly what he hoped would happen. Amanda needed to place her complete trust that it would go according to John’s plans, and she does just that. Cecilia and Parker then find themselves in a final game, fighting each other to the death to get a gulp of clear air as chemical gas fills their room. The loyalty between Amanda and John will be tested with fatal results in Saw III, but during this sequel-prequel timeline, they are an impenetrable team.

John thinks five steps ahead, creating backup plans that make him a brilliant mastermind. Amanda, on the other hand, doesn’t have the skill or patience to think ahead. When she expresses that she isn’t ready to take on the Jigsaw legacy, John reassures her, but her concerns are valid. This pair is not the average horror movie monsters because of how they are so open to their weaknesses and how they depend on a tight bond. Saw X doesn’t forget the gore and wince-inducing traps, nor does it forget the best relationship to the series. Jigsaw and his apprentice are unique horror icons with vicious moral codes. Maybe there’s another Sawlegacy sequel (mixed with a prequel) that can fit in the timeline to bring these two back – if not, Tobin and Shawnee, it was good to see you!

Saw X is available to rent or buy on Apple TV+ in the U.S.

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