Welcome to Day 21 of Spooky Season! A while back, I decided to binge-watch the Final Destination franchise. As I was watching all 5 movies, I started thinking about who Bludworth was. there have been quite a few theories. One of the most well-received theories was that Bludworth was Death Itself. I considered the theory but it just didn’t feel right to me. So, I gave it some thought and I decided to share who, or what, I believe Bludworth truly was.

Well, there is one thing we know about Bludworth, he knew a lot about Death and its design. I don’t believe it’s because he was Death, but that he worked FOR Death – Bludworth was The Grim Reaper. True, some would say Death and The Reaper are one and the same, but that’s not the case in all fictional media, so I’m using this to plead my case. Even in the first film, Bludworth mentioned Death and The Reaper as 2 different beings. As a coroner, he collected bodies, I believe it’s possible that he collected souls too. After taking souls into the afterlife for so long, he developed respect and admiration for human lives, and he felt it was not fair for Death to cheat them out of a full life with Its designs. So, he began trying to stop Death. I believe he was the one providing the premonitions to all of the characters we see.

Let’s start at the very beginning, with the bridge collapse. Bludworth showed Sam what’s going to happen on the bridge in the hopes of saving someone. This could’ve been a trial run to see if he could pull off saving at least one person. He ended up saving the whole busload of people! Satisfied, Bludworth thought he finally cracked the code. However, Death was petty and didn’t let the survivors celebrate for very long. Once Bludworth realized that Death wasn’t just going to forget about them, he came up with his first solution… or theory. If the survivors found someone to take their place in the design, maybe Death would be satisfied. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case and Death used flight 180 to get rid of the two remaining survivors of the bridge collapse. Molly didn’t die in the bridge collapse, so her death on flight 180 could’ve been punishment for Sam trying to cheat Death – forcing Sam to watch her die as a subtle reminder that It can’t be cheated.

Bludworth was aware of the flight and tried again to prevent it. So why did Bludworth give the premonition to Alex instead of Sam again? There are a few possible reasons. Maybe Bludworth wanted to completely start over with his experiment, maybe he sent it to Alex on accident (which is very unlikely), or maybe Alex was a stronger receiver of psychic visions and Bludworth felt he had more potential. So Flight 180 happened and a new batch of victims were on Death’s chopping block. At this point, Bludworth didn’t have a new theory, the best he could do was urge Alex to pay attention to the signs he gave him. Unfortunately, Alex couldn’t keep beating Death and Bludworth was once again forced to start all over.

Fast forward to the pileup – Clear Rivers was the only one alive from Flight 180 and now Death was working backwards to tie up the loose ends that the prevention of Flight 180 created. After failing twice already, Bludworth almost decided to give up. He had another theory but he decided to bag it. However, when he saw how long Clear has survived and when he saw how innocent and desperate Kimberly was, he found new hope. You could see a little more pep in his step when Clear showed up again. He gave them his new theory, that if there was an introduction of life that was not meant to be, it would force Death to start anew. Kimberly mistakingly took this as to mean that if an unborn baby that was supposed to die in the pileup was born, then it would defeat Death’s plan. Bludworth realized her mistake and sent her a new vision that showed the unborn baby and its mother were never killed in the pileup. Kimberly then realized if she died and was brought back to life, then it would possibly thwart everything. Once again, he believed this worked and peace was finally restored, but of course that wasn’t the case.

Now, for the roller coaster crash and the Nascar massacre, where was Bludworth? I think after 3 failed attempts to stop Death’s design, Bludworth stopped providing new theories. He didn’t entirely give up on humanity though. He continued to provide premonitions and signs to Death’s potential victims with the hope that someone somehow figured out how to stop Death once and for all.