All 10 Epic Twist Endings Of The Saw Franchise, Ranked

The art of the twist ending has been shaped, cultivated, and fine-tuned into something that can be the most effective gut punch if built and used well. It's a perfect narrative tool when deployed in just the right moment for just the right reveal — and it doesn't always work out for every film that tries to use it.

That said, the "Saw" franchise doesn't really have that problem. The films are, at this point, known for their epic twist endings, and they may even have perfected the art — at least where the horror genre is concerned. All 10 movies so far have some kind of twist ending, but some pack a bigger punch than others. Needless to say, the franchise has taken such an ownership of twist endings — even the ones that don't still shock and awe — that they all deserve to be ranked.

So here goes nothing: all 10 of the epic twist endings from the "Saw" franchise, ranked.

When it comes to twists, this "Saw" franchise reboot attempt ends up at the bottom of the list. Detectives Zeke Banks (Chris Rock) and William Schenk (Max Minghella) join forces to identify a copycat Jigsaw killer more than a decade after the original killer's death, which ends up in a two-fold twist. The overall plot twist — revealing that Shrenk, Banks' trusty partner, is the Jigsaw copycat — could've been seen a mile away by anyone. Shrenk's father was murdered after agreeing to testify against a dirty cop, and Banks' father was the head of the force. It's an obvious motive, even with the movie trying to hide the twist.

But that's not quite as egregious as Spiral's second twist, which sees Captain Banks (Samuel L. Jackson) become the victim of the final trap of the film. The trap rigs Banks' arm so it lifts and a gun barrel extends from it when the SWAT team looking for him enters the room. Thinking he's going to fire on them, they shoot him to death in front of Zeke, giving him the same trauma Schenk had. The issue with this twist isn't so much narrative as it is in the optics, which frame a Black man dying to senseless police violence as poetic justice. The moment is predicated on the fact that the cops shoot first and ask questions later, an issue prevalent in police crime, particularly against Black people. Therefore, the film's failure to grapple at all with the racial politics of police brutality makes the twist feel thoughtless and ineffective.

The thing about this twist ending is that it really reinforces the franchise's negative spirit in a way that doesn't do anything to serve the greater narrative — and it ends up leaving a bad taste in the audience's mouth. In the twist, FBI agent Peter Strahm (Scott Patterson) gets drawn into a trap by detective-turned-Jigsaw-apprentice Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) where, in order to survive, he must "trust" Hoffman's instructions to climb into a coffin filled with glass shards. An obvious flaw in this set-up is that Hoffman absolutely should not be trusted. He interferes with the trap by entering the room before Strahm can even finish listening to the instructions, and he clearly never had any intention of giving Strahm a chance to survive — a key tenet of John Kramer's philosophy.

But further still, it's just a bummer of a twist from an audience satisfaction perspective. Strahm, while not being necessarily the most exciting character in the "Saw" franchise, is a generally good person with good, even if flawed, intentions — so it's a bit of a buzzkill to see him fall on Hoffman's sword. It makes the twist fall really flat here, and honestly, had they done the same twist they did with the roles reversed? Well, it would've been a really fun way for Hoffman, a character some here at /Film would call the true champion of the franchise, to get his comeuppance (but we'll get to that later in the list).

The twist in this installment does give a bit of a momentary shock, which brought it up a few notches on this list, but ultimately, the ending of "Saw IV" ending is lackluster. It relies on the gimmick that the game isn't happening in the present moment (which was done better in earlier and later installments). This is the film where the big twist is the fact that Detective Hoffman is the other apprentice and will thus take over for Kramer now that he's dead. Audiences get a bit of a shock in the first few moments when the detective gets up and reveals himself amidst a major trap that he appeared to be a victim of. The idea that he's one of the orchestrators and it's the first we're hearing of it, well, that certainly has an effect.

But it all comes crumbling down when the second half of the twist hits, the part where we find out that the game we just watched — the one that Hoffman came out of unscathed — happened before Kramer's autopsy at the top of the film. It's a reveal that was done way better in "Saw 2" and "Jigsaw," and here it only serves to set up the fact that Hoffman will face tests of his own, not to actually bolster the twist itself. Overall, it feels like a bit of a cop-out..

The most recent installment of the "Saw" franchise had a pretty satisfying twist ending, but it certainly wasn't perfect. In this twist, evil doctor Cecilia, who tricked Kramer into thinking he was getting life-saving care, finds herself caught in a trap after thinking she had turned the tables on Jigsaw. In fact, Kramer and his apprentice Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) had planned on temporarily being "beaten" by Cecilia and her boyfriend, Parker (Steven Brand), giving them the same false hope that their scam had given to him. They don't skimp on the brutality for Cecilia's final game either; she ends up having to fight her boyfriend to the death to stay alive. And it does force her to come face to face with some trauma, though not entirely comparable to what Kramer had to endure through her fraudulent scheme. 

Could the twist have been better here? Totally. Satisfying the audience in the full sense would have meant Cecilia meeting her demise alongside her boyfriend. Despite the fact that Jigsaw doesn't ever give his victims traps they can't get out of somehow, it would've been a worthy moment for his convictions to waver. But watching John and Amanda deliver comeuppance to such a diabolical villain is enough to keep this twist ending hitting on a rewatch.

The twist ending of "Saw 3D" (originally subtitled "The Final Chapter"), packs a real punch in theory. But it's so out of the blue, with quite literally no foreshadowing or build-up in the previous installments, it's not as successful as it wants to be. In this twist, Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) is revealed as one of Jigsaw's original apprentices, left with instructions from Kramer to spring into action if his wife, Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell), was ever harmed. Just prior, Hoffman murdered Jill using the original reverse bear trap, bringing Dr. Gordon back six films after he made his debut in the "Saw" franchise.

This ending rocks, like I said, in theory. It's so cool to see Lawrence back after all this time and in such a meaningful way, with a real barn-burner detail about him coming to light all at the same time. It should be, for all intents and purposes, the biggest success of the franchise aside from the original as far as endings go. But because there's just no set-up at all in the films leading up to the final chapter, his inclusion feels like a messy addition that comes out of nowhere and doesn't entirely fit. There are logistical real-world reasons to not have much foreshadowing about Dr. Gordon being an apprentice leading up to "3D," since Elwes was in legal disputes over alleged backpay that kept him from returning until the seventh installment. But the lack of lead-up to the reveal, even small hints we could piece together after the fact, really dulls the blade when it comes to this twist's impact.

This is another cool two-fold twist, and this one works better than the last one of those that we talked about. First, there's the whole "let's test the insurance company jerks who denied my coverage" angle of the film, which is just as timely and sharp now as it ever was. It makes for an epic and ruthless twist when those insurance company jerks who denied a sick person coverage do, in fact, get tested (to death), but by the family of someone who was deemed as replaceable as Kramer was. Seeing someone take the actions Kramer probably would've loved to ultimately take, and sentencing those who treated his life and the lives of many others as expendable, is a really satisfying way for that arm of the story to end.

But then there's the whole Hoffman side of things. He's running himself ragged trying to evade capture and almost gets caught in Kramer's posthumous web by Jill, who fulfills Jigsaw's wish to have Hoffman tested by putting the apprentice in the reverse bear trap. Before it can end his life for good, Hoddman breaks free of his restraints by breaking his own wrist and managing to wedge the bear trap off his head before it kills him. However, he doesn't come away unscathed; his face is completely ripped open. Seeing Hoffman maimed by one of the traps, after spending three movies as the trap mastermind, makes for one of the best twists since his character was introduced.

We've got ourselves another two-fold twist: this time the present day element just doesn't have the juice, but the other side of the twist hits hard. At the end of "Jigsaw," which takes place over ten years after John Kramer's death, we find out that pathologist Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore) was Jigsaw's very first apprentice. That's not a bad twist on its face, but by the time we hit the eighth film in the franchise, the apprentice reveal is starting to get a little stale. Plus, it's another twist you can see miles away, with Logan spending most of his time with fellow pathologist Eleanor (Hannah Emily Anderson), who is a self-proclaimed Jigsaw fangirl — a classic red herring if I've ever seen one.

The other twist is also recycled from earlieri n the franchise, but this one works because of how much time has passed since Kramer was still around. We discover that the game we're watching, which seems to be taking place in the present day, is actually one of the first games Kramer ever organized. Logan was one of the people saved from that original game, and he recreated it in order to nab Detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) for releasing the man who murdered Logan's wife prior to the very beginning of the film. While that's all a bit thick and heavy with plot, the thing that sticks out here is that we could be watching one of the earliest games, and that kind of lore is always going to be interesting when it comes to a man who made his life's work teaching people to appreciate life on the edge of death.

In "Saw II," things go bigger, with the game playing out in a labyrinthian house with a whole group of test subjects, including the son of Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg). The cops who are trying to stop this game eventually trace the CCTV footage they've been watching and realize that it's a recording, not a live feed. Daniel Matthews (Erik Knudsen) is found in a safe wearing an oxygen mask, revealing a pun in Jigsaw's promise that Daniel is in a "safe and secure state." 

Meanwhile, Detective Matthews, in an attempt to save his son, has entered the house where the game was being played — and walked right into his own trap. When he wakes up, he finds himself in the dilapidated bathroom of the first film, and Amanda Young reveals herself to be Jigsaw's apprentice. She then leaves him to rot in the bathroom alongside the skeleton of Adam Stanheight (Leigh Whannell).

This ending admittedly pulls from the original, but why wouldn't you if the whole world was gobsmacked by it? Having it all happen again in a similar way gives this great dreadful feeling of being played like a cog in a machine; there's simply no way to stop someone like Jigsaw and those who support him. There's a deep, inevitable darkness in this ending, and it's a great way to pave the way for the madness that will be the rest of the series. It's giving "play it again, Sam," and it rocks.

Things get really juicy in "Saw III," so it makes sense that the twist is just as engaging as the film leading up to it. In this installment, Kramer is on his last legs, trying to make do in a makeshift hospital fashioned by Amanda. They forcibly recruit a doctor named Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) to keep Kramer alive, keeping her in line by way of an insane shotgun collar. Meanwhile, a man called Jeff (Angus Macfayden) is being put through his own game designed to help him forgive the people involved in his son's death. When Lynn succeeds, Kramer instructs Amanda to remove the collar. She refuses, admits to doubting Kramer's philosophies, and takes responsibility for some recent traps being inescapable. 

Amanda shoots Lynn just as Jeff enters the lair, and it's revealed that Jeff and Lynn are married. He fatally shoots Amanda in return. That's when we find out Jigsaw knew about Amanda's change of heart, and she was the real test subject all along. Kramer then offers to call an ambulance for Lynn and let them both go if Jeff can pass one last test: to either kill Kramer or forgive him. When Jeff decides to kill him, Lynn's collar goes off and the room is sealed shut as Kramer reveals their daughter was also captured, and only the now-dead Jigsaw knows her whereabouts.

I mean, do we really need to say anything here? This is a jam-packed, high octane ending filled with twists on twists. There's a lot of moving parts that the audience has to keep track of in the last act of the film, and that can muddle things a bit, but that doesn't take away from the impact as it all comes together. Sheesh!

Let's be real: How does the original not take the number one spot, not only for its cultural impact but also for its sheer undeniable brilliance? Exactly. It has to. The original "Saw" twist ending is why "Saw" twist endings are a thing people know or care about. It's why I'm writing this wonderful little list in the first place. The conclusion was such an unbelievably powerful turn of events — imagine the man responsible for your imprisonment was the dead man in the middle of the room you've been held captive in the entire time — that it's fair to say "Saw" creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell perfected the concept of the twist ending on their very first try.

Yes, the writing that brought us the original "Saw" twist is strong, inventive, and engaging enough to be seen as the brilliant (albeit a little dated at times) mystery that it is, all the way to the high melodrama that the final moments are drenched in. But the cultural impact of the ending has made it more than just a high point for horror — it has made sure that the twist ending endures as the glowing start of a franchise that defined horror in the 2000s. The strength of the film's finale has become a well-trodden place of inspiration and homage for the horror creatives who still see room for twists that can blow us away like this one did. And honestly, it still does to this day. In fact, it might never lose that effect, at least not for me.