The Big Picture

Final Destination creator Jeffrey Reddick wanted to bring Ali Larter’s Clear and Devon Sawa’s Alex back for the sequel. Scheduling issues and “stuff” prevented Sawa from returning. Reddick reveals the story he had in mind had Sawa been able to reprise his role for Final Destination 2.

The end of Final Destination firmly establishes that death is relentless. No matter how many times Devon Sawa’s Alex intervenes, it keeps doing the rounds until all of the Flight 180 survivors are dead. But, Alex and Ali Larter’s Clear did, in fact, survive the first film, therefore, could return for more — but only one of them did.

Final Destination 2 introduces AJ Cook’s Kimberly, the next character to have a premonition and “save” a bunch of lives from an epic disaster. Whereas the first film’s opening sequence took place in the air on a flight bound for Paris, Final Destination 2 hit Route 23 where a truck with logs would wind up killing Kimberly and many others. But, Kimberly sees it happen before it really does. She blocks the entrance to the highway and saves herself and seven others from the catastrophic pileup.

In true Final Destination fashion, any relief the group feels from walking away with their lives vanishes when they start dying one by one. Desperate to figure out a way to survive, Kimberly turns to Clear who’s committed herself to the Stonybrook Institution two days after Alex is killed by a falling brick. While she does contribute to helping Kimberly crack the code, ultimately death finally gets Clear. In the third act of the film, Clear is incinerated when she enters Eugene’s (TC Carson) hospital room not knowing that the oxygen tanks have been leaking. When she opens the door to the room, the plug to his life support machine is ripped from its socket, igniting the oxygen and killing them both.

Image via Dimension

During a recent interview for his new release, Til Death Do Us Part, Final Destination creator Jeffrey Reddick confirmed he had always planned to kill Clear, but he had initially hoped to keep Alex alive as the “torch-bearer” of the series. The trouble was, scheduling issues and “stuff” kept that from happening. Reddick began:

“I wanted to bring both Alex and Clear back. There were some issues with scheduling and stuff with getting Devon Sawa back, and I got annoyed how they just killed him off with a brick, which I thought was a big F you. That’s really my only complaint with Final Destination 2.”

What if things worked out and Reddick was able to get both Larter and Sawa back? Apparently, they would wind up messing with death’s design by having a child. Reddick explained:

“If I had them both back, I had always planned on killing Clear, but I wanted to keep Alex alive. I had a cool twist at the end where it still was, you know, she has a life that saves her life, but then death gets her once she has the kid and Alex is still kind of the torch-bearer. That was my original take, but with the scheduling stuff, we ended up with no Alex. And I’m like, ‘Ah, if I’d known we weren’t gonna bring Alex back, I would have not have killed Clear,’ because I love bringing original people back, but I don’t like killing them.”

Image via New Line Cinema

There’s actually a Final Destination alternate ending that was filmed that tapped into this exact idea. Rather than have Clear and Alex survive the incident at Clear’s house, Alex perishes. But, in additional deleted scenes, it’s revealed that the two actually sleep together when Clear finds him on the beach earlier in the film. Another deleted scene then shows a positive pregnancy test before moving to the movie’s big finish. The alternate ending would cut from Alex’s demise to Clear having their son, Alex Browning II. Then, the final scene of the film would suggest that thanks to the baby, Clear and Carter (Kerr Smith) could go on to have “a chance at a full life.” Clearly this ending didn’t make the final cut of the first film, so perhaps this is a storyline Reddick was hoping to reincorporate in the sequel.

At this point, Clear and Alex can’t scratch Reddick’s itch to bring back original characters, but two others can – Kimberly and Officer Burke (Michael Landes). In Final Destination 2, the group comes to believe that if Isabella (Justina Machado) has her baby, that new life will defeat death. However, it turns out, Isabella was never meant to die in the Route 23 crash, so her baby would have been born regardless. Instead, “new life” comes in the form of Kimberly herself. She drowns in a lake but is resuscitated, creating “new life” that frees her and Officer Burke from death’s design. There is a “Choose Their Fate” scene from the Final Destination 3 DVD release that features an article stating that both characters wind up dying in a woodchipper accident, but one must assume deleted and alternate scenes are not franchise canon, so perhaps they’re still in the mix to return.

Looking for more on the Final Destination franchise from Reddick including some updates on Final Destination 6? Check out our full 39-minute conversation in the video below: