Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Saw X.
Amanda Young returns in Saw X, and the character has a long history in the Saw franchise. Shawnee Smith previously portrayed Amanda Young in the first three Saw films, and her demise in Saw III has largely left her out of the Saw franchise since. However, like Jigsaw himself, the Saw movies like to play games. Saw X takes place before the events of Saw III, giving Amanda the chance to return and offer up one of her most memorable performances yet.
While John Kramer (Tobin Bell) sees his torture devices and the games he sets up as mechanisms to change the lives of his subjects, Kramer’s younger apprentice Amanda Young has long held conflicted feelings about their activities. In Saw X, Amanda and Jigsaw trap some particularly sinister individuals for their new game, enabling the Saw franchise to show both Kramer and Amanda in a whole new light.
Amanda Young Is John Kramer’s Accomplice In Saw
Amanda Young is first introduced in the original Saw as a drug addict who is one of John Kramer’s early subjects. Amanda is affixed with the original Reverse Bear Trap device and forced to dig through a man’s intestines in order to retrieve the key to free herself. Amanda manages to do so just in the nick of time, which makes her the only survivor of Jigsaw’s games at this early stage. This experience affects Amanda deeply, and she tearfully tells Detective Tapp (Danny Glover) that Jigsaw “helped” her. Amanda becomes a changed woman from that point onward.
Amanda returns in a much more significant role in 2005’s Saw II, during which she is seemingly placed in a new game alongside several other people. She and her companions face a house full of slow-acting poison, and she even finds herself tossed into a pit of dirty hypodermic needles. However, Saw II‘s big twist is the reveal that Amanda has become John Kramer’s devoted apprentice, who is tasked with carrying on his work after he eventually succumbs to his terminal cancer. Amanda continues as Jigsaw’s loyal follower throughout the Saw franchise, while Saw X shows one of their previously unseen games.
Amanda’s Role In Saw X Explained
Set between Saw and Saw II, Saw X follows John Kramer as he seemingly finds a cure for his terminal cancer from an off-the-grid medical team working outside Mexico City. To John’s shock and anger, he later learns that the team is actually a group of con artists who faked his entire surgery — and have done the same to dozens of other terminally ill people for the last eight years. After obtaining the identities of everyone involved from their cab driver associate Diego (Joshua Okamoto), Kramer wastes no time in setting up a new game for his medical charlatans, with Amanda Young joining him.
At the ending of Saw X, the group’s leader, Cecilia (Synnøve Macody Lund), and her lover, Parker (Steven Brand), seemingly get the upper hand. Parker helps Cecilia escape, and they force Kramer and local boy Carlos (Jorge Briseño) into a waterboarding trap that dumps blood on their heads. To their surprise, they end up playing right into Kramer and Amanda’s hand when they’re trapped in the building’s office filling with poisonous gas. Kramer and Amanda are well aware of Parker and Cecilia’s connection. In the end, Cecilia kills Parker to stick her head through a ventilation hole, with Kramer and Amanda giving Carlos the scammer’s stolen money as they depart.
What Happens To Amanda In Future Saw Movies
Though Amanda is fiercely loyal to Kramer in Saw X, the movie does show some seeds of her dissent in the Saw franchise’s future timeline, with Amanda sympathizing with Gabriela (Renata Vaca) for being pulled into the medical scam to pay for her drug addiction. Amanda also believes Cecilia deserves no shot at redemption. Saw III shows Amanda’s work with Kramer (retroactively following Saw X) as taking a real toll on her, notably in flashbacks to the first Saw, during which she returns to the industrial bathroom and suffocates Adam (Leigh Whannell) rather than let him slowly die.
Amanda also develops some major friction with Detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), with the two competing for Kramer’s favor to become his successor. Unbeknownst to Kramer, Amanda is under added pressure from Hoffman, who reveals that he knows she is indirectly responsible for the miscarriage Kramer’s wife Jill (Betsy Russell) due to her boyfriend Cecil (Billy Otis) accidentally slamming a door into Jill’s belly while stealing drugs from Jill’s free clinic. With Amanda having a panic attack from Hoffman’s threat, Saw III shows Amanda really begin to break down with Kramer’s death nearing.
While kidnapped physician Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) does her best to keep Kramer alive as long as possible, Amanda resorts to self-harm as a substitute for her former drug addiction. As Kramer’s death becomes imminent, the emotionally distraught Amanda holds Lynn at gunpoint and reveals that she has gradually lost faith in Kramer’s philosophy. Moments later, Lynn’s husband Jeff (Angus Macfayden) enters, having just gone through his own gruesome test. Amanda shoots Lynn, and then Jeff shoots her. It is then that Kramer makes a shocking confession to Amanda: the game that Jeff went through in Saw III was really a test for her.
How Amanda Dies In Saw III & Why It Happens
As Amanda works alongside Kramer, her rivalry with Hoffman and her disdain for the test subjects Kramer chooses leads to Amanda creating traps that are impossible to beat, like the one set up for Detective Kerry (Dina Meyer). This runs completely counter to Kramer’s philosophy that he is awakening the survival instinct and value for life within his subjects. Since Kramer will not pass the torch of his legacy as Jigsaw to a killer, he designs the game for Jeff and Lynn to test whether Amanda is willing to work within his framework and twisted sense of justice.
After Jeff shoots Amanda, Kramer reveals that he is aware that she’s been putting their subjects into traps from which they could not free themselves. Despite this, Kramer still believed in Amanda’s potential to become what he thought she could be as new the Jigsaw. Much to Kramer’s dismay, Amanda proves incapable of adhering to the Jigsaw standard due to her feelings of anger and vengefulness, which end up costing Amanda not only the chance to follow in Kramer’s footsteps but her life as well.
Will Amanda Return After Saw X?
Theoretically, Saw X could be the final Saw movie. However, given how strongly the film has been received, a return of the Saw franchise as the Halloween staple it once was seems like a foregone conclusion. Amanda Young can surely be a player in that comeback. Of course, as with the demise of her mentor John Kramer, Amanda’s death in Saw III places limitations on how she can appear in future Saw movies. The easiest work-around is to bring Amanda and Jigsaw back in films like Saw X that take place before Saw III.
Additionally, future Saw movies set in the present could include flashbacks with Amanda, as they often did with Jigsaw himself, as a way of showing her significance to the franchise. With both possibilities on the table, Saw X‘s reinvigoration of the Saw series might place more of a demand on Kramer and Amanda being active participants in upcoming projects. That could make another Saw interquel the most likely place for Amanda Young’s next story, but after Saw X, her return is every bit as likely as that of Jigsaw.
