Warning! This article contains spoilers for Netflix’s Time Cut.
Netflix’s time-travel slasher,Time Cut, can get confusing pretty quickly, especially considering some of its character deaths happen not once, but twice. Set in the fictional town of Sweetly, the movie centers around the Sweetly Slasher, who killed four teenagers back in 2003, including the sweet and popular Summer (Antonia Gentry). Lucy (Madison Bailey) — a teen from 2024 and Summer’s younger sister — sets out to stop them before they happen.Time Cut’s maincharacterquickly encounters a series of paradoxes that overcome her knowledge and threaten the limits of her existence.
While theending ofTime Cutoffers some clarity as to what happened and when, many things that are initially established as canon end up changing or never occurring.School Spiritsdirector, Hannah Macpherson, craftsa gripping and tension-packed murder puzzle whose fragmented and shifting nature ensures no set course of events.Time Cut’s three timelinesbleed into each other, demonstrating that the littlest change can break or re-make the truth. All the while, the Sweetly Slasher is determined to write his own version, where no survivors get second chances.
8Brian
Second Timeline
Brian is part of Summer’s friend group, which includes Ethan, Emmy, Val, Brian, and Summer. They are the popular teens at Sweetly High School and, except for Ethan, are targeted by the Sweetly Slasher inTime Cut’s second timeline.He killed Brian on April 16, when he was shopping at the mallwith Val for the Spring Fling.
Brian marked the killer’s first murder, with his girlfriend being the second. Old Quinn killed him because he and Ethan threw him into the river in the first timeline, making their whole class laugh at Young Quinn’s desperate attempts not to drown. Although Brian seems like a nice friend to Summer,he was presented as Quinn’s main bully and the one who incited the river prank— telling Ethan to take out his frustration on “that nerd Quinn” when Summer avoided talking to him.
7Val
Not much is revealed about why the Sweetly Slasher targeted Val. Although she is a part of Summer’s friend group, Val is not the only one at school who laughs when Ethan and Brian attempt to throw Quinn into the river, making it strange that he would want to kill her specifically. The likeliest reason for her murder is that she is Brian’s girlfriend, andQuinn’s blind rage made him target the whole friend group, thinking them all responsible for condoning the bullying.
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Val’s murder as it happened in the second timeline isn’t shown on screenbut only alluded to. The final timeline provided an idea of what the original murder looked like before Lucy changed it. After trying on some clothes at Wetslide, Val stepped out of the dressing room to find Brian dead on the floor. She hid from the Sweetly Slasher, but he eventually cornered her on a shelf — wherehe presumably killed her with a knife.
6Emmy
Emmy was killed on April 17 when she was workingat the Sweetly Marine Museum. Her original death scene isn’t shown, but the final timeline sets it up. The Sweetly Slasher creeped up on her while she was wearing headphones and cleaning the boat. When Summer warned her and Emmy tried to flee, she struggles with the door — suggesting the killer cornered and stabbed her there.
In the final timeline, Summer opens the door from outside, saving Emmy with the help of Lucy and Quinn. Old Quinn’s motives for killing Emmy aren’t explicitly revealed. However, she was part of Summer’s friend group and had laughed at the river prank — though, admittedly, she called it a stupid senior tradition.It is more likely that, in hindsight, Old Quinn realized Emmy and Summer were lovers, considering young Quinn does notice the pair’s intimate relationship. Even if it is not confirmed that Summer ever came out in the first timeline, it is possible, since Emmy did so pretty young.
5Summer
After killing Brian, Val, and Emmy, theSweetly Slasher killed Summer on April 18 at the Spring Fling partyat the Hayshed. He attacked her when she was putting lipstick in the bathroom, and then chased her through some abandoned sheds as she struggled to find a way back to the party.He used a scythe to stab herin the back while she tried to run.
Summer never died inTim Cut’s first timeline. A resentful older Quinn created a time machine to go back in time and kill her and her friends, provoking the second timeline.
In the final timeline, Summer tries to recreate her murder to ensure Lucy is born. However, her sister and Quinn ran over the attacker, revealing it is Older Quinn from the first timeline — who was actually thrown in the river when young. Afterward,he explained that he wanted to kill Summer because she laughed as he screamed for help in the water and because she told him she could never love him.
4Brian
Final Timeline
Brian’s was the only death that didn’t change in the final timeline, as Lucy failed to arrive on time to prevent his murder. Even if she did stop him from throwing Quinn into the river, Brian was killed because the Sweetly Slasher comes from the first timeline, where the incident did happen. The character is punished for something a different version of him did, adding toTime Cut’s complex exploration of one decision’s chain of ripple effects.
As opposed to Val’s unseen second-timeline murder,Time Cutdid indeed show her boyfriend’s demise. As Brian waited for Val to come out of the dressing room, the lights on Wetslide went out, making him accidentally drop some things on the floor. When he bowed down to pick them up, the Sweetly Slasher stood over him andstabbed him in the neck with a broken CD.
3Val
When Lucy traveled to the past, Val acted as a supportive friend to Summer, and considered by Gentry’s character “the sweetest person” — however, she doesn’t get a chance to prove this. Lucy isn’t able to prevent Val from being killed on April 16, but she changes the way it happens. She distracts the Sweetly Slasher at Wetslide andallows Val to run from the store where she was supposed to be killed.
Trying to reach help, the pair takes the electric stairs only to find that the slasher is at the bottom waiting for them. Lucy climbs back up, but Val trips and hits her head.Old Quinn kills Val at the end of the stairsby hitting her head against them. Val’s final timeline death produces Ethan’s eulogy-type speech at Spring Fling, which originally also included Emmy.
2Mall Security Guard
The change in Val’s death signals the beginning of a series oftime travel tragedies caused by Lucy inTime Cut. In the second timeline, the Sweetly Slasher killed two people on the night of April 16, but in the final timeline, he kills three. As Madison Bailey’s character yells for help, she causes the mall’s security guard to try to save Val. Not only does he get to her too late, buthe is stabbed by Old Quinn.
Time Cutsuggests Lucy is actively changing the past — creating an enthralling suspense about who will die next and whether it will be someone entirely unexpected.
The death of the security guard served toraise the stakes for Lucy’s intervention in the past— as he wasn’t supposed to die. From then on, she worried about the effect every one of her choices will have in the future, which helped her realize that if she saves Summer, she wouldn’t be born.Time Cutsuggests Lucy is actively changing the past — creating an enthralling suspense about who will die next and whether it will be someone entirely unexpected.
1Old Quinn
Time Cut’s twist on the slasher’s identitydefies all predictions, as an older Quinn is revealed to be the Sweetly Slasher. Bitter and resentful about the way Summer and her friends treated him when he was young, the Quinn from the first timeline invented the time machine to rob them of their future.The movie’s three timelines meet for the final confrontation— Older Quinn came from the first, Lucy from the second, and Quinn and Summer experienced the final one.
Lucy took the slasher to June 14, 2025, and they fought each other in a parking lot. WhenLucy stabbed Old Quinn, she ended the first and second timelines and their respective murders, replacing them with the final one — where Emmy and Summer are saved; Quinn isn’t thrown in the river; and Lucy is never born. Coming herself from a timeline that no longer exists inTime Cut, Lucy decided to stay in the final timeline’s past with her sister, a better family, and Quinn.
Time Cut
Cast
A teenage girl goes back in time to the early 2000s to save her sister from a dangerous killer.
