Fans of the Final Destination movies know there isn’t a lot of continuity, apart from each new sequel returning to the basic concept: Someone has a premonition of impending disaster and uses it to save the lives of people who would have died in that disaster, but death finds convoluted ways to claim them anyway. Even more than in more horror franchises, there aren’t legacy characters to check in on, or an elaborate, developing timeline packed with lore. And that’s because the darkest joke of Final Destination movies is that none of the central characters ever does manage to outwit death for long.
But there is one throughline for the whole series: Candyman star Tony Todd as mortician William Bludworth, the wise old soul who lays out the rules of death for the doomed protagonists, so they can fight a little longer. William Bludworth appears in three of the five original Final Destination movies, with a couple of voiceover Easter eggs from Todd in a fourth movie. And he’s back in the latest installation, Final Destination: Bloodlines, one of the final movies Tony Todd shot before his 2024 death — this time with a heartfelt message co-directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein say was aimed directly at his fans.
Lipovsky says bringing Todd back to the franchise was a no-brainer for the directors, especially since he wanted to reprise the role as much as they wanted him back.
“He really wanted to be in this movie,” Lipovsky told Polygon via Zoom. “He was sick when we were developing the film, and we were worried he wouldn’t be well enough [by the time we were shooting], but he really, really wanted to be there. And we wanted to craft a narrative around him, to give him a bit more of an origin story, to fill him out as a character.”
Polygon.
