After two years, the long-awaited Saw X chronicles John Kramer’s most personal ‘game’ yet. We knew that John Kramer was suffering from (and eventually died of) a frontal lobe tumor and colon cancer, but what we didn’t know—until now—is that he was scammed out of $240k by a group of con artists led by Cecilia Pederson, the daughter of an acclaimed Scandinavian scientist.
In order to exact his revenge, Kramer kidnaps all those responsible and forces them to make the ultimate choice—live or die. He targets Pederson, the brains of the operation; Valentina, a faux nurse; Mateo, a pretend anaesthesiologist; and Gabriela, the pretend ‘host’ who welcomes him to the operation in Mexico.
The fate of every character who dies in Saw X
Major spoilers for Saw X ahead.
We know for certain that Valentina, Mateo, Gabriela, and Parker Sears all died. Cecilia Pederson and Henry Kessler— a ‘cancer survivor’ and ‘successful candidate’ for The Pederson Project—presumably died, but this is shown off-screen, therefore it is unconfirmed. Let’s briefly review how each of them met their demise.
Valentina
Valentina (Paulette Hernandez) seems to be a kind-hearted nurse with pure intentions to cure terminal cancer patients. However, she is revealed to be nothing more than a scam artist. Working alongside her boss and colleagues, Valentina would pose as a nurse for The Pederson Project. Valentina meets her end in the Amputation Trap (working title), wherein she is tasked with extracting her bone marrow by amputating her right leg at the thigh.
She fails to produce enough bone marrow within the time limit and a taut string of razor-sharp wire decapitates her. Later, Cecilia disembowels Valentina’s corpse to use her intestines as a makeshift lasso. How lovely.
Mateo
Mateo (Octavio Hinojosa) poses as both an anaesthesiologist and a surgeon during John Kramer’s procedure. He pretends to perform life-saving brain surgery to remove John’s tumor, but the footage playing on the ‘camera’ is taken from a training video for aspiring neurosurgeons. Mateo finds himself in the Brain Surgery Trap, wherein he must place a sufficient amount of cerebral matter into a glass beaker to secure the key and free himself from the electrocution collar strapped around his neck.
In layman’s terms, Mateo has to perform awake self-surgery to remove sections of his brain and dispense them into the beaker. Once the brain matter dissolves, the key will be released. The catch? There’s no anesthesia. Mateo successfully cuts through his skull and retrieves parts of his cerebral tissue, but doesn’t complete the task in the allotted time, so the mask around his head closes and cooks him alive.
Gabriela
Gabriela (Renata Vaca), a drug addict, incites John Kramer to undergo the surgery after claiming to have been saved by The Pederson Project. She finds herself in the Radiation Therapy Trap, where she’s cuffed at her left wrist and right ankle and forced to smash her bones with a hammer to escape the shackles before the cancerous rays from the X-ray machine burn her alive. In a shocking twist, Gabriela successfully completes her task and drops to safety with her face scorched and numerous bones broken.
After Cecilia supposedly swindled John and Amanda, her boyfriend Parker Sears frees her from the shackle around her neck and locks John and a young boy named Diego into the Bloodboarding Trap meant for her. As Gabriela lies helpless on the ground, Cecilia stomps on her neck to instantly kill her, enraging fellow drug addict Amanda.
Parker Sears
Cecilia’s boyfriend and supposed thyroid cancer survivor Parker Sears (Steven Brand) gets what’s coming to him in Saw X‘s final act. He and Cecilia find themselves outsmarted by John and Amanda and coerced into the Gas Chamber Trap. John’s office, where he oversees the game’s conclusions, supposedly contains all the money Cecilia had conned out of vulnerable cancer patients. When she and Parker go to retrieve it, the door locks behind them and the room fills with poisonous gas.
There’s only one hole in the wall for someone to breathe fresh air, so he and Cecilia fight over who deserves to live. In the end, Cecilia pummels Parker, stabs him, and leaves him to both bleed out and dissolve. Let’s not pretend he didn’t have it coming.
Cecilia Pederson (Unconfirmed)
Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund) uses her father’s methods for curing cancer as a way to lure terminal cancer patients to a facility where she would have them wire funds to her account in exchange for surgery. However, the surgery would turn out to be a complete ruse and after discharging their patients, Cecilia and her associates would pack up the equipment and relocate to do it all over again.
We anticipate Cecilia’s trap throughout Saw X until the very end when she switches places with John Kramer and forces him to endure the Bloodboarding Trap, where he and Carlos are slowly drowned with blood over a period of time. After killing Parker and taking the air slot for herself in the Gas Chamber Trap, she finds herself trapped in the head hole, unable to go inside without suffering the same fate as Parker. She presumably dies of dehydration or starvation.
Henry Kessler (Unconfirmed)
Henry Kessler (Michael Beach) approaches John Kramer at a café and tries to sell the idea of The Pederson Project to him. Kessler even goes as far as to fashion himself a fake scar to ‘prove’ his survival and recovery. He convinces Kramer to contact Cecilia, then we never see him again. He isn’t present throughout the movie, nor does he end up at the abandoned warehouse with the others.
It isn’t until the post-credits scene that we see Henry again. He’s been kidnapped by John and Mark Hoffman and forced to undergo a test of his own. We see him in the Disembowelment Trap, but we don’t get any further context as to what he needs to do to survive, nor if he even makes it out alive. But we weren’t paying that much attention anyway. We were all too preoccupied with fawning over Hoffman, no doubt.
