WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Spiral: From the Book of Saw.
Spiral: From the Book of Saw is back to torture more victims, but does John "Jigsaw" Kramer return as the franchise's signature villain? When fans think of Saw movies, it's likely their first mental images are of Jigsaw, as well as the character's various iconography. Beyond just John Kramer, there's the pig mask, Billy the puppet, the cassette tapes delivered to test subjects, the mechanical traps usually primed to remove limbs, and so on and so forth. Jigsaw is a very memorable bad guy, albeit one who doesn't see himself as one.
Of course, Jigsaw, at least not the John Kramer genuine article, literally wasn't long for this world. His first appearance in Saw came with a ticking clock, as co-creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell wrote their big bad as being a terminal cancer patient. Whether they would've done that if they thought their little horror movie would become an enormous franchise is a question worth asking, but in the timeline that did happen, Jigsaw had a built-in shelf life, barring a miraculous and eye-rolling sudden cure.
Appropriately, Jigsaw met his end in Saw 3, and just to make sure fans knew it wasn't a swerve, his autopsy was shown in excruciatingly graphic detail in Saw 4. Yet, that hasn't stopped John from playing large posthumous roles in every Saw movie since. Even if his screentime was brief, he always managed to make a difference to the plot. Did the same hold true for Spiral: From the Book of Saw, or is John Kramer finally gone for good?
Jigsaw Is Dead, Long Live Jigsaw: John Kramer's Spiral Status
Sadly for at least some Saw fans, John "Jigsaw" Kramer (Tobin Bell) does not appear in person in Spiral: From the Book of Saw. John is mentioned multiple times by characters, and some old police photos are shown of him, but that's it. Not only that, for the first time in the Saw franchise, the killer has no direct connection to John either. He's not an apprentice, and he's seemingly never met the man. The new killer is a self-styled moral crusader named William Schenk - or at least that's his alias - who believes Jigsaw had the right idea, but instead of just applying tests to individuals, he seeks to clean up the city's corrupt police force.
Schenk begins the film as the new partner of Detective Zeke Banks (Chris Rock), seemingly the only decent cop in town. Schenk hoped his game would end with Banks joining forces with him to finish eradicating the bad cops on the Metro PD, but since he kidnapped Banks' former police chief father and put him in a trap, Schenk's plan doesn't exactly come to fruition in that respect. Spiral: From the Book of Saw ends with both Zeke and Schenk alive, and seems to clearly be setting up a renewal of hostilities in Saw 10, which was recently reported to already be in development. While many Saw fans will no doubt be disappointed at the absence of Tobin Bell and John Kramer from Spiral, this was the right move to make for the franchise to evolve and stop clinging to the past.