Saw: Every Jigsaw Apprentice, Ranked

In the shocking twist ending to James Wan's "Saw," the dead man lying in the middle of the floor was revealed to be none other than John Kramer (Tobin Bell) aka Jigsaw watching his sick game play out in front of him. After a series of tragic events befall John, the civil engineer contorted his architectural skills to build Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions that supposedly tested people's will to live. But for as smart as he was, there was only so much a terminal cancer patient could pull off by himself. Therefore, John would go on to acquire a number of apprentices across the ten "Saw" films.

The disciples of Jigsaw, whether they genuinely believed in his ideology or wanted to further their own agenda, dedicated themselves to his torture teachings in some form or another. You could feasibly make a workplace sitcom based on the few scenes where we see some of them interacting with one another (looking at you, Amanda and Hoffman). This list is composed of all the direct Jigsaw apprentices, in addition to the fanatics who continued the work as a result of his influence. Select individuals who assisted Jigsaw's games like Art Blank (Louis Ferreira) or Obi (Timothy Burd) don't really count because they weren't clued into what was happening.

Before we get started, let's give an honorable mention to the two unmasked assailants ambushing Hoffman at the end of "Saw 3D: The Final Chapter." Although once rumored to be the duo who survived the three-way public execution trap at the start of the film, director Kevin Greutert has confirmed that actors playing Brad (Sebastian Pigott) and Ryan (Jon Cor) didn't shoot that scene, so their identities are forever left unknown.

Coming in at last place is Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore), the blandest apprentice in the worst "Saw" film to date. In spite of being considered canonical with the rest of the series, 2017's "Jigsaw" comes across as the "Saw" equivalent of "Never Say Never Again." It's got the traps, Tobin Bell playing John Kramer, and a big twist ending composed by Charlie Clouser, yet plays like a soulless knockoff. A large part of this has to do with Logan, a U.S. Army medic turned Medical Examiner who reveals himself as the orchestrator of the film's game (well, kind of). The central game in Jill Tuck's Pig Farm is revealed to have taken place before all of the others timeline-wise, which explains why Jigsaw is still alive despite looking older. Logan ended up in that game as a result of mixing up the X-rays that would have diagnosed the gamemaker's cancer earlier. But when he doesn't immediately wake up for the buckethead trap, John nurses him back to health in recognition of his own mistake.

From that moment, Logan became the first Jigsaw apprentice. The dead bodies the police find throughout the film are from his recreation of the same game, composed of criminals that the corrupt Detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) helped set free — including the man who murdered his wife. Passmore doesn't possess the gravitas or personality to make an impression, especially for a character who supposedly played a role in constructing the iconic Reverse Bear Trap. It doesn't help that he has no chemistry in his scenes opposite Bell. Logan says he speaks for the dead, but sadly has nothing interesting to say.

Some may decry Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell) being on this list, but she converses with John Kramer's associates, ambushes Detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) with the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 at her husband's postmortem request, and dramatically closes a door while saying "game over," so she fits within the guidelines. While she received a flashback in "Saw III," Jill wouldn't be introduced as a character until "Saw IV," where we see how her relationship with John turned into something much darker. Being the wife of Jigsaw, she's the only person who's witnessed the full scope of her husband's transformation from hopeful architect to vindictive serial killer. The two had planned a life together, but the one-two punch of her violent miscarriage and John's cancer diagnosis threw all of that into disarray.

Unlike the other direct apprentices, Jill wasn't lured into the gamemaker's plans so much as trapped in them. She's the Skyler White of the "Saw" series, in that she gets a lot of flack for despite being under the control of a domineering husband who has deadly connections in high places. In spite of what John says, the games are extremely personal revenge sprees consisting of people who wronged him, with a large number of trap participants being "failed" patients from Jill's health clinic. What prevents Jill from being higher on the list is that there's little consistency to how she's presented. The woman we meet in "Saw IV" is much different than who we see in the next three movies. Jill's actions come more out of tying up loose ends to John's killing spree, which would explain why she's shocked when Hoffman actually survives his unwinnable trap.

While never explicitly having worked with John Kramer, Detective William Schenk (Max Minghella) falls in line as a Jigsaw disciple. He's content on carrying on the serial killer's legacy not out of obligation to his teachings, but retrofitting his own grievances onto it. Keeping with "Saw" tradition, the mastermind behind a new crop of Jigsaw traps comes from within the police precinct investigating the series of traps around town. Schenk is presented as a rookie officer assigned as the partner to Detective Zeke Banks (Chris Rock), deemed untrustworthy by the precinct after he ratted out a dirty cop. The man in question was Schenk's father, who was set to testify against one of them before Officer Peter Dunleavey (Patrick McManus) murdered him in cold blood in his apartment. The Jigsaw copycat witnessed it all go down in secret, which compelled him to carry out his plot by playing the long game until he had access to the hornet's nest.

Schenk and John share a lot in common when it comes to revenge disguised as rebirth. Where the two differ, however, is that John targets craven monsters and people who need help, while Schenk sets his sights on purging the shameless malefactors within a system that's spiraled out of control with little accountability. His plan is a karmic reflection of the legislation that allowed Zeke's father Detective Marcus Banks (Samuel L. Jackson) to clean up the streets by any means necessary. As far as "Se7en" at home goes, "Spiral" crafts a compelling antagonist who wields the Jigsaw mantra as the start of a new cycle of renewal. There are no truly innocent parties in Schenk's traps. Shame about the lackluster tapes, even though the pig theming serves a greater purpose here.

For a series that depicted painstakingly detailed accounts of its characters and what led them to the moment they met Jigsaw, the "Saw" series hardly seemed interested in Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes). The absentee father/adulterer spent the first movie trapped in a dingy bathroom with Adam (Leigh Whannell), a photographer tasked with taking incriminating pictures of him in the outside world. After Dr. Gordon sawed off his own foot to save his family, his fate was largely left in the wind. Multiple installments went by where we had no idea where he went, nor why he didn't go back for his sweet Adam. It wouldn't be until the closing moments of "Saw 3D" where we learn John Kramer not only nursed him back to health but recruited him for some of the more medically complicated traps like the key behind the eye for the Venus Fly Trap guy.

What could have been easy fan service actually makes some sense, such as recommending Dr. Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh), a surgeon at his own hospital, for John's backdoor brain operation in "Saw III." Dr. Gordon, unlike a lot of the cockier apprentices, knew his best bet was to lay low and only come out when John requested his services. Such is the case when Jill Tuck drops off a tape of the gamemaker asking the good doctor to take care of things should harm come to her, leading to Hoffman's karmic entrapment in the bathroom. For as much of a disappointment "Saw 3D" was, it's still an entertaining capper to the original run of "Saw" movies because of Elwes' campy performance. It's a shame we never got to see more of his entertaining villain persona beyond the Jigsaw support group and the ending.

Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) has lived entire lifetimes in the complicated timeline of the "Saw" franchise. In the wake of being slapped with a phony drug charge by Detective Eric Mathews (Donnie Wahlberg), Amanda went to prison and ultimately became a heroin addict. Once on the outside, she found herself in the now iconic Reverse Bear Trap, which instructed her to carve the key out of the stomach of her unconscious cellmate. It was at that moment where John Kramer would recruit her as his protégé apprentice that would continue to carry out his work after his passing. The events of "Saw II" would present her as a repeat victim in Jigsaw's games, only to show that she was merely a plant to help move things along. Smith did stellar work playing a character who is ostensibly the central tragedy of the "Saw" franchise.

For as much as "Saw X" tried to soften him a bit, John was a cult leader who could easily manipulate people into his way of thinking based on their circumstances. Amanda is no different — she wasn't saved from the brink so much as being held captive to a serial killer's flawed ideology that required her unconditional support no matter what. Looking up to John as both a father figure and spiritual leader served in place of actually building a better life. Amanda's final moments were a three-way tug-of-war between John's mind games, her own murderous impulses, and Hoffman threatening to tell her mentor about her indirect involvement in Jill Tuck's miscarriage. Her fate was sealed no matter who she decided to listen to, and Smith makes a meal out of such a complicated character. 

In the wake of John Kramer's death in "Saw III," it was Detective Mark Hoffman who stepped up to the plate as the series' secondary antagonist from "Saw IV" up until "Saw 3D." His scuzzy demeanor made for a controversial yet compelling successor who truly understood what it meant to be Jigsaw. Hoffman and John are two powder kegs of misplaced ego and hypocrisy. Each of their first traps are built as retribution for the person who caused the death of a loved one, but Hoffman is the only person willing to admit it. He's recruited (well, blackmailed) into helping John carry out his work;  unlike Logan, Hoffman being revealed as an apprentice since before the bathroom trap actually makes sense. The gamemaker wouldn't have acquired any information on his players without the Detective providing him intel.

Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) wouldn't have had the opportunity to kill Jigsaw if not for Hoffman paving the way for everyone's mutually assured destruction. He's nothing if not retaliatory toward those who put him into a corner. Every Hoffman-led "Saw" movie sees him going full supervillain mode to conceal his complicity and winning (until the last movie). "Saw VI" features one of the most tense sequences in the franchise, with the Detective taking out an entire room of long-running investigative side characters in a matter of seconds. Hoffman, even more so than the other apprentices, is proof that John's crusade to rehabilitate people through traumatic bodily injury is a fantasy. He manages to survive the unwinnable Reverse Bear Trap, yet it only further exacerbates his violent tendencies. Hoffman sucks, but that's what makes him the best Jigsaw apprentice. Game over.