The Final Girl Support Group

Lynnette comes across dolls hanging from branches, a toy cemetery, abandoned appliances, and a windchime made of screwdrivers. Suddenly, a man assaults her from behind, pulling her by the hair into a house. She uses her box cutter to cut her hair to free herself. She runs to get her gun and is about to shoot him when Chrissy appears and tells her to stop. The man is Chrissy’s boyfriend Keith. Chrissy sends him away, annoyed that Lynnette wasted her entire afternoon with a fake transaction.

The Final Girls support group considers Chrissy, who became a Final Girl at a homecoming massacre, a traitor because she champions the killers’ rights. Dr. Carol theorizes that Chrissy switched loyalties because her monster was her godfather, but Lynnette thinks she’s acting erratic and dangerous.

In Chrissy’s cluttered home, the women discuss their different beliefs around what happened to them. Lynnette thinks it’s simple. But Chrissy likes theorizing her suffering, which she views as a “shamanistic vision quest that uses an ordeal to lead us inward on a journey of spiritual discovery and eventual synthesis and peace” (231). She has taken the horrific thing that happened to her and turned it into a self-actualizing opportunity.

Chrissy visits Billy Walker regularly and commissions his art for customers. Lynnette tells Chrissy that someone is using Chrissy to communicate, but Chrissy knows more than Lynnette thinks. Lynnette was “always more of an unfinished victim than a real Final Girl” (234), but she’s finally about to have an opportunity to be real: Chrissy knows what the numbers in the email sent to the support group mean. They walk through Chrissy’s museum to get to the computer.

The museum’s first room represents what happened to Dani. It has the knife Nick used to kill, and the tire iron with which Dani killed him.

As they walk through Chrissy’s organized and cataloged museum, Chrissy and Lynnette argue about who the monsters are and why they do what they do. Lynnette sees them as psychopaths. Chrissy sees their behavior as metaphysical: They see themselves in other people, so they kill those who mirror their own weaknesses. In the end, there is just the monster and the Final Girl—two opposing forces of life and death: “Even destruction can’t unmake creation. That primal feminine impulse, that procreative urge cannot be undone” (242).

They walk into Adrienne’s room, with items from the original 1978 Camp Red Lake murders. Chrissy philosophizes about the difference between these massacres and other murders. Horror is more meaningful because of the Final Girls. The Final Girl and the monster are opposite sides of the same coin: She is loud, fast, and resourceful; he is slow, silent, and can only kill. She tries to save her friends, and he’s alone. When she kills him, she puts him out of his misery and frees them both.

Heather’s room is more horrifying than Lynnette imagined, since Heather was part of a supernatural massacre. Lynnette’s room is still empty because Lynnette hasn’t gone down the Final Girl path yet. Julia’s room is made up of mirrors and the items from The Ghost’s murders. Chrissy theorizes that each Final Girl has a stock role, such as jock or cheerleader; Lynnette’s role will be “Final Girl of the Final Girls” (247). To Chrissy, monsters serve a purpose. They’re the threshold that all must cross, and the thing people fear most. They bring about people’s metaphorical deaths so they can transform into who they must become.

Chrissy shows Lynnette emails from someone named “Orchomenus.” Orchomenus is ostensibly interested in Billy’s art, but has actually been communicating with Billy through numbers at the end of each email. Billy’s responses include numbers too. The numbers correspond to page and line numbers from The Diary of Anne Frank, the real-life autobiography of a young Jewish girl who died at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust during World War II. Orchomenus and Billy use this book because every prison has a copy. Chrissy claims Orchomenus forged Lynnette’s letters to Billy. Chrissy believes Orchomenus is Dr. Carol. Lynnette is devastated by the confirmation of what she feared.

Suddenly, the women realize that Keith has found Stephanie outside.

Keith is holding a bloodied and limp Stephanie in the living room. Chrissy laughs. She wants to let Keith have Stephanie because he feeds on murdering. While Keith prepares to skin Stephanie, Lynnette runs to the car, starts it, and crashes it into the house. The crash kills Chrissy. Lynnette finds Stephanie, but just then Keith suddenly grabs Lynnette’s ankle from beneath a pile of drywall. She stomps on his arm and stabs it with a piece of splintered wood over and over until he lets go. Lynnette carries Stephanie out while Keith comes after them. The car doesn’t start until the last second.

Lynnette gets Stephanie stitches for her scalp, and then takes them to a Motel 6. Lynnette is devastated that she killed another Final Girl. She is horrified that she murdered someone, and she is determined to never kill again, no matter what. She calls Skye on Stephanie’s phone and tells him to run, but he explains that Dr. Carol is taking him and Pax to Sagefire. Lynnette calls Julia, who tells her that Dr. Carol is picking up everyone from the support group to keep them safe because they believe Lynnette has had a mental health crisis and is dangerous. Lynnette begs Julia to go somewhere with the other Final Girls to be safe from Dr. Carol and to get Skye and Pax too, if they can.

When Stephanie wakes, Lynnette finally looks at the comic book she bought from Pax. It features a violent superhero named “Sky Man.” As the crayoned Sky man cuts off the heads of six women, he says, “I kill all the Last Ladies” (270). Lynnette realizes that Skye must be the killer: He sent the emails sent to Chrissy from Dr. Carol’s account, and he got hold of Lynnette’s book. Lynnette calls Julia many times to warn her, but Julia doesn’t answer.

Lynnette brings her car to a mechanic and convinces him to give her a loaner. She tries calling Skye, but it goes to voicemail. She starts to call Garrett, but Stephanie stops her—Garrett won’t believe Lynnette because her theory is based on a little kid’s drawings. Lynnette is sure she’s right about Skye, but then realizes that she spoke just as adamantly about Dr. Carol.

They stop at a rest area so Stephanie can pee. As she comes back to the car, Stephanie gets off the phone with someone. Lynnette muses that her entire life has been wasted on being scared and trying to stay alive. The only thing she can do now is to keep Stephanie safe. Lynnette is determined to not let more Final Girls get made. She wants all the killing to stop.

They decide to go to Dani’s ranch.