Time Cut‘s Killer Even Shocked Madison Bailey—the Netflix Movie’s Ending Explained
Spooky season might be over, but Netflix is counting on the fact that teen slasher movies are always in—particularly the ones banking on nostalgia. One such recent release is Time Cut, starring Ginny & Georgia’s Antonia Gentry and Outer Banks’ Madison Bailey as sisters.
In the movie Madison Bailey’s Lucy goes back in time to 2003 to save the sister she never knew, Summer, played by Gentry from the “Sweetly Slasher” serial killer. Any similarities to Amazon’s Totally Killer, starring Kiernan Shipka are probably pure coincidence. What happens afterward is a very confusing set of circumstances, because when you throw in time travel, that’s what you get.
Related: Who killed Wes Genrette in Outer Banks?
The movie opens in 2003 as Summer decides to go to a party, even though three of her friends just got murdered by a serial killer. That turns out to be a bad idea, of course, as the serial killer then kills her. Twenty-one years later, Lucy, Summer’s younger sister who she never met stumbles upon a time machine and ends up back in 2003, two days before the death of her sister. Pretty good timing, right?
But who is the killer in Time Cut? What are the reasons behind their rampage? And how does the movie end for our two protagonists, Lucy and Summer?
Who’s the killer in Time Cut?
To get to the killer, we have to explain the ending of this Netflix movie. When Lucy time travels to 2003 she befriends Quinn (Griffin Luck), the school’s resident nerd and the only one who knows about time travel. Quinn is quick to believe Lucy’s story of traveling in time but warns her that she cannot change anything from the past or she could create a devastating ripple effect. Lucy, of course, totally ignores this advice and tries to save the first two victims of the serial killer – Brian and Val.
She fails, but her attempt gets on Summer’s radar, and Lucy is forced to tell Summer the truth: she’s not just from the future, she’s her sister too. At first, Summer doesn’t believe her but is soon convinced. Knowing her sister is from the future, Sumner convinces Lucy and Quinn to help her save the next victim, Emmy, Summer’s best friend. Once they successfully save her, they realize the past can indeed be changed.
For Lucy, that means they have save Summer, even though that means she probably won’t exist—her parents told her that they didn’t want another child and basically only had her because they lost Summer.
As they’re trying to find a part for the time machine, they discover that someone has already taken the part they need, which means the killer is also from the future. And surprise surprise, it turns out to be someone they know: Quinn himself. In the other timeline, Quinn was bullied and later tried to confess his love to Summer, who told him that she could never love him because she was a lesbian. After that Quinn had the totally normal reaction (not) of making a time machine so he could go back in time and kill Summer and all her friends.
In the end, both Lucy and future-Quinn are transported back to 2024 where Lucy gets the better of him and kills him. But Lucy doesn’t want to stay in 2024, even though Summer is alive now in that timeline because her parents don’t know who she is. Instead, Lucy chooses to go back to 2003 where she can live out her life alongside her sister. It’s a pretty cheesy ending, and it required a lot of timey wimey to get there, but all is well that ends well, isn’t it?
