Saw Timeline Explained: Every Film in Story Order

Saw (2004), directed by James Wan, is the start of the story, and its killer is John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer. Photographer Adam and oncologist Lawrence Gordon wake chained in a bathroom with a body between them, and Lawrence has until 6:00 to kill Adam or his wife Alison and daughter Diana will die.

Flashbacks show detectives Tapp and Sing closing in on Jigsaw, and show that Lawrence saw the testimony of Amanda, a rare survivor of one of his traps. The captor watching the family turns out to be Zep Hindle, a hospital orderly who was himself forced to obey Jigsaw to earn an antidote to a slow poison. The twist is that the supposed corpse stands up and is John Kramer. He shocks Adam through the chain, seals the door and leaves. Lawrence crawls out for help, having sawed through his own foot, and his fate stays open. For the film itself, see saw 2004, and for the man behind the tape recorder, john kramer saw.

Saw X (2023), directed by Kevin Greutert, sits second in the timeline: it is a sequel to Saw (2004) and a prequel to Saw II, and it shows John Kramer when he is dying rather than in control. Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith return as John and Amanda Young, and the filmmakers decided not to de-age either of them.

John learns he has terminal brain cancer, and a man named Henry tells him about a miracle treatment in Mexico. He travels to a clinic outside Mexico City, believes the operation worked, and then returns to find it empty. The staff, led by Cecilia, are con artists who prey on the desperate. With Amanda helping, John puts the fake doctor and the team through traps built around the harm they did. Valentina and Mateo die in theirs, Gabriela survives hers and is then killed by Cecilia, and John tricks Cecilia into bringing in Parker, the man behind the scam. The last scene shows Henry waking in a bathroom with a trap attached, watched by John and Mark Hoffman, and a short post credit scene has a Hoffman cameo played by Costas Mandylor. The page for saw x covers the film in full.

Saw II (2005), directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, is the film where the series learns that Jigsaw has help. It begins with an informant who dies in a head trap, a scene that pulls Detective Eric Matthews toward a factory. There he and a SWAT team take John Kramer into custody without a fight.

The arrest is the bait. Monitors in the factory show eight people sealed in a house while a nerve agent works on them, and Eric's teenage son Daniel is one of the eight. They have roughly two hours. John asks Eric to sit down and talk, and says Daniel will come out safe if Eric follows his rules.

Inside the house, the captives hunt for antidotes, and several die in traps. They also work out that every one of them except Daniel has served time in prison. Amanda, who survived an earlier game, stays close to Daniel, while Xavier turns violent. Eric eventually loses his temper with John, and a colleague notices that the footage is a recording, not a live feed. Daniel is later found alive inside a safe. Eric goes into the house alone and wakes chained in a bathroom, where a tape tells him Amanda has been John's accomplice from the start. She locks the door and leaves him there. For the detective at the center of it, see eric matthews saw, and for the film itself, saw 2.

Saw III (2006), directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, is the point where the story loses both of its leading figures. Dr. Lynn Denlon is taken from her hospital and brought to a hideout, where John lies in bed with terminal cancer. Amanda locks a shotgun collar around Lynn's neck and links it to John's heart monitor. If his heart stops, the collar fires, so Lynn has to keep him breathing.

The second game belongs to Jeff, whose son Dylan was killed by a drunk driver. Jeff walks through an abandoned meatpacking plant and meets the three people he holds responsible: Danica, the only witness to the crash, Judge Halden, who gave the driver a light sentence, and the driver himself, Timothy. Danica and Timothy die before Jeff can reach them.

Back at the hideout, Lynn performs a crude operation to ease the pressure on John's brain. She pleads with Amanda, who answers that she no longer believes in John's ideas and has built her traps so that nobody can win. Jeff arrives and shoots Amanda dead, and John then explains that Lynn, Jeff's wife, was Amanda's real test. Jeff cuts John's throat with a power saw, and the collar kills Lynn. A last tape says a girl named Corbett is missing, and that only John knew where. Our pages on saw 3 and amanda young saw cover the film and its villain.

Saw IV (2007), directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, opens with the autopsy of John Kramer and exposes Mark Hoffman as a second apprentice. A microcassette is found in Jigsaw's stomach, with a message for Hoffman that the games have only just begun.

Officer Rigg, a cop who cannot stop trying to save others, is forced through a series of traps. The stakes include the lives of people he is trying to rescue, among them Eric Matthews, who turns out to be alive. Agents Strahm and Perez study the case, and Jill, John's widow, is questioned about a past miscarriage that shaped him. Flashbacks fill in how Kramer became the man behind the puzzles. The clues lead to the Gideon Meat Factory, where Rigg must choose between following the rules of the game and breaking them to save a victim. Hoffman seals Rigg and Strahm inside the building and leaves them trapped. The page for saw 4 has more, and mark hoffman saw follows the new villain.

Saw V (2008), directed by David Hackl, runs two stories side by side: a public hero and the one man who doubts him. After a convicted killer named Seth dies in a pendulum trap, Detective Mark Hoffman is celebrated for ending the Jigsaw case. Agent Peter Strahm, who lived through a trap himself, does not buy it. As he studies the evidence, he becomes sure Hoffman is involved.

The second story follows Ashley, Brit, Charles, Luba and Mallick, who move through a series of rooms that reward cooperation and punish selfishness. Several of them die early. Only Brit and Mallick reach the end, where they find out that all five were connected to a fatal fire. They must supply blood to open the last door, and Mallick dies in the effort.

Flashbacks reveal that John pulled Hoffman into the games after discovering that Hoffman had killed Seth. In the present, Hoffman plants evidence so that Strahm looks like Jigsaw's heir. Strahm shuts Hoffman inside a glass box, but then walks into a room with closing walls. Hoffman can only watch as the walls crush Strahm, and he walks free as the keeper of the legacy. See saw 5 for the full film page.

Saw VI (2009), directed by Kevin Greutert, turns the series on Hoffman, with John's own will setting the plan in motion. The film opens on two loan sharks, Eddie and Simone, who wear head harnesses and have to cut away their own flesh. Simone gives up an arm, the scale tips, and Eddie dies. Hoffman, who got out of the trap that killed Agent Strahm, leaves Strahm's fingerprints at the scene so the FBI keeps looking for a dead man.

The main game belongs to William Easton, an insurance executive whose company denied coverage to sick clients. His tests echo that habit. Some of his employees die, and on a spinning roundabout he can rescue just two of six colleagues. Agent Erickson spots something wrong with the prints and confronts Hoffman, who kills Erickson, Agent Perez and a technician.

Jill Tuck, John's widow, then catches Hoffman off guard with a letter he once wrote to Amanda Young, and clamps a modified reverse bear trap onto his head. Elsewhere, William finds his sister Pamela in a cage room, where Tara and her son Brent, relatives of a former client, decide his fate. Brent pulls the lever, and acid kills William. Hoffman breaks his own wrist to slip free and flees with a badly torn cheek. The page on saw 6 has the credits and release details.

Saw 3D (2010), directed by Kevin Greutert, was marketed as the last chapter, and it ties the story back to its first room. It starts by revealing that Dr. Gordon lived through the bathroom trap from Saw (2004), having burned through his ankle to escape. A public trap then offers two men a choice between killing each other and saving the woman who manipulated them. They let her die.

Jill Tuck watches Hoffman get out of his own trap and approaches Detective Gibson. She offers to expose Hoffman if she receives immunity. Hoffman, meanwhile, kills a group of white supremacists in a junkyard and abducts Bobby Dagen, a self-help author who built a career on a made-up story of surviving a Jigsaw trap. Bobby has an hour to reach his wife Joyce while she is lowered toward her death. His publicist, lawyer and best friend helped with the lie, and each of them dies in a trap. Bobby pulls two of his own teeth to get a door code, yet his final test fails, and Joyce is burned to death.

Hoffman hides in a body bag to get inside the police station, where a turret kills Gibson and his officers. He then kills Jill with the reverse bear trap. Outside town, three pig-masked figures seize him, led by Dr. Gordon, who chains Hoffman in the original bathroom. The page for saw 3d lists the cast.

Jigsaw (2017), directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, is set ten years after Saw: The Final Chapter. Detectives Halloran and Hunt chase Edgar Munsen, who is shot after setting off a remote trigger, and five strangers then wake in a barn to a recorded voice that sounds like John Kramer.

Carly, a thief whose crime led to a death, dies in the second test, and in the third Ryan must cut off his own leg to save Anna and Mitch. Meanwhile pathologists Logan Nelson and Eleanor Bonneville come under suspicion, because Eleanor admits she is a Jigsaw fan, and later evidence points to Halloran. Logan appears to die, but he is revealed to be the unconscious man from the very first barn game, spared by John ten years earlier and made his first apprentice. He framed Halloran for revenge over his wife's death at Edgar's hands, and Halloran's collar reactivates and kills him. See jigsaw 2017.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021), directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, is a spin-off that follows a Jigsaw style copycat rather than a Kramer apprentice. During a Fourth of July parade, Detective Marv Bozwick is attacked by a figure in a pig mask and killed by a train in a subway tunnel. Zeke Banks, an outcast on the force, is paired with rookie William Schenk to work the case.

More police officers die in traps, and suspicion falls on Zeke because of his history with Detective Fitch. His father Marcus, a retired police chief, is abducted, and Zeke finds his former partner Peter Dunleavy locked in a crushing device. Schenk then reveals he faked his death, that his real surname is Emmerson, and that he is the son of a man Dunleavy murdered to protect a corrupt cop. Zeke saves Marcus, but a SWAT team shoots Marcus dead as a suspected gunman, and Schenk escapes. The film does not show his later fate. See spiral saw and zeke banks spiral.

Watching in story order changes one thing, and it is where Saw X lands. It sits between Saw (2004) and Saw II, so John Kramer is already dying while Amanda Young is already his helper, and the reveal in Saw II loses part of its surprise.

The larger point is the chain of successors. Amanda is Jigsaw's first apprentice in Saw II, Hoffman is the second in Saw IV, Dr. Gordon takes over the final act of Saw 3D, and Logan Nelson becomes the new Jigsaw in Jigsaw (2017). Several films hand the series to someone else, which is why the timeline is easy to follow once you track who holds the tape recorder.

So, where should you start? In my opinion, new viewers are better served by release order, because Saw X leans on what you already know from the first two films, including the Hoffman cameo. It could be argued that returning fans enjoy the chronological order more, since it gives John a clean arc from illness to death. Either way, Spiral works as a stand alone watch that you can leave until last. If you have already finished the story, the saw movies ranked page puts the films in order of quality.