YMMV / Slasher

Season One: The Executioner

• Alternate Character Interpretation Does Vaughn relent from killing himself, Ariel, and Jake in a Murder-Suicide due to being moved by their pleas for mercy or just out of cowardice about ending his own life?
• Ass Pull: Some fans feel Cam being the Executioner is a nonsensical twist for gratuitous shock value, citing how his Accidental Murder of his mother as a child is brought up far too late in the series, other characters make more sense as the killer, and Alan and June spent enough time around Cam that they would have seen warning signs of his psyche and behavior.
• Base-Breaking Character: Tom Winston. Some fans enjoy him due to coming off as a reasonable person, his relationship with Sarah, having something of a redemption arc and the fact his backstory is genuinely saddening. For others he's a terrible Hannibal Lector rip-off who is far more annoying than engaging.
• Catharsis Factor: Let's face it: You were cheering when Vaughn was burned alive after everything he did to the cast and especially to Ariel Peterson.
  • Almost every victim of the Executioner could qualify, given most of them are devoid of redeeming or even sympathetic qualities.
• Ensemble Dark Horse
  • Robin, due to how Adorkable he is, and you can't help but feel sorry after losing Justin in the way that he did. Fans were worried about him being stabbed in the final episode but relieved when he was shown alive.
  • Brenda, for her no-nonsense attitude when helping Sarah and Dying Moment of Awesome when faced by the Executioner. Wendy Crewson's performance didn't go unnoticed, as so far, she's the only member of the cast to have been awarded for her role.
• First Installment Wins: This is the only season where Too Bleak, Stopped Caring didn't take a hold.
• Franchise Original Sin: Future seasons of the show would really up the World of Jerkass factor to the point where no one cares what happens to these people. This season had many jerkasses among the cast, but this was balanced by having several of them being sympathetic alongside the nonjerkass cast, meaning the viewers genuinely could feel invested in the cast. Future seasons would lose the balance in favor of the jerkass part, and also start killing nice characters very violently, making it harder to care.
• Iron Woobie
  • Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Given how she's treated by half of the town with such disdain, being told her mother was a "whore", and her growing distance with Dylan, it's hard not to hug her.
  • Robin, considering everything he suffers through.
  • Ariel Peterson. It's a miracle she didn't lose her sanity after being kept in hiding by Vaughn for five years.
• Jerkass Woobie: Brenda is a bitter, envious woman who tries to strain Sarah's marriage and has committed a terrible crime resulting in her best friend being hospitalized for life but life has been harsh to her, starting with her own daughter (whom she's implied to have raised alone) being murdered by Tom Winston. The fact that she's felt sincere guilt for her crime for years also plays a factor.
• Moral Event Horizon: Discussed; as explained by the Executioner during their interview with Allison, they aren't just punishing people for committing sins- everyone sins at least once in their life, so that'd require killing everyone. The people they targets are those whose sins have specifically gone far enough to be horrible, unforgivable crimes.
• Narm Charm: The season is an over-the-top Canadian version of Se7en, yet that's what makes it endearing.
• The Woobie: Heather Peterson, considering what happened to her husband and daughter.

Season Two: Guilty Party

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Given what Talvinder reveals during her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the counselors that reveal that they're just as bad as, if not worse than, they think Talvinder herself is, it leaves a question about Talvinder's character. Is she really a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing like everyone claims she is, or did she act the way she did towards them primarily because she knew just how rotten most of them were.
• Jerkass Woobie: Everybody, except for Benny and Noah. Special mention goes to Judith, who is killing to avenge her son, Owen, who was framed for the murder of Talvinder and hanged himself.
  • Talvinder gets this treatment coming off more sympathetic than any of the other characters. At worst she was an Alpha Bitch who was a bit self-centered. She did not deserve to die like that.
• Moral Event Horizon: Seriously, has any character not even come close to crossing it at some point in this season?
  • Killing Talvinder was understandable to a degree since she knew that the other counselors have done far worse than her, even if they were filthier than her deep down. But framing an innocent man — and being responsible for his suicide — whose only real crime was being overly obsessed with Talvinder was what drove Judith over the edge in the first place.
    • However, one subversion goes to Peter, who not only acknowledges what they did was wrong, but he was the one who confessed to their parents about what the counselors had done, even admitting that they deserve to be punished.
  • Noah tried to rape Talvinder for criticizing him. In retrospect, that makes his brutal rape by Glenn/Benny almost karmic.
  • The killer, Judith, went overboard by killing innocent people who weren't exactly guilty of any particular crime, or at the very least crimes that they were trying to atone for.
  • It's difficult to say when exactly Glenn/Benny crossed it. He impulsively killed his lover from prison and assumed his identity, but abducting and raping Noah was pretty high up there in nastiness, as well, although it is somewhat mitigated if you see the rape as karma for Noah's Attempted Rape of Talvinder, which even the other counselors were disgusted by.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This is a bleak season. Despite everybody in both groups having a Dark and Troubled Past, and even if they are trying to atone for it, or if the victim was deserving, there are no innocents. Makes it tough to really care about anyone, especially given that, unlike season 1, this one ends with the killer as a Karma Houdini and fully intending to kill the last survivor later.

Season Three: Solstice

• Accidental Aesop: Dan's backstory gives off one that just because a person is not a minority, doesn't mean they're not in need of help. Dan's reason to become a white nationalist was that nobody was trying to help him and his daughter at a time where his wife has died and he was living in poverty, and he searched for "who helps white people" after Angel asked him for donations to Saadia's family. Truth in Television, this is how White Nationalists often prey and gather people, finding someone in need of help and channeling their anger towards minorities.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: While Cassidy is unquestionably a cruel bully toward Saadia, some fans question whether she really shares her father’s newfound racist beliefs (especially given her Antagonistic Offspring interactions with him), or is lashing out at Saadia out of Misplaced Retribution about how her father neglects her to focus on harassing Saadia and her family.
• Anvilicious: This season has a pretty no pulled punches policy when it comes to bashing at social media culture and how people glorify deaths in order to bring up their own status, sometimes disguising it as sympathy, and to the detriment of families involved. However, the ones to do that are very cartoonishly evil and the message is very in your face. Violet's entire character is nothing but this.
• Catharsis Factor: This season's characters make up for some of the worst and most unlikable ones in the series, which makes it pleasing when a few of them die. Most notably:
  • Cassidy is an Alpha Bitch who actively attacks Saadia, accusing her of terrorism when she was actually a victim of one, and has her face burned off.
  • Xander is an annoying asshole hipster who gets killed by essentially having the crap beaten out of him with the tools for his trade before having his blood turned into coffee.
  • Charlie, the racist and annoying classmate of the main characters that after having made threats to rape and kill some girls gets a foot long blade shoved down his throat.
  • Violet, world-class Attention Whore who exploits other people's trauma for internet followers, is forced to read about how shameless she is on webcam before getting stabbed for all the internet to see.
  • Dan, the white supremacist asshole gets the crap punched out of him by Angel, the man he bothered the most.
• Fridge Brilliance: The season is called "Solstice", which is also the day it takes place, and the killer is dubbed "The Druid". This makes sense because the solstice is a day in which ancient druids would have pagan rituals back then.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Kaili Greenberg is a walking Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. She is a complete Mama Bear to her students, especially the ones who have suffered greatly. She punishes bullies without question and never hesitates to try to help her students, especially the case with Saadia and Jen who she knows have suffered greatly. For Saadia, she gives her a talk about how it's girls like her who will change the world while people like Cassidy, who violently attacked her in the hallway and called her a terrorist, will wither away forgotten. For Jen, she encourages her to return to class to finish her final right after a bully taunted her about her mother's suicide by fire. It makes it all the sadder to see her suffer such a death that most viewers agree she didn't deserve, let alone one so violent and cruel, and at the hands of the very student she was trying to help.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Angel, wanting to start a relationship with Joe, who focuses too much on Violet who obviously doesn't care for him, not to mention the trauma of being hated for being gay.
  • Dan is a shitty white supremacist who nobody loves...but it's made clear he became the way he was after the death of his wife and struggling to raise Cassidy to the point where she acts out through extreme promiscuity and then murdered by the Druid. It's pretty much shown that for all his white supremacist talk, Dan is a bitter, bitter man. He seems to somewhat change for the better after bonding with Angel, giving him some dignified last words after he dies and willingly helps Saadia when she struggles to get up when leaving the building.
  • Amy saw her parents die in a car accident, then killed Kit by accident after hitting him with her car while he fled from the Druid (with him dying in her arms as -unlike the other neighbors-she tried to save him). She is also in an unfulfilling relationship due to probably being asexual and nearly commits suicide on one scene. If not for her texting and driving and her refusal to help Justine during a moment of severe need (during which Amy does so in a Jerkass Has a Point moment) she would probably just be The Woobie.
  • Jen and Conner, while being serial killers, can come off as sympathetic for how much they suffered due to Justine's post leading to them being harassed by the building residents, causing Justine to kill herself and then be harassed more thanks to Violet, all while the police don't do anything due to lack of evidence.
• Love to Hate: Violet is essentially a vulture looking for disgraces to feed on, and Paula Brancati really manages to convey her pettiness.
• Moral Event Horizon: While there is little question the murders committed by the Druid were horrible acts, the fact a lot of them were Asshole Victims, combined with Jen and Connor's genuinely sad motivation, could almost make you sympathize. However, you know Jen has crossed the line when she murders Amber, her own surrogate mother, in cold blood while screaming about how it was her fault.
  • The Druid really crosses this when they murder the very sweet and completely innocent Kaili, who was nothing but a kind soul to almost everyone she spoke with except for Kit, who insulted her, and the bullies at school. Fake or not, she made every attempt to help students, and she truly didn't deserve to be vivisected alive.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Even by the show's already dark standards, this season is particularly heavy on brutal and violent deaths, and the vast majority of characters range from unlikable to downright psychopaths, which makes it hard to care when the deaths happen, which are already pretty hard to watch. Though admittedly it's not quite as bleak as season 2, since this time around the killer does get defeated, slightly more characters survive, and the most unlikable among the survivors goes through genuine Character Development.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: While Kit cheated on his various partners, he seemed to be entirely upfront about the fact that being in a relationship with them was not going to stop him from dating other people and that he was polyamorous. While he was a jerkass and his conduct with partners and neighbors sucked, his partners being mad about something he made clear was going to happen seems uncalled for.
  • Kaili really got the short end of the stick. Sure, she may not be as wholesome as she comes on to be, but the loneliness she suffers from will warp people at points; and fake or not, she made some attempts at trying to get the students to talk to her; and they did trust in her, except for the ones who called her fake.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Violet is meant to be shown to have Hidden Depths and legitimately love Joe, regardless of the fact he cheated on her, but she is such a thoroughly unlikable character, that the few moments she shows humanity and sympathetic traits fall flat on the ground.

Season Four: Flesh & Blood

• Alternative Character Interpretation
  • While there's no doubt that Florence is a horrible person, does she feel some degree of affection for her family? She appears to be genuinely distraught by her father's and later, brother's death, yet she selfishly lets O'Keeffe die to save her own skin. Is she a sociopath to the core or is she just following her father's "values" to the letter and spirit, believing it to be the best way to obtain and lead the family business?
  • The final scene offers one about Liv. Is she challenging her Galloway heritage, deciding to behave differently? Or is she accepting the possibility of becoming as cruel and sociopathic as they were? Is her expression one of defiance or a Psychotic Smirk, suggesting that Spencer's plan has managed to warp her? Given the absence of Christy, Birgit and Trinh in her hallucination, could she be picturing herself in an Ironic Hell where she's trapped with the rest of the Galloway bloodline?
• Catharsis Factor: Seeing Florence finally get what's coming to her, especially after the previous episode driving home just how unrepentantly horrible she is, feels like justice.
• Complete Monster: "The Gentleman", the woman using the name Persephone Trinh, was an "end-of-life specialist" who was an outright murderer, bringing her to the attention of the dying Spencer Galloway. Hired to give Spencer a peaceful death and weed out the "weak" of the Galloway family, Trinh butchers a sailor to help fake her own death and betrays Spencer by injecting acid into his heart. Trinh proceeds to stalk and murder everyone she can, making the deaths as horrifically violent as possible, having young Jayden's limbs torn off; pouring molten metal down the throat of his mother Grace; and attempting to simply butcher the others once the competitions seem at their end.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: While not textbook sociopaths, the Galloways share several pathological traits. They show a pervasive Lack of Empathy (despite each one having some degree of affection towards another member of the family), are manipulative, self-absorbed, and volatile.
• Ending Fatigue: As usual, the killer's identity is revealed at the end of the penultimate episode, and the season finale shows the unmasked Gentleman in all their hamtastic glory and then she's killed in the first minutes, unlike the other killers who stay alive until the very last minutes. The rest of the episodes is dragged by the three remaining survivors suddenly grasping Idiot Ball and Villain Ball at turns, which can be really frustrating as you'd think that they would know better after escaping so many deadly traps.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: With a cast of such despicable people backstabbing each other for money, Christy Martin is one of the only truly likeable characters, as she genuinely loves her family and her husband, and was willing to endure the Big, Screwed-Up Family because she loved him. She's also one of the only voices of reason within the family.
  • While she doesn't get much to do in the first three episodes, Dr. Trinh definitely earns this status after it's revealed she's the Gentleman, with Jeananne Goossen turning in a delightful Large Ham performance after the big reveal. The fact that her victims are mostly reprehensible pieces of shit doesn't hurt either.
• Evil Is Cool: The Gentleman has a very classy costume and provides elaborated deaths to several truly despicable individuals. The revelation of Dr. Trinh being behind the mask adds a level of awesome to the mix.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Liv being the Final Girl without subversions (apart from the ambiguous epilogue) is seen by some as predictable, especially since so far, each season has had a final girl among the survivors.
• Love to Hate: Sabrina Grdevich really hams it up as the shrill, narcissistic Florence, possibly outclassing Violet from Solstice in this field.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Florence keeps finding new ways to cross it as the show goes on. Take your pick on murdering Dr. Trinh for insulting her, allowing her child to be killed by nerve gas, or exploiting her son's kidnapping for money.
  • Spencer crossed this from beyond the grave when he rigged the bunker to be flooded with nerve gas after two people entered it while leaving only one gas mask, knowing full well that this would kill either his wife, his children, or his grandchildren. And it turns out that he was even worse than believed, as he was the one who hired the Gentleman to hunt and kill the family members to "weed out the weak".
  • Grace crossed it years before the show's current day. She was the nurse who was caring for the cancer-stricken Annette Galloway. During a fever-induced speech and believing she wasn't going to survive, Annette made Grace promise her that she would help keep the family together and whole in her absence, which Grace agreed to... and then Grace murdered Annette when she was recovering, directly responsible for setting the Galloways on their dark path.
  • The Gentleman mainly takes out the members of a horrible family, who have done nothing but backstab each other and are awful people in general. However, the gruesome and unnecessarily prolonged murder of Merle, who was only guilty of being in a relation with Grace can qualify as this. Otherwise, given that they could easily gather information about the family, doing nothing to stop Aphra before it's too late makes them an Accomplice by Inaction in Christy's death, which cannot be justified by any crime on the victim's part.
• Special Effects Failure: The lack of texture on Vincent's decapitated head makes it very obvious that it's just part of a mannequin.
• Tainted by the Preview: The SDCC 2021 trailer has come under a large amount of scrutiny for coming off as cheap or amateurish compared to the previous seasons. Though, this is likely due to the move to the more niche streaming service Shudder instead of Netflix. This was averted come release however, as many saw the season was up to par as the previous ones, save for a few dicey effects.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Despite the numerous flashbacks, Spencer is hardly if ever seen interacting with Christy. While it would have been perfectly in character for him to consider her unworthy of his time, it would have been interesting to see him faced with someone who not only is his moral opposite but also hasn't been under his thumb her whole life.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Let's just say that nearly every single character is somehow more dickish than the majority of last season's cast. The standout example has to be Florence Galloway, who at this point is just begging to be killed off in a brutal way. It doesn't help that the few decent people in the family (Annette, O'Keeffe, and Christy) all die horribly after being betrayed by someone they trusted. By the end of it, Liv herself seems to come to the conclusion that the entire Galloway bloodline is poisoned beyond repair, and murders Theodore, the only one left besides her, to put a permanent end to the family. Even then, it's implied that Spencer's plan has taken a toll on her sanity and, since she's a Galloway by blood, she could possibly become another ruthless sociopath in the future.
• Unexpected Character: Amber, Justine's wife from season 3, makes an appearance to drop off Aphra with Seamus and Christy, and briefly alludes to Jen and Connor, thereby connecting the previous seasons.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Aphra's mental instability makes her somewhat pitiable even after the reveal that she's actually an adult posing as an underage. However, her creepy selfies with the corpses and gruesome aggression of Christy makes it difficult to feel sorry when the Gentlemen lures her to the woods and murders her.
• The Woobie:
  • Christy really got the short end of the stick. She was nothing but a true Nice Girl who was trying to be a good parent to her daughter and was determined to work on her relationship with her husband. She ends up losing her husband in a violent way, learns that her daughter is actually an adult who was manipulating her, and then learns that her husband was gay and she was The Beard. Finally, her "daughter" bites off chunks of her face and some of her fingers, leaving Christy a bloodied mess who begs for a Mercy Kill, which Grace provides. What did this woman do to deserve all of this?
  • Annette Galloway was equally unlucky in life. She was a genuinely good woman who was a good parent to her kids, and held her family and the business together. She's horribly betrayed by her own Gold Digger nurse, Grace, who kills her with an overdose of medication... right after she's showing signs of being able to beat her cancer.
  • O'Keeffe is the White Sheep in the Galloway bloodline, which makes their family life rather dreary, especially under Florence's parenthood. They seem to hold on rather well at first until Florence lets them die slowly and painfully by gas poisoning to save her own skin, and they spend their last, agonizing moments aware of such betrayal.

Season Five: Ripper

• Catharsis Factor:
  • A retroactive case with Alistair Simcoe, who is killed in the first scene. As his past is reconstructed through investigation and flashbacks, he proves to have been an unrepentant sadist and possibly Jack the Ripper himself. Him being carved up by the Widow feels more and more deserved as the season goes on.
  • Viviana's ultimate fate. Her sister Venetia is sawed in half for real thanks to Verdi, who additionally plants evidence on Viviana to get her arrested for the death. While she may not have done the crime she was arrested for, she's shown herself repeatedly to be an unrepentant sadist, so it's still immensely satisfying to see Viviana be stripped down, have water poured all over her to "clean" her, and finally ending with her hair being messily chopped off, before being left to rot in prison.
  • And of course, the Grand Finale of the Widow's victims, Basil Garvey. After being defeated by the Widow, every single person he has hurt over the course of the season reveals themself as being now in on the Widow's plan before they tear his face apart together. Verdi, whom he spent the entire season harassing despite her wishes, puts a cap on all of the brutality by returning the wedding ring he gave her, to his corpse.
• Evil Is Cool: The Widow has quite a distinctive memorable outfit and is very easy to root for since all their victims are some despicable monsters. This is in addition to the actual badassery they display when they win a fight against a detective trying to catch them. The reveal of her identity being Regina Simcoe who is actually Margaret Mehar's daughter makes her so much cooler because of how seamlessly she sashayed her way into the town's elite without any of them knowing, and set everything in motion to get the revenge she wished for.
• Iron Woobie: Regina Simcoe is clearly harboring some inner demons, especially given how awful Alistair was. In spite of that she commits to helping Kenneth with the investigation. Then it's revealed that her mother was murdered when she was very young and she was then kicked out onto the street. This caused her to take on the identity of The Widow for revenge on everyone involved.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Horatio is a pimp with a bad temper that often draws troubles, but his despair at Daisy's death, for which he feels indirectly responsible, is genuine, to the point he willingly lets the Widow kill him.
  • Salomé for all their flaws, is shown to have received very little kindness prior to meeting Terrence. This is not even to mention the scars Alistair gave them.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The Widow is a violent killer, but the victims are such assholes that it's easier to side with the Widow than with them. Many of the characters' abusive natures make them so easy to hate that they make it easy to cheer for the Widow instead.
• Magnificent Bitch: Regina Simcoe, aka "the Widow", is the killer stalking the streets. The daughter of Margaret Mehar, after Margaret was murdered by Basil Garvey and Regina's husband Alistair, Regina trained for years to avenge her. Searching for the truth, Regina married Alistair and eventually coaxed the entire explanation from him. Hunting down her targets one by one, Regina kills everyone involved in her mother's murder while deflecting all suspicion as a grieving widow by day. Regina even converts her lover, Detective Kenneth Rijkers, to her cause and lures Basil to his death, knowing without her, there will be no justice for all of Basil's crimes.
• The Woobie:
  • Verdi Botticelli. She's such a sweet girl who is nothing but kind to all the people around her, but she is heavily abused by her older sisters who berate her for everything, including trying to "steal" Basil Garvey from Viviana despite it being more his fault than hers. The poor girl goes through so much in the first few episodes at the hands of the cruel people around her that it makes you want her to be the victorious Final Girl who gets the happy ending she deserves. She eventually does, but in a very dark way far beyond what the audience expected.
  • Gladys. Being a maid in Basil's house means that not only she lives under his thumb, but she also has to witness him abusing other people without any chance to help them. If that wasn't enough, Basil is also actively violent towards her for any kind of blunder on her part, something that she had come to cover up as a result of her "clumsiness". Like with Verdi, she manages to get out of that situation, although in a very dark and bloody way.

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