The 7 Biggest Clues About Sweetly Slasher’s Identity Twist Through Time

Notice! This post contains spoilers for Time Cut.

For almost its entire runtime, Netflix Time cut drops several subtle clues that reveal the identity of its central killer, Sweetly Slasher. Serving as yet another addition to Netflix’s catalog of original sci-fi films, Time cut it doesn’t delve too deeply into exploring complex ideas with its time travel setting. Instead, it sticks to well-known tropes of the subgenre and presents a coming-of-age drama that focuses on themes of grief, childhood trauma, and the consequences of even the smallest actions.

To highlight how past events impact the future, Time cut drops several hidden details throughout its runtime that secretly reveal its ultimate twist. Many first-time viewers will probably end up missing these details, as the film tries to fool someone through red herrings. However, viewers who rewatch the time travel film will find that it reveals its biggest twist in the opening moments itself.

7

Summer rejected Quinn’s letter in the 2003 timeline

Rejection was the turning point in Quinn’s story

One of the first clues revealing that Quinn is the Sweetly Slasher killer in Time cut appears in the film’s opening scene. As Summer heads to a party, Quinn innocently hands her a letter in which he expresses his feelings for her. To his dismay, she ignores him and goes to the party. The film later reveals that even after reading the letter, Summer rejected Quinn saying she could never love him like that.

As the story of future Quinn suggests, the rejection ended up becoming a cannon event in his timelineturning him into a resentful killer who traveled to the past and murdered Summer. After Lucy travels to the past, protects Quinn from bullies and shows that he can have friends too, Quinn’s timeline changes, leading to him never becoming the killer. As a result, the canonical event that encouraged him to murder Summer and her friends never happened.

6

Lucy finds the time machine in the barn where Summer was killed

The killer emerges from the barn in the opening segment

In Time cutIn the opening moments, the Sweetly Slasher killer suddenly emerges from the barn where the graduation party is being held. This early scene suggests that he has kept his time machine inside the barn, and it travels with him every time he jumps through time. In Lucy’s 2024 timeline, she first encounters the time machine when she enters the barn where her sister was killed. This scene establishes that Quinn created the time machine and kept it hidden in the barn.

5

Quinn’s teacher calls him a physics genius

Quinn’s passion for time travel foreshadows his future

After Lucy travels through time and visits her science teacher, he introduces her to Quinn, who he says is a physics genius. The fact that the teacher called a high school student a genius foreshadows how Quinn will eventually build a time machine and use it to murder those who wronged him. Quinn supports his professor’s claims by sharing how much he knows about time travel with Lucy, reminding her that altering the past can cause ripples in the future and alter it significantly.

As the film progresses, Quinn also helps Lucy understand the inner workings of the time machine. His extensive knowledge surrounding time travel and how it can work highlights how he will end up building a time machine in the future. However, Lucy does not suspect him of being the killer because she does not realize that the killer could come from the future.

4

Quinn is almost thrown into the river

The river incident was another event that turned him into the killer

When “future” Quinn meets Lucy, Summer and “past” Quinn in Time cutIn the final arc, he reminds Summer how she laughed at him when the seniors threw him into the river. His recollection of the event suggests that he was deeply disturbed by it, and it played a crucial role in turning him into a serial killer. However, in the new 2003 timeline, Lucy stops the elderly from throwing Quinn into the river. As a result, the new timeline’s Quinn never stops believing in the goodness of humanity and does not become the murderous Sweetly Slasher.

3

2003 Quinn always knew the whereabouts of the murdered teens

Quinn’s past helped him strategize his future murders

The 2003 timeline reveals that Quinn interacted with Summer at the party near the barn moments before she was murdered. Since he was with her in 2003, his future self, who traveled back in time to kill her, also knew exactly where her whereabouts were. Likewise, the 2003 timeline also reveals that Quinn worked at the mall where Val and Brian were murdered. This equipped his future with the knowledge of his whereabouts, allowing him to execute his plan without worrying about tracking down his victims.

2

2003 Quinn expresses his disappointment in the present

Quinn seems very happy with school life

When Quinn and Lucy try to fix the time machine, Quinn opens up about her parents’ absence and tells Lucy that she hopes her future is better. The scene highlights how, despite being a good boy, Quinn is on the verge of losing all hope. In the original 2003 timeline, he likely lost all hope after his schoolmates bullied him and Summer rejected him. Fortunately, in the new 2003 timeline, Lucy befriends him and helps him realize he’s not alone.

At an initial moment of Time cutQuinn tries to explain to Lucy how altering an event in the present can lead to disastrous consequences in the future. Your own story seems to be the perfect example of the butterfly effect. Although many early childhood traumas contributed to him resenting his schoolmates, Summer’s rejection is what drives him to invent the machine and travel back in time to kill her.

1

Lucy and Quinn discover that the killer comes from the future

They discover that he broke into the SONR lab before them

Lucy and Quinn break into the SONR Laboratory to gain access to the antimatter needed to operate the time machine. However, when they arrive at the facility, they discover that someone else has been there before them. They deduce that the killer stole one of the cylinders containing the antimatter, leading them to realize that the killer is also from the future. He hopes to kill Summer and disappear from the timeline using the time machine before law enforcement can catch him. This clue is enough to reveal that Quinn is the Sweetly Slasher killer in Time cut.