Amanda Young is a character originally introduced as a side character in James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s 2004 film Saw, and throughout the franchise becomes one of its main recurring characters. We first see her as one of the first victims chosen to be ‘tested’ by John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, and when she passes her test and survives, she becomes an apprentice to John’s work testing people. After her first test, she quickly develops a very unhealthy relationship with John, becoming obsessive in her desire to gain his approval and entirely emotionally reliant on him. John’s work as the Jigsaw Killer is motivated by several events in his own past: his wife divorcing him after she suffers a miscarriage as well as a diagnosis of terminal colon cancer and an inoperable brain tumour drive him to attempt suicide. Unsuccessful, he begins to appreciate his life in a manner which he was not before, crediting the fact that he was forced to confront his own mortality after the cancer diagnosis and suicide attempt for this change. He decides that he must grant this same opportunity to others, considering himself a saviour, and begins to design ‘tests’, placing people in life-or-death situations to see if they have the ‘survival instinct’ necessary to survive his tests and change their lives for the better. His philosophy is predicated on two key principles: first, that people who act immorally or are otherwise unappreciative of their lives deserve to be given a second chance rather than just outright punished, and second, that the way to grant this second chance is by testing them, and upon their survival, the subject will gain this appreciation and be motivated to change their flawed ways.

Not muchis known for sure about Amanda’s life before her first test. Her father was a drug addict, and neglected and abused Amanda when she was a child. He would frequently punish Amanda by locking her in a dark closet in their house for hours at a time, causing an intense fear of the dark. It is also implied that she was sexually abused by her father in childhood. As a young adult, Amanda is imprisoned for possession of heroin. However, this conviction was based on false evidence fabricated by Detective Eric Matthews. It is while serving her sentence that Amanda begins to use heroin, and by the time of her release, she has become addicted.

Amanda’s and John’s worlds first cross when Amanda begins to attend a recovery clinic for addicts run by John’s then wife, Jill Tuck. Whilst there, Amanda enters a relationship with fellow addict Cecil Adams. Despite Amanda’s attempts at recovery, she is consistently unsuccessful, eventually resulting in Jill dismissing her from the clinic and calling her a lost cause. Amanda, who very probably has borderline personality disorder, is crushed by this perceived rejection, and gives up on recovery entirely. Whilst suffering withdrawal symptoms, she convinces Cecil to steal some of the methadone stored at Jill’s clinic, as he still attends. He is reluctant, but she persuades him to rob the clinic as she remains hidden outside. The robbery attempt ends with the currently pregnant Jill sustaining physical trauma to the stomach, causing her to miscarry her and John’s child Gideon. This ends up being the first catalyst in John’s transformation into the Jigsaw Killer. John’s very first test subject is Cecil himself, reasoning that Cecil’s drug use and thievery constitute a lack of appreciation for his life, though it’s clear that the real motivation behind John’s choice is a selfish desire to punish the man who caused the death of his child. John, however, does not see this discrepancy between his principles and actions as he has entirely convinced himself that he is unbiased in his selection of test subjects. It is only his insistence to himself that he is against outright murder, likely as a way to help convince himself that what he is doing is a morally good thing, that forces him to allow some possibility of escape for Cecil. In fact, Cecil survives his initial test, but immediately afterwards dies in another trap. John can rest easy knowing that Cecil only ended up in that second trap because he tried to attack John, so his death was technically brought upon by himself, allowing John to absolve himself of any guilt he would feel had he just killed Cecil.

Eventually, John chooses Amanda as a test subject. She is informed that she is being tested due to her addiction to heroin, but John yet again has a selfish reason for choosing her as a subject: he wants to prove to his now ex-wife Jill that Amanda could be fixed and was not a lost cause, it was in fact a failure on Jill’s part, and that John’s own methods would be successful. In Amanda’s first test, she is told she has one minute to find a key to a device attached to her head, or the device will rip open her face, killing her. However, the key is in the stomach of a living but paralysed man in the room with her, and she must kill him in order to obtain the key. She passes her test, and becomes the first person publicly known to survive one of the Jigsaw Killer’s traps. After being tested, Amanda stops using heroin, and when recounting her story to the police, insists that the Jigsaw Killer helped her, and is grateful to him for giving her a second chance.

Something interesting to note about the man from Amanda’s test is that he is referred to as her cellmate. Either, they are cellmates because they are currently in a room together, or they are cellmates in the literal sense, sharing a room during Amanda’s prison sentence. Since most prisons are separated by sex, this line could be taken to imply that Amanda is transgender and hence served her sentence in a male prison. If this is true, one is forced to conclude that Amanda very likely suffered sexual assault while imprisoned, with how common the practice of V-coding is. If this happened to Amanda, it is likely that she was assaulted by her cellmate, the very man she has been instructed to kill. Perhaps this is part of why Amanda is so quick to kill the cellmate, especially given that she has a history of sexual abuse at the hands of her father, allowing her to blur the two men together and attempt to find some catharsis in repeatedly stabbing her cellmate. Admittedly, I find it very unlikely that Wan and Whannell actually intended the cellmate comment to imply Amanda being transgender, especially when no other aspect of her narrative references this. Nevertheless, it allows for a very interesting reading of Amanda’s character that could even help explain some of her later actions, especially considering some metatextual elements of the franchise. For one, in the short film made by Wan and Whannell to help pitch their idea, Amanda’s character is replaced by a male character named David played by Whannell. I’m sure this was just because of budget constraints, but it is interesting to consider the idea of gender transition here, perhaps with David as a pre-transition Amanda. As well as this, body horror fundamentally works by showcasing how fragile the human body is, and often relies on characters going through unwanted physical transformations, causing them mental distress in order to effectively horrify its audience. It is therefore incredibly easy to consider body horror as a metaphor for gender dysphoria, especially if you understand the transformation to be going through the wrong puberty. Whilst the Saw franchise is not body horror, there are certainly aspects of it what with how brutally the characters’ bodies are treated. It follows, then, that if one were primed to consider these films through a trans lens, the experience of being in a trap, and, crucially, surviving the test, could be a metaphor for realising you are transgender, and transitioning. After all, one of John’s goals for his subjects is to start a change in character via their test, a transition of character rather than gender.

Soon after this first test, Amanda meets John, and he convinces her to become one of his apprentices. We don’t see this conversation on screen, but it’s clear that this is the beginning of John constantly manipulating Amanda and taking advantage of her unstable emotional state. He can convince her by relating the two of them, attempting to put them in the same boat: both of their lives changed for the better after having a traumatising near-death experience that caused them to confront their mortality, the fact that John was the one to traumatise Amanda in this way should be glossed over when faced with the positive impact being tested has had on her life. To help drive his point home, John can remind Amanda that Jill gave up on her, refusing to give her a second chance, when in contrast John was the one to give her that second chance, which is what she needed and deserved, as proven by the fact that she has stopped using heroin. By positioning himself as Amanda’s saviour as opposed to her torturer, John ensures that Amanda forms a trauma bond with him, beginning her habit of orienting her emotional state around his approval of her. At this point, Amanda – again, heavily implied to have BPD – has recently gone through a traumatic event and has recently quit heroin without addressing her underlying addictive tendencies, so is in her most emotionally vulnerable state, which John knows and hence takes advantage of.

One of the first things John has Amanda do as an apprentice is set up Doctor Lawrence Gordon’s and Adam Faulkner Stanheight’s test. While preparing to kidnap Adam, they cross paths in Adam’s apartment building, and the two of them have a short conversation. This is significant to Amanda, because she now has a personal relationship – no matter how shallow – with Adam, and so she can no longer view him as just a test subject and is forced to contend with the fact that he is a real person, a real victim of John’s, and by extension hers. In Adam and Lawrence’s test, John intended Adam to have a key to the chain around one of his legs, allowing him to move freely around the room while Lawrence was help captive by his own chain. But when Amanda sets up the game, she tosses the key to Adam’s chain in such a way that it’s almost guaranteed that Adam will lose the key without even realising it, which she is sure to know. This is the first indication we have that Amanda is beginning to become disillusioned with John’s philosophy, as she effectively removes any possibility of Adam’s escape with her placement of his key. She is clearly in emotional distress as she sets up this test, crying while letting John comfort her. This happens a lot between them: Amanda has a breakdown, often because of something John is making her do, and she seeks comfort in John, his presence and his words calming her. John’s words here are indicative that he is using every opportunity he has to manipulate Amanda, keeping her reliant on him and ensuring he has her entirely under his thumb.

Adam ends up passing his test, but he is unable to escape from his chains because the key was in fact lost. John leaves him in that room alone in the dark, left to slowly die of whichever of thirst or a bleeding gunshot wound gets to him first. After a couple of days, Amanda sneaks into the room Adam is in and suffocates him with a plastic bag, all while crying and whispering comfort to him, and probably to herself. This action is a big insight into Amanda’s character: she’s been thinking about Adam enough that she finds that she has to do something. She can’t deal with the fact that he has been left to die – that John has left him to die – even though he passed his test and so should be given his second chance at life. She remembers that it’s arguably her own fault that Adam is dying: after all, she was the one to carelessly toss the key. She’s been thinking back to that minute-long conversation between them and the fact that he is a real person who is really suffering in that dark room alone. By killing Adam, Amanda hopes to bring herself some peace. It’s an act of mercy, to put an end to Adam’s suffering by finally killing him, but it’s also an act of mercy for Amanda’s own sake: she needs to find some closure with Adam so she can stop feeling guilty over his suffering. It’s likely, also, that she relates to him, to an extent where she begins to blur the lines between them. They are similar ages, they were chosen by John to be tested for similar reasons of wasting their lives and engaging in substance abuse, they both passed their tests, perhaps Amanda even found Adam’s personality to be similar to hers based on their brief conversation – though most of this would be imagined by Amanda after the fact as she keeps thinking about him. The difference between them, though, is that Amanda was allowed to keep on living, when Adam has just been abandoned. The fact that he has been left in the dark, too, will affect Amanda as she starts projecting her own fears of the dark from her childhood onto Adam.

Here is a time where viewing Amanda as transgender adds to the narrative: maybe Amanda sees some of her pre-transition self in Adam. Adam was tested specifically because he wasn’t properly living his life, instead becoming almost a passive observer, watching his life happen from the sidelines as a voyeur. This is a common occurrence with transgender people who have not realised this fact about themselves yet: the reluctance to participate in their life stemming from a feeling of general disconnect, with an as-of-yet unidentifiable cause. So maybe Amanda felt like this before transitioning, and seeing Adam go through life in the same way causes her to even further project herself onto him, distressing her even further. Returning to metatextual considerations of this reading of Amanda, as well as playing David in the short film, Whannell also played Adam in Saw. This introduces a connection between Adam and David due to them being played by the same person, and there is also the obvious connection between David and Amanda, as David was a replacement for Amanda in the short film. Therefore, Adam and Amanda are metatextually connected, in a way that is particularly notable if one takes the metaphorical view that pre-transition Amanda is the same person that Adam is.

It is important to note that Amanda kills Adam behind John’s back. She knows that John would not approve of her going in after a test and doing anything, but she cannot bring herself to do nothing. She craves John’s approval more than anything, so she is forced to sneak around him so that he won’t find out and reject her.

Adam isn’t the only other subject of John’s that Amanda finds herself relating to in this obsessive way. Gabriela is another such victim, who’s test is part of a larger game with other test subjects in the room with her, notably including a woman named Cecilia Pedersen. Gabriela’s test involves being forced to break her wrist and ankle to get out of reach of an extremely strong radiation heat lamp. Gabriela succeeds in this and collapses to the floor, and Amanda attempts to call a hospital so that Gabriela’s injuries can be treated properly, as she has passed her test. However, she is stopped from doing this by Cecilia, who then stamps her foot on Gabriela’s neck, breaking it and killing her. This causes Amanda to break down, because she sees herself in Gabriela. Gabriela was, like Amanda, addicted to drugs and engaged in questionable activities to fund the habit; Gabriela, like Amanda, passed her test and so deserves that second chance that is so central to how Amanda views John’s methodology. Gabriela was so close to getting help, to getting away, before Cecilia, who hasn’t even been tested yet and therefore has not proved herself worthy of a second chance, murders her in cold blood, something not even John or Amanda do.

At some point while Amanda is an apprentice, she becomes entirely disillusioned with John’s methodology. She stops believing that the subjects deserve second chances, because even when they are given them they do not change. Because of this change of her views, she starts to design rigged traps that are unbeatable, effectively just forcing people to torture themselves with no way of escape, ensuring their deaths. The point at which she begins to do this isn’t explicitly stated, but it seems likely it is sometime soon after watching Cecilia kill Gabriela.

A few months after Gabriela is killed, John involves Amanda in his test for Detective Eric Matthews – the same man who fabricated evidence for Amanda’s case. John has chosen Eric to be his next test subject for several reasons: he has wrongly incriminated several other people through false evidence, he frequently resorts to police brutality, and he is neglectful of his teenage son after a divorce. Amanda, along with six other people falsely convicted by Eric and Eric’s son Daniel Matthews, are trapped in a house, and are instructed to find antidotes for a nerve gas they are all breathing in. To the others in the trap, Amanda is any other victim, but secretly she is an apprentice and John has tasked her with protecting Daniel. Amanda tells the others in the house that she has previously been tested, but has been chosen again because, despite quitting heroin, has began to self-harm, hence indicating to Jigsaw that she still does not appreciate her life, and so needs to be tested again.

While Amanda is shown to self-harm, its unclear whether she was telling the truth about starting only after her first test. All we do know is that she uses it as a way of calming herself, treating it as a physical outlet for her emotional frustrations. Very probably, too, she self-harms as a way of punishing herself. Amanda goes behind John’s back in several moments in the series, because she is so afraid of him rejecting her and punishing her. However, without this punishment, she feels lost, and so likely uses self-harm as a way of getting this closure of punishment she would otherwise get from John himself. Still, we don’t know when Amanda started to do this, and depending on when she did, the behaviour will function in slightly different ways as Amanda uses it for different purposes. Maybe she started before even her first trap, as a way to cope with her previous trauma. In this world, self-harm functions as a way of externalising her internal distress, and possibly even as a way of manifesting her disgust with herself and her body, a disgust common both in transgender people and victims of sexual abuse. Maybe she started when she first stopped using heroin, replacing one addiction for another. In this world, self-harm functions primarily as an addiction, replacing heroin in Amanda’s brain as the behaviour she is dependent on as she has not addressed her underlying addictive tendencies. Maybe she only started when she started to go behind John’s back and start creating rigged traps. In this world, self-harm is incredibly clearly a way of punishing herself, the way she imagines John would punish her. Maybe she only started when she was forced to go into hiding. In this world, self-harm functions as a way to express her emotions and relieve the emotional pressure and stress of hiding, in a way in which she doesn’t hurt those around her – specifically John.

In order to obtain the antidotes, the test subjects are made to undergo various trials. Xavier Chavez, another man in the house, is instructed to search for his antidote in a large pit of used heroin needles. This is his task because he is a drug dealer, yet not a user himself: John takes issue with the fact that he knowingly takes advantage of others, using their addictions for his own monetary gain, while not engaging in the same behaviours himself. However, Xavier is the most physically strong of the group, and decides to throw someone else into the pit to find the antidote for him. He chooses Amanda, and none of the other people in the room try to stop him. This is cruel on Xavier’s part, but it’s also cruel on John’s. At this point, he has other apprentices, one of whom, Mark Hoffman, works for the police and hence is much stronger than Amanda. Would he not be the much more sensible choice if John’s goal was to protect Daniel? Surely John would not be under the impression that everyone would ‘play fair’, and yet still he chose Amanda to be in the trap. Additionally, she has already been traumatised by being tested before, and Hoffman has not been tested. It seems to be a way for John to further ensnare Amanda: afterwards, he can let her come crying to him about being thrown into a pit of heroin needles – an additional layer of cruelty coming from the fact that she has just recently overcome her heroin addiction – and comfort her, despite it is yet again his fault that she is in a traumatising situation. In the pit, Amanda successfully finds the needle, but just missing the time limit set by the game, so Xavier is unable to get his antidote, and rendering Amanda’s efforts futile.

Another consequence of Eric’s test is that John’s identity as the Jigsaw killer becomes public, forcing him as well as Amanda into hiding. Because of this, Amanda loses all contact with the outside world, further isolating her such that the only contact she has with other people are with John and his other apprentices. This isolation also ensures that Amanda is now even more heavily reliant on John. Before, her reliance was more emotional, her seeking out his approval and love, but now there is an added layer that her physical wellbeing is dependent on John as well. She needs him, she cannot survive without him, for safety, for shelter, for food, as well as the previous emotional needs she was putting on him – love, approval, attention, care, and tying her every emotion to his. It is probably during this time when tensions between Amanda and Hoffman begin to rise. Hoffman is unique among John’s apprentices in that he has not been tested in one of John’s traps yet. He holds this over Amanda, taunting her that clearly, he has always held the appreciation for life that Amanda lacked – and clearly still lacks. Amanda extrapolates that because Hoffman never had to be tested, John looks with more favour on Hoffman than he does on Amanda, making her intensely jealous of Hoffman.

This is another fundamental part of Amanda’s relationship with John: this extreme jealousy, which in Amanda is expressed emotionally as hatred and physically as violent anger, towards other objects of his attention. To her, John paying any amount of attention to another person is stealing away attention and affection he could be directing at her. But more than this, Amanda sees John’s attention falling on other people as a deliberate choice on his part, as a rejection of Amanda.