Clear Rivers was born on September 5th, 1982. During her delivery, her real mother passed
away due to childbirth complications, so she mostly grew up with her father. He would take her on trips to his waterfront
cabin, teaching her to fish and do other outdoor activities. Her father did remarry at some point, and
Clear came to love her step-mother. When she was 6 or 7, she would worry and worry
about her parents dying, so much so that it would keep her lying awake at night. In 1992, when Clear was just 10 years old,
her worst fears came true, when her Dad stepped into a 7/11, and an armed robber told him
“don’t turn around.” For whatever reason, he did turn around, and
that would be the last thing he ever did. To learn what happened to Clear in between
Final Destinations 1 and 2, and the details added to her backstory in the novelization,
stick around to the end of this video. Welcome to Horror History. My name is CZsWorld, and I haven’t gotten
a haircut in about a year and half. Clear Rivers was the first returning character
in the Final Destination franchise and she’s also one of the most unique, exhibiting an
ability that no other character seems to possess. Before we get started, I accidentally got
a second copy of Final Destination on Blu-Ray, so I’m giving it away. To enter to win, you just have to be following
me on Instant Grandmother and Like THIS post. Full rules are in the description. After losing her father, Clear’s life went
to sh**. Her step-mother remarried to some asshole
that she never liked when Clear’s real dad was alive, and the new husband, who is technically
not Clear’s stepfather, didn’t want kids, so her stepmother, who technically is still
her stepmother and guardian, began to neglect her. Naturally, this causes Clear to become goth,
just as any kid with a troubled home life does in a movie. But Clear would take it one step further. In 1998, she turned 16 years old, emancipated,
and began living alone in her father’s old house. She became an experimental artist and welder,
expressing herself through strange experimental art. She also enjoyed watching crime drama shows. It’s not clear… no pun intended… if
she made any friends in high school, but it would appear that she doesn’t have any friends
in her senior year French class. She is, however, the most prolific French
speaker in her class. “Les enfants. Ecoutez. Excusez-moi. Ecoutez. Qu'est ce que c'est I'annonce?” “The airport does not endorse solicitors.” This is the class’s big end of year field
trip to Paris, France. The departure date is May 13th, 1999. Clear mostly has her nose in a book the entire
time, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. She gets coffee and a snack before boarding,
and at the gate another book falls out of her bag, and a classmate named Alex Browning
helps her pick it up. When she takes it, it’s open to a page about
the Princess of Wales dying in a car crash in 1997, her first of many ominous signs. She listens to headphones while boarding,
and is mostly disconnected from the rest of the class as she takes her seat in Row 23,
Seat J, where she started to feel a strange paranoia, but did not know where the feeling
was coming from. The next thing she knows, Alex Browning is
having a meltdown, freaking out and yelling that the plane is going to explode. In that moment Clear felt the same uneasiness
that Alex felt, and for whatever reason, she believed him and exited the aircraft to sit
alone in the gate area. This is the first example of her unique ability
to feel what others are feeling. She’s not a visionary like Alex, Kimberly,
Wendy, Nick or Sam; and she’s not a psychic, she’s can’t read people’s minds, but
she can read people’s feelings. She seems to be the only one to carry this
ability, unlike her ability to see signs, which seems to be possible for anyone as long
as they know to look. Sure enough, the plane explodes just as Alex
predicted, and thirty-nine minutes later, the seven survivors, which include 6 classmates
and one teacher, are moved to a closed off room. There’s a lot of hostility towards Alex,
so Clear lives up to her namesake and “clears the air”. "What, you think I'm some sort of--" “He’s not a witch!” Over an hour later, at 11:20PM, Clear is being
interviewed by the FBI, explaining that she saw and heard Alex and believed him. When the families arrive, Clear is the only
one with nobody to show up for her, and she gets a ride home from Alex’s parents. On June 21st, 1999 Clear attends the memorial
for the Flight 180 victims alone, and gives Alex a white rose for saving her life. This moment is photographed and ends up in
the newspaper. She feels this unexplainable attraction towards
him, and creates a sculpture in her garage of how he makes her feel. CLEAR: “It’s you. Not a likeness. It’s how you make me feel…. Alex.” On the night of Tod’s Waggner’s death,
Clear feels a similar feeling to the one she felt on the plane and goes to the Waggner’s
house, which is soon surrounded by official vehicles after an apparent self-immolation. She hides out near the house and tries to
warn Alex to get out after he shows up, because being there makes him look sus in the eyes
of the FBI. Alex shows up at her house the next day, wondering
why she was there, and she explains her sculpture to him. “The sculpture doesn’t even know what
or why it is, it’s reluctant to take form, and yet creating an absolute yet incomprehensible
attraction.” She suggests they go see Tod’s corpse to
possibly better understand the way they are feeling about all the recent events. I wish just once that a girl would take me
to the morgue to see my best friend’s corpse on the first date. “Gives me a rush.” She’s got the right idea. They sneak in through the roof. When they find Tod, they’re startled by
a chemical induced spasm in his arm, then caught off guard again by the coroner. Clear notices the marks on Tod’s neck, suggesting
that he had pulled on the wire and it was not a suicide. The coroner explains that death has a new
design for them, but Clear isn’t convinced. They go the next day to get coffee. Sorry Clear, the second date was not as inspired
as the first. Clear thinks that the death omens theory isn’t
real, claiming that you can find signs anywhere if you believe in them. She still believes Tod killed himself, but
that belief would be shaken not long after when either coincidence or fate brings together
ALL of the remaining Flight 180 survivors. When each survivor somehow ends up in the
same spot, Alex tries to warn the others about his theory -- that each of them is still on
Death’s list. Things get heated, and Terry Chaney ends up
becoming the victim of a bus accident. Clear is shaken by incident, because it basically
proves Alex’s theory to be true. She becomes semi-obsessed with talking to
him, to the point that Alex’s dad recognizes her voice when she asks for him and Alex is
burned out from dealing with her, so he starts ignoring her. I think part of the reason for Clear’s attraction
to him is her ability to sense feeling. When Alex has a vision, it’s accompanied
by a lot of intense feeling, due to how real his visions can seem. Since Clear can detect these feelings, Alex
is like a sensory overload for her. It’s like how dogs have a great sense of
smell, so they love things that smell. Don’t they. Yes they do! After Death comes for their teacher, Ms. Lewton,
the FBI wants to arrest Alex, thinking he’s responsible, so they ask Clear if she knows
where he is. They ask her to let them know if she hears
from him, and she notices that they’re keeping an eye on her to see if she’ll reveal his
location. So instead of contacting Alex, she arranges
a meeting with the other remaining survivors, Carter and Billy. She has Carter drive her to where she thinks
Alex is. It’s left up to the audience to speculate
exactly how she knew his location if he wasn’t talking to her at the time, and I theorize
that she was able to detect his intense feelings, like she could essentially use her own sense
of feeling as a sort of dowsing device. When she’s sure they’re not being watched,
she gets out and goes across the treeline to the beach, where she finds him. He ponders about a world where the Flight
180 victims are safe, and she tells him about her father’s death, wishing there was a
world where he was safe. They get into Carter’s car, with Clear planning
to take Alex to her father’s cabin to hide out, but Carter loses it after finding out
his death is essentially inevitable. This causes him to become semi-suicidal, thinking
he’d rather go out on his own free will. Clear tells him she wants him to stop the
car, so he sarcastically obeys and parks on a railroad crossing with an oncoming train
and refuses to get out. The rest of them have to flee the car and
beg Carter not to end his own life, and when they are able to convince him, the car stalls,
and Carter finds himself locked in the vehicle. Alex is narrowly able to pull him to safety,
and after doing so Clear realizes how close she was to losing him and collapses into his
arms. As the train goes by, it propels a piece of
scrap metal that takes out Billy and in the hysteria Clear is the only one to find a little
moment of sanity and warns Alex that the police are going to show up and tells him to
to hide out at her Dad’s cabin ASAP. They disaster-proof the cabin, and Clear returns
to her own home for safety, not realizing that Alex made a mistake with his prediction,
and that she was actually next on Death’s list. Her experience watching crime dramas may be
the reason she realizes that the FBI is watching her. She comes out to straight up tell them that
she won’t turn Alex in. They offer to bring him into “protective
custody” where he’ll be safe, and it’s assumed that she does give away his location
in exchange for his safety. But again, he wasn’t the one who needed
immediate protection. A storm brews, and the lightning sets a series
of events in motion, resulting in a loose power line emitting sparks, which threatens
her dog Rex’s safety, and knocks out the power. She runs out to save him, but when she does
so lightning strikes her drying rack, and it spins out of control and punctures the
pool, which floods the entire yard. She climbs into her window, but the storm
overloads all the electronics in the house, making it actually more dangerous than she
thought because of the fire hazard, so she flees to her car. Unable to get the garage door opener to work,
she bashes through to try and escape, accidentally knocking over a can of flammable Turpentine
oil, which gets ignited by the loose wire. This is when Alex arrives and tries to save
her, but inadvertently knocks open a gas cylinder which rockets it’s way under the car. Realizing the car is going to explode, he
decides to sacrifice himself so that death can theoretically “skip” Clear, but not
wanting to lose yet another person she cares for, she begs him not to do it. Alex grabs the power line and gives her time
to get out of the car before the explosion. The jolt of electricity sends him flying into
the garage, and Clear goes to him immediately, and the FBI shows up shortly after. An ambulance is already on the way so they
are able to save Alex. In the months that follow Alex and Clear get
into a relationship and become friends with the other survivor, Carter. Once they’re convinced that it’s over, they
all plan a trip to France together as a symbolic moving on from the horror that was Flight
180. In December 1999, the three of them arrive
in Paris. One night they go out to get drinks at a cafe
between Place des Vosges and Saint Germain des Pres. Clear has her first “legal” drink, a glass
of red wine, having just turned 18, a few months ago and being in France, where the
required age is three years younger than in her home country. Carter tells them: “Sometimes it just feels like the two of
you were the only ones that could really understand.” ...which reinforces the idea that they each
had a unique ability and a unique connection. Clear tells him that she feels they “won”
a chance to have a full life, and they argue about what Death’s plan really was for them
all along. But Alex sees the signs of another possible
disaster, and for whatever reason, his girlfriend isn’t as quick to pick up on his feelings
as she has been during past incidents. He heads back to the hotel, and Clear is concerned
and wants to go with him, but he warns her to stay away. Just then, she sees a sign of her own, the
same one Alex saw shortly before Terry’s accident. She realizes a bus is going to hit Alex, and
is able to narrowly warn him before it happens. “ALEX!” But the bus crashes and sets in motion a chain
of events, where a dislodged sign swings in to take his life. Carter dives and saves him, but in doing so,
Alex is “skipped” and the order “resets”, now putting Carter on Death’s target, and
he becomes the victim of Newton’s First Law. "So who's next?" Based on what she eventually tells the coroner,
William Bludworth, Alex and Clear both escape Death’s designs dozens of times sending
the target back and forth between the two of them over and over in the year 2000, and
most likely becoming the most skilled escape artists from Death’s plans in all of Final
Destination lore. Unfortunately for Clear, who probably would
have rather gone first as opposed to losing yet another loved one, she was the more skilled
of the two. Alex was struck by a falling brick in an alley,
causing Clear to scream so loud that nearby merchants called the police. Alex was later pronounced dead and Clear was
arrested. Clear was then taken into custody, likely
on suspicion that she was the murderer, given that she wasn’t friends with any of the
Flight 180 victims before the accident, but was present at the scene of each subsequent
death with the exception of the teacher, Ms. Lewton who passed away in a more private setting. Clear was investigated as a possible Cult
killer who wanted to take out those who survived the accident with her -- based on some kind
of belief or ideology. Obviously, they had no evidence against her
that wasn’t circumstantial, but rather than taking back her freedom, she admits herself
to “Stonybrook Institution” in a padded room in the insanity ward. Although she is put unvder the care of a Dr.
Ron Fairbairn, she’s not mentally ill like other patients, but rather, stays there voluntarily. She’s able to monitor what’s going on
outside her door using a security camera, but given the fact that we’ve literally
seen two cases of exploding monitors, you’d think she might forego that luxury. During her time in confinement, she keeps
an evidence board filled with newspaper clippings about those involved with Flight 180 and other
people who had near death experiences. This must have been difficult to keep together
without using any push pins. On May 13th, 2000, one year after the crash
of Volée Flight 180, Clear hears about an accident similar in nature to the explosion,
in the nearby town of White Plains, NY and agrees to meet the alleged clairvoyant, Kimberly
Corman, requesting that she does not bring any sharp objects, necklaces, belts, shoelaces,
flammable objects or edible objects in order to ensure her complete safety. She explains to Kimberly that the would-be
victims will die in the same order as they were meant to die in the pile-up, and warns
her not to ignore ominous looking signs. Kimberly calls her a selfish coward before
leaving, and Clear doesn’t seem to mind at the time, but she would later reflect on
the exchange and change her reclusive ways after re-reading the article about the first
Route 23 survivor that ran out of extra time. She checks herself out of Stonybrook Institution
and tracks down Kimberly... somehow. I’m guessing that she’s able to find Kimberly
for the same reason she was able to find Alex at the beach. Kimberly, like Alex, is a visionary, so she
often experiences the intense and realistic feelings that come with those premonitions. Kimberly seems to have even more detailed
visions than Alex did, so it may have been relatively easy for Clear to track someone
like that down. She takes Kimberly and Officer Thomas Burke
to The Mt. Abraham Coroner, William Bloodwurth, the same man who gave them the idea about
Death’s list the previous year. He’s expecting them when they arrive, and
when pressed by Kimberly, he reveals that only the introduction of new life can defeat
death. Would have been nice to know a year ago, but
whatever. While filling up at the gas station after
this visit, we really see how Clear’s time alone after Alex’s death forced her to become
even more cautious, when she alertly spots a teenager lighting up a cigarette and scolds
him for it, probably saving them all from getting Zoolandered into the afterlife. Kimberly has another vision, but Clear is
distracted by a number of possible disaster triggering moments. She’s become so paranoid about domino events
that could lead to their deaths, that she essentially becomes the ultimate Defense for
death’s plan. She’s always thinking 2 or 3 steps ahead
of what’s going on in the present. Kimberly describes her vision, so Clear ends
up learning that there was a pregnant woman who survived the Route 23 pile-up thanks to
Kimberly’s intervention. Clear theorizes that according to what Mr.
Bludworth told them, if this baby is born, it will screw up Death’s list and force
everyone to get a new expiration date. With the help of Burke, the police officer
who was there on the day of the crash, they’re able to find the name and vehicle information
of the pregnant woman, Isabella Hudson. Burke organizes a meeting with the remaining
Route 23 survivors, and Clear tries to warn them all to look out for signs. One of the guys, Eugene, thinks they’re
all full of BS and gets his coat to leave, starting an accidental Rube Goldberg machine
that nearly knocks Clear out the window. But for some reason that’s still not enough
to convince him that Clear and Kimberly are telling the truth. Then, things start getting weird. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever done
an episode of Horror History where the events that I discuss get THIS cringe. So one of the guys sees what he perceives
to be a man with hooks, I can’t take this seriously... so Clear runs downstairs to tell
Eugene and another survivor, Nora, but it’s no good and Nora gets decapitated by the elevator. Clear comes back upstairs to catch the tail
end of an incident where Eugene stole Burke’s gun and tried to blow his brains out, but
got 6 duds in a row, which Clear chalks up to it simply not being his turn to die. Do not try this at home. If you’re subscribed to me. They all go to find the pregnant woman, Isabella,
and each of the Route 23 escapees share a story about how they had cheated death once
before. One woman, Kat, tells a story that is of particular
interest to Clear. “Last May I was supposed to go stay at this
cheesy little bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania, right? So anyhow, there’s this major gas leak that
no one knows about and all the guests suffocated during the night.” “So what happened?” “I don’t know, I never made it. The bus I was on splattered some girl over
the road.” She’s of course talking about the bus that
hit Terry, which Clear was there to witness. It turns out that all of the Route 23 survivors
escaped their first near-death experience because Death had to change his plans in order
to first take out the Flight 180 survivors. In other words, the pile-up on Route 23 was
actually Death just trying to clean up those whose lives were extended indirectly after
Alex Browning saved 7 people from Flight 180 with his vision. So Clear’s fate is very much linked to everyone
in that car. Just after Clear figures this out, their tire
blows out, veering them off the road, and badly injuring Eugene. When the ambulance shows up, she’s bossing
the paramedics around, telling them to be careful of all these ridiculous scenarios
that she’s anticipated. She tries to go along in the ambulance, but
they don’t let her, so Burke makes some calls to find that Isabella is at a nearby
hospital prepping for delivery. A couple more.. less important characters...
die, but more importantly some farmer gives Clear and Kimberly his truck to go to the
hospital in. KIMBERLY: “We have to get to the hospital now!” FARMER: “Well take my truck. The keys are in it.” He’s a simp. We were all thinking it. When they get to the hospital, Clear goes
to find Eugene to try to keep him safe, while Kimberly and Burke look for Isabella to make
sure the birth goes smoothly. Clear is unable to find Eugene, because remember,
he’s not a visionary, she can’t detect him. She ends up running back into her comrades
after Isabella safely delivered the baby, and they celebrate Death’s curse allegedly
being over. Only… Kimberly has another vision of the Route 23
pile-up, and realizes they were wrong, Isabella was never supposed to die. Kind of a big oopsie. Kimberly envisions someone with bloody hands
driving into a lake, which Clear interprets to be Eugene and takes off after him instead
of… you know, just asking if they were the hands of someone with dark skin. She finds Eugene’s room and opens the door,
not realizing his oxygen supply was leaking… which wouldn’t really be much of an issue…
but this oxygen is flammable? It’s flammable oxygen. So that means when you unplug the outlet…
which happens… it apparently explodes. The whole room explodes. I don’t know, Death was getting desperate,
like an umpire in an extra innings game. So Clear Rivers turns into Clear well-done-meatloaf. In Jurassic Park, life finds a way, but in
Final Destination, Death finds a way, so on May 15th 2000, he would finish would he started
one year and two days before by cooking the last survivor that made it off of Volée Flight
180. Clear Rivers was no more. There’s an interesting symmetry to her story,
with her real mother dying in childbirth and Clear also passing away after a baby delivery. But it’s possible that Clear was ready to
go. She had experienced 11 people die first hand,
and considering that she can experience the feelings of others… that’s an unimaginable
amount of pain to go through. At that point in her life, there was really
nobody else left for her to go to. Click the video on the left for even more
analysis on the Final Destination series, and if you love horror remember to subscribe
to CZsWorld for new horrors every week, ring the deathbell and turn on all notifications. I will see you. In the next one. Assuming we both survive. If you want to beat death, use a facemask
and social distancing.
