The Last Ones Standing: A Bloodstained Elegy for the Final Girls
by Justine Norton-Kertson
In the dim glow of a flickering television screen, shadows stretch long across the room, and the familiar refrain of breathless footsteps echoes from the speakers. The chase is on. Again. Somewhere within the maze of wood-paneled basements, moonlit campgrounds, and suburban cul-de-sacs, she runs. She always runs. But she’s not running away. Not really. She’s running toward—toward a reckoning, toward a destiny sharpened like a kitchen knife’s edge. She is the Final Girl, and she is eternal.
The Final Girl is more than just a survivor-she is a myth, a heroine, a warning, a promise. We know her well, even if we don’t know her name. She’s Laurie Strode’s quiet vigilance, Nancy Thompson’s dream-weaving resolve, and Sidney Prescott’s unyielding will. She is, in part, the spirit of every girl who’s been underestimated, overburdened, and written off. She’s the living refutation of every whispered "you can’t" ever uttered to every girl in every lonely house at the end of every road in every small town.
She is afraid, but fear does not consume her. She does not freeze. She does not faint. She transforms. The hunted becomes the hunter, and the terror she’s been running from is finally caught in her gaze—a gaze that sees not just her killer but everything her killer represents. The rot of misogyny. The casual underestimation, the absurd presumption that anyone, anywhere, could ever be entitled to her body and her life.
There is something sacred in that moment. It’s not the glory of triumph but the weight of it. The camera lingers, her breath ragged and shallow. Blood (his or hers, sometimes both) streaks her face. Her eyes are wide with something beyond relief—clarity. She knows now, with an ancient certainty, that no one is coming to save her. No cavalry. No last-minute rescuer. The person who saves her is her. It was always her and always will be her.
The Virgin, The Vessel, The Victory
Once upon a time, horror critics and academics would reduce her to a moral symbol. They’d call her "the last innocent" or "the virginal survivor" as if the blood on her hands were some divine reward for her purity. But those critics misunderstood her. Purity is not her weapon. Her weapon is rage…. survival. Her power comes not from abstinence, but from courageous audacity and unwavering will.
Laurie didn’t survive Michael Myers because she’s a “good girl” who abstained from sex and drugs. She survived because she had the presence of mind to stab him with a knitting needle.
Nancy didn’t survive Freddy because she’s chaste. She survived because she’s clever enough to turn her dreams into weapons.
Adelaide didn’t survive the Red and Tethered uprising because she’s morally superior. She survived because she’s adaptable, cunning, and willing to do whatever it takes—even if it means confronting her own shadow and breaking her own reflection.
Sidney didn’t beat Ghostface because she’s some paragon of virtue. She beat them because she’s tenacious and tired and willing to go down swinging.
Gretchen didn’t survive Herr König and escape the horrors of the Bavarian resort because she’s pure of heart, obedient, or polite. She survived because she’s brave enough to protect her sister and relentless enough to fight back when the odds are against her.
The Final Girl’s virtue isn’t moral. It’s practical. She adapts. She learns. She’s quick to understand that following the rules won’t save her. So she makes new rules. She’s not waiting for the system to save her because the system, the police, the boyfriends, the family and friends—they’ve all failed her. The only rule she follows is the one she’s written in blood: Tonight, I will not die.
Bloodlines and Legacies
The Final Girl’s lineage stretches further back than the slashers of the ‘70s and ‘80s. She’s a descendant of Little Red Riding Hood, who outwitted the wolf. She’s a sister to the heroines of Gothic horror, like Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, who learned to navigate haunted corridors on their own terms. She’s kin to the witches burned but never broken. Her story is old, older than any VHS tape, older than any drive-in scream.
Her story is cyclical because horror is cyclical. The slasher resurrects, the predator returns, the masked man comes back. The past is always clawing its way into the present. But the Final Girl returns as well, reborn in every new era. Sometimes she’s quiet and bookish, sometimes she’s loud and angry, sometimes she’s jaded and messy and complicated. But she’s always there.
Look at her now: Dani Ardor standing defiant in her flower crown. Tess Marshall, bruised but unbent, crawling out of a suburban nightmare. Erin Harson wielding kitchen utensils like weapons of war. Their aesthetics shift, their methods change, but their heart, their essence, their song remains the same.
To Be the Last One Left
It’s lonely being a Final Girl. Her friends are gone. Her world has changed. Victory tastes like copper in her mouth, and peace is something she’ll never quite have again. She’s "fine" when people ask her if she’s okay. She’s "just tired" when she’s actually soul-weary. Her trauma becomes invisible, even as it never leaves her.
But if you’re reading this, if you’ve ever felt the weight of that aloneness, if you’ve ever been underestimated, gaslit, and hunted—maybe you’re a Final Girl, too. Maybe you’ve been running, but you’re tired of running. Maybe you’re ready to turn around, to face the thing chasing you. Maybe it’s not a man with a knife. Maybe it’s grief, debt, shame, addiction, or the long shadow of something you can’t quite name.
But take heart. There’s power in being the last one standing. There’s power in writing your own rules. The Final Girl isn’t just a character on a screen. She’s an idea, a symbol, an archetype as old as fear itself. And when you’re up against it, whatever it is, you can call on her.
She’ll show you how to steady your breath. How to think three moves ahead. How to be clever. How to be ruthless. How to face the monster with eyes wide open. How to say, not me, not today, not ever.
The Final Girl is alone, but she’s never truly alone. She’s all of us. And she’s still standing.
