Time Cut ending explained as Netflix film unmasks killer with unexpected character twist

*Warning, this story contains major spoilers for Time Cut*

Netflix film Time Cut features a new serial killer stalking teenage victims called the Sweetly Slasher.

A high school student is sent back to the year 2003 by accident and soon discovers she has returned to the day her sister is murdered.

Not just that, but the killer also targets her sister's closest friends before vanishing without a trace, leaving the crimes unsolved for more than 20 years.

As the film lands on the streaming service in time for Halloween, viewers will get to see how it all plays out as the killer is finally unmasked with a surprise reveal followed by an unexpected character twist.

So who is the killer in Time Cut? And just what exactly happened in the end scene? Here's everything you need to know but beware what follows is major spoilers for the film.

The beginning of Time Cut starts in a familiar fashion for fans of slasher movies, with more than one character introduced with a suspicious nod that they could be the killer.

Summer's boyfriend is the number one suspect, having just been dumped 'out of the blue' just before the attacks begin.

Lucy even claims that her mother always suspected him even though he apparently had an alibi for each murder.

She also suspects her sister's ex-boyfriend after finding a letter from 'E' in the future. However, this is revealed to actually be from Emmy, who Summer had been fearful of starting a relationship with as she had yet to come out to her parents.

However, after Lucy and Quinn steal some anti-matter needed to use the time machine again, they realise the killer already took some for himself, meaning he is also from the future.

Later, when they hit the Sweetly Slasher with their car, he gets back up and removes his mask to reveal he is actually Quinn, albeit an older version, seemingly from another timeline.

This version of Quinn is very different from the one that has been helping Lucy get back home for the entirety of the film.

He was thrown into the river, a fate that Lucy prevented happening to her Quinn, and left humiliated by Summer, who he is in love with.

This has somehow turned him into a killer out for revenge and he decides to pick off all of Summer's friends one by one before killing her last.

What isn't explained is when the future Quinn actually travels back to the past to commit the killings. He is made to look older and has a slightly deeper voice and the time travel device exists in 2024, so we assume he travelled back in that year.

Why did he wait so long before committing the murders? Disappearing through the machine is how he gets away with the murders and evades capture but the gap in events is not completely clear.

The film's ending also has one more unexpected character twist in store before the credits roll that raises more questions.

After Lucy's final confrontation with evil Quinn, where she shocks him with a cable used for charging an electric car, she then stabs him with his own knife in the present, and we return to Summer and good Quinn in the past.

They wonder if Lucy made it home and talk about how they miss her. She then reappears right in front of them and shares that she decided to return to the past, because this is where her future is.

She also reveals that she went home to check if anything had changed and her parents didn't recognise her but that her sister 'definitely' didn't have a husband.

The film fails to explain how Lucy even exists in the past as she originally believed saving her sister would mean she wouldn't be born.

How would her parents not recognise her? Did her sister not recognise her in the future either? Somehow she has still been accepted onto the NASA internship in 2003 that she was accepted on at the beginning of the film in 2024.

Perhaps all these questions will be picked up in any potential sequel.

Time Cut is streaming now on Netflix.