In this review of Dead Teenagers #5, it’s the final showdown between Claire, JT, Brandy, and Alban. Who will be left standing?
Dead Teenagers #5
Writer: Jude Ellison S. Doyle
Artist: Caitlin Yarsky
Main Cover: Naomi Franquiz
Variant Covers: Keyla Valerio, Caitlin Yarsky, Naomi Franquiz
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: August 5, 2025
This review contains spoilers
Dead Teenagers #5 kicks off with a flashback to Alban and JT, as he throws her a quote from a French writer about the innocence and openness of young girls. Before he tries to kiss her. She backs away, and his mood immediately sours. When she asks for the recommendation, he says he doesn’t want to waste her time and that she’s basically too poor for MIT, anyway.
In the present, Brandy and Alban are at the carnival, chatting over drinks…before she pushes him into the path of a ride. Unfortunately, as revealed when Claire and JT catch up to Brandy, he lives. But the device at his hip, showing a number, has broken.
From there, he chases Brandy through various other scenarios, Claire and JT running through MORE of these other scenarios as they try to reach them again. Eventually, they find themselves back at Scenario 0. They realize that Alicia must have seen this at some point.
And unfortunately…again, Alban’s not dead and he stabs Brandy. From there, we get a few huge reveals: every time someone dies in one of these time loops, Alban gains another life (making him insanely powerful), the device at his hip is where the lives are all stored, and the game, and therefore the loops in the first place? That’d been played by Alicia, who didn’t want high school to end.
JT tells him off for being a creeper, about how people tend to get better after their teen years. And gets stabbed. Which leaves Claire as our Final Girl. Since the game needs a new main player, Alban offers that position to Claire. She agrees…before grabbing the life-storing pager and tossing it to JT to crush it. He’s soon killed, and we find ourselves back in 1997.
It’s prom night again, but they all still have their memories from adulthood. Using that knowledge, they prevent Alicia from starting the game in the first place, now secure in the fact that they’re probably not going to die in more insane ways and actually experience adulthood organically.
So, for a story that was already immensely entertaining, they’ve saved some of the best stuff for the finale. We get the emotional payoff of JT finally giving Alban a piece of her mind after he’d ruined her life for rejecting his advances. Sure, she gets stabbed for her trouble, but that was sorely needed. Also, the delighted cackle I let off when Brandy shoved Alban in front of one of a ride’s cars…if he didn’t have tens of thousands of lives at his disposal, that probably would’ve taken him out entirely, and it feels very true to who Brandy is. She says she’d want to at least have some fun before being killed, and using a freaking carnival ride to attempt to kill a guy that’d preyed on her friends? Very fun.
And speaking of the fun aspect of Dead Teenagers #5, they bring in a few more crazy scenarios that lead to death. A few standouts for me: “Art”, with a beautifully blunt parody of pretentious arthouse films. “Space Camp”, which brings the story briefly into the territory that a few horror franchises have gone to (first ones that come to mind are the 10th Friday the 13th installment and the 4th Leprechaun movie, and that’s not even counting those that were Space Horror from the get-go). There’s even one where Third Eye Blind is announced to be playing at prom and it causes a fandom-based riot in the halls.
But above all else, there’s one scenario literally named “Dead Teenagers”, where we find out that the little caption boxes that show the scenarios are actually visible to our main characters.
The reveal of Alicia’s part in the game puts issue 1 into a whole new light. We see there’s a good reason she’s survived the first 10999 scenarios: because she was the main player. All because she didn’t want her high school experience to end. It makes me wonder what she’d be like as an adult, now that she and her friend group have that opportunity.
Having the trans woman of the group be the Final Girl, complete with finally taking down the killer? That just makes an excellent finale even better. It’s not something that comes up very often in horror, but it’s very welcome.
Final Thoughts
Dead Teenagers #5 really sticks the landing, giving us a brilliant and satisfying conclusion to a delightful, nostalgic tale. Our three main characters all get their moment to shine, Alban gets a much-deserved end after everything he’d done to these kids, and the core group gets a brand new chance at a full life.
