5 Black Horror Characters That Lived But Were Never Mentioned Again
The year is 2025, and we’ve come so far. If you’re under a certain age and/or haven’t been doing your homework, the idea that Black characters are always the first to die in horror films probably seems like a completely foreign concept. Scholars and historians have demonstrated in recent years that our collective memory of this phenomenon doesn’t exactly match the facts (read The Black Guy Dies First Black Horror Cinema From Fodder to Oscar by Mark H. Harris and Robin R. Means Coleman and watch Horror Noire (2019)). But when a trope is prevalent enough to have a lengthy page on the TV Tropes Wiki and to be directly referenced in other movies like The Blackening (2022), it’s worth taking a minute to reflect and not just write it off as something from a bygone era.
While recently pouring one out for the Alfre Woodards, Sam Jacksons, and Charles S. Duttons of the horror world, I thought of a different group of melanated horror stars: the survivors. More specifically, I was thinking about the Black horror characters that were scrappy (or lucky) enough to make it to the end of their respective movies, but were nowhere to be found in subsequent sequels in the same continuity. Where did they go? Were they all killed off-screen, or did they wisely pack a bag while the credits were rolling and hop on the first thing smoking to Anywherebutheresville? Spoilers: it’s a mixed bag.
1. Selena from 28 Days Later (2002)
The badass that inspired this entire list, Selena (played by Naomi Harris) was last seen smiling with her found family after surviving the first two months of a don’t-call-it-a-zombie apocalypse. The trio managed to get the attention of a passing plane and were presumably rescued, but when the narrative shifted to different protagonists in the sequel, Selena and her crew were absent.
At the time of writing this, we know that Jim (Cillian Murphy) is returning in some capacity for the long-awaited 28 Years Later (2025), but there has been no mention of Selena or their younger compadre, Hannah. The killing adventures of Selena continued in the comic book series, but it’s unclear if the upcoming film will acknowledge those.
2. Ronald Tyler from Child’s Play 3 (1991)
First of all, Cadet Tyler slander will not be tolerated, so hush or be thrown into a giant metal carnival fan. Tyler (played by Jeremy Sylvers) narrowly avoided Chucky’s game of Hide the Soul and his problematic plan to become a “bro”, but for all we know, he and fellow survivor Kristen De Silva (Perrey Reeves) are still back at Kent Military school mopping up blood. Or maybe they both went to prison when the cops found all those dead bodies at the school, and the only suspect was a shredded doll. We may never know.
3. Trucker from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
The end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a case study in why you should mind your own business, especially when driving through creepy-ass Newt, Texas. After stopping to help the bloody blonde final girl Sally (Marilyn Burns), the unnamed trucker (played by Ed Guinn) is last seen hauling ass after Leatherface does some unscheduled modifications to the side of his vehicle. Sally managed to hitch a ride with someone else, but where the hell did the trucker run off to?
Unfortunately, we know what happened to him, and it’s not good. As John Squires of Bloody Disgusting once pointed out on Twitter, the trucker did in fact make it to Texas Chainsaw 3D. In an alternate opening, he is shown hanging from a meat hook with a whole lot of red covering his bright yellow shirt. It’s safe to assume it wasn’t ketchup, and he wasn’t taking a vertical nap after being invited over for barbecue.
4. Joel Martin from Scream 2 (1997)
Look up “smartest Black character in horror history” in an encyclopedia, and there might be a picture of Joel Martin smiling and waving from the backseat of a cab as it crosses the Woodsboro city limits. In Scream 2, cameraman Joel (played by Duane Martin) did what audiences had been yelling at characters to do for decades: when the body count started to rise, he read Gale’s book to learn about the events of the first film, then he bounced and didn’t look back. Or did he?
Joel hasn’t been seen in four sequels, but a popular fan theory is that he is the father of the Meeks-Martin twins Mindy and Chad (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding). There has been zero confirmation that Joel ever returned to Woodsboro or that he ever met Randy’s sister Martha, but don’t let facts get in the way of good headcanon.
5. Yvonne Miller from A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)
Not quite a final girl, Yvonne Miller (Kelly Jo Minter) is what Mark H. Harris and Professor Coleman refer to as a S.W.S, or a “Sidekick Who Survives.” She was saved from a watery demise and lived to tell the tale of Freddy Krueger, but Minter herself and the character were M.I.A until the Never Sleep Again documentary in 2010.
According to ANOES Wiki, Yvonne’s story continued in the Elm Street comics from Innovation Publishing. Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox) and her son Jacob return to Springwood to find that Alice’s old friend has switched career paths from nursing to law enforcement. She was probably better off taking the Joel route.
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