CHARACTER
Final Girlsby RIley Sager

Joe Hannen

Joe Hannen

Quick Facts

  • Role: Tragic scapegoat of the Pine Cottage massacre; posthumously redefined as a victim
  • First appearance: A shy stranger who arrives at Pine Cottage after his car breaks down
  • Key relationships: Quincy Carpenter, Franklin Cooper (Coop), Tina Stone, Janelle Bennett
  • Core theme: His story underpins Truth, Memory, and Deception

Who They Are

At first, Joe Hannen exists only as Quincy's faceless “Him,” the supposed killer that her mind supplies to fill in the horror she can’t face. As memory returns, Joe emerges as a painfully shy, observant young man whose awkwardness makes him easy to misread and easier to blame. He is not the slasher icon the media needed but a gentle outsider whose presence disrupts the group’s fragile equilibrium—and whose death cements a decade-long lie. Joe’s character reframes the massacre not as a clear-cut tale of predator and prey but as a tragedy of misperception, panic, and the stories trauma tells to keep survivors alive.

Personality & Traits

Joe’s manner—hesitant, formal, unfashionable—marks him as “other,” but the text repeatedly aligns him with empathy, restraint, and moral clarity. His awkwardness invites scorn; his actions demand a second look.

  • Awkward and shy: He speaks in halting, almost foreign-sounding English, avoiding eye contact and social risk. His beige cable-knit sweater and loose green corduroys visually cue his misfit status among effortlessly performative partygoers.
  • Perceptive and kind: After Quincy Carpenter is devastated by Janelle Bennett and Craig’s betrayal, Joe notices her pain and offers quiet comfort instead of opportunism; later, he physically intervenes to stop Quincy from committing violence.
  • Lonely: He admits to few friends and fuzzy romantic ties, which dovetails with his later connection to Tina Stone at Blackthorn—two isolated people forging the only friendship they can trust.
  • Misread by the group: The same watchfulness that makes Joe perceptive reads as “creepy” to the others, priming them—and later the police and media—to accept him as the killer without evidence.

Character Journey

Joe’s arc unfolds entirely through Quincy's recovered memory, transforming him from a nightmare silhouette into a human being with dignity and intention. He wanders into Pine Cottage by accident, is pulled into the group’s simmering conflicts, and becomes a mirror for Quincy’s grief and loneliness. He tries to de-escalate her anger, not inflame it. In the massacre’s chaos, Joe misreads Quincy as the killer, just as she misreads him; fear ricochets between them until Franklin Cooper (Coop) arrives and, hearing Quincy’s panicked cries, shoots Joe dead. The novel’s reconstruction of events restores Joe’s innocence and reveals his death as the hinge on which a decade of falsified narrative—and Quincy's identity—has turned.

Key Relationships

  • Quincy Carpenter: Joe recognizes Quincy’s hurt without exploiting it, offering gentleness that she briefly accepts. Their sexual encounter isn’t conquest but refuge, underscoring how both are adrift; later, Joe’s plea in the woods stops Quincy from crossing a moral line. Their mutual misrecognition during the massacre—each fearing the other—exposes how trauma scrambles truth at the worst possible moment.
  • Tina Stone: Tina calls Joe her “only fucking friend” at Blackthorn, and her entire con—posing as Samantha Boyd, infiltrating Quincy’s life—springs from a ferocious loyalty to clear his name. Through Tina, Joe becomes the novel’s quiet engine: the absent presence whose vindication matters more than anyone’s reputation.
  • Janelle Bennett: Janelle invites Joe to stay, drawn to the “mystery” of his shyness and treating him like a novelty accessory for her party. Her flirtation and pressure to drink position Joe as spectacle—wanted for entertainment, discarded once he complicates the vibe.
  • Franklin Cooper (Coop): Coop kills Joe while believing he’s saving Quincy, then allows that error to calcify into “truth.” Joe becomes Coop’s alibi and burden, exposing how hero myths can be built on lethal misreadings.

Defining Moments

Joe’s scenes are sparse but decisive; each reverses an assumption the novel initially encourages us to make.

  • Arrival at Pine Cottage: He appears on the deck with a broken-down-car story; Janelle insists he stay despite skepticism (Chapter 11-15 Summary). This entrance casts him as intruder—but also as someone waved past the group’s boundaries for someone else’s pleasure.
  • The Sexual Encounter: Quincy, shattered by Janelle and Craig, turns to Joe, initiating a brief, tender encounter (Chapter 31-35 Summary). The scene complicates the “lurking stranger” trope by showing Joe as responsive, not predatory; intimacy here is a salve, not a setup.
  • The Intervention in the Woods: When Quincy storms out with a knife, Joe stops her and talks her down. The moment matters because it proves Joe’s guiding principle is harm reduction—not escalation—even under emotional strain.
  • The Final Confrontation: Quincy later remembers Joe kneeling by Amy, holding the knife Coop used, terrified of Quincy and trying to explain what he saw (Chapter 41-43 Summary). The tableau is a hall of mirrors: each sees a killer in the other, and the knife—passed between hands—embodies the story’s shifting blame.
  • Death: Joe runs toward Quincy and is shot by Coop, who reacts to Quincy’s cry that “he’s still out here” (Chapter 1-5 Summary). His death seals the false narrative; the real killer disappears into the legend that Joe’s corpse makes possible.

Essential Quotes

“I’m sorry if I frightened you.” Hesitation streaked each word, as if he didn’t quite know how to talk. He spoke English the way a foreigner did, halting and formal. Quincy listened for a trace of an accent, not finding one. “I was looking to see if someone was here.”

Joe’s diction—polite, overly careful—signals someone accustomed to being perceived as threatening and trying to preempt that judgment. The “foreign” cadence underlines social exile rather than nationality, marking Joe as alien in a room where fluency equals safety.

“He doesn’t deserve you,” he said. When he touched her shoulder a second time, Quincy allowed it. Emboldened, his hand slipped down Quincy’s arm to her midriff. Again, she let him do it. “You’re better than him,” he whispered. “Better than both of them. So pretty.”

The passage frames consent as mutual and tentative: Joe follows Quincy’s cues rather than taking advantage of her vulnerability. His language is embarrassingly earnest, but it’s also not manipulative; he’s naming her worth when everyone else has treated her as disposable.

I was leaving, He says, breathing hard. I heard screams. I came back. And saw—

The broken syntax and dash freeze Joe inside the trauma loop where explanations always arrive a second too late. His account also rebuts the “stalker” narrative: he had the chance to flee and instead returned toward danger, the choice that costs him his life.

“He was my friend,” Tina says. “My only fucking friend. Ever.”

Tina’s raw claim reframes the entire plot as an act of mourning and advocacy. By planting Joe at the center of her vengeance/justice quest, the novel insists that truth-telling is not procedural but relational—someone loved him, so the lie can’t be allowed to stand.