William Bludworth

After the North Bay Bridge collapses, Bludworth watches the memorial for the victims from a distance. Later, when Isaac dies at an acupuncture clinic, he meets Sam, Molly, Peter and Nathan at the morgue.

The warning is blunt: Death will collect all of them, in order. But there's a way out. Kill someone and you get the rest of that person's life. He says it and leaves the group alone with the idea, which ends up poisoning everyone.

Alex Browning and Clear Rivers sneak into the funeral home to see the body of Tod, the first Flight 180 survivor to die. Bludworth catches them. Instead of calling the police, he tells them what nobody wants to hear.

Death, he says, has a design. When Alex got everyone off the plane, he ruined it, and now Death is coming back for the people who should have died, in the right order. Figure out the order and maybe they can cheat Death for a while. It's the first time anyone puts the series' rules into words.

A year later, Clear comes back to the funeral home with Kimberly Corman and officer Thomas Burke, survivors of a pileup on Route 23. Bludworth does his usual thing: cryptic talk, dry humor and one clue.

Only new life can defeat Death, he says. The group decides that the baby of Isabella Hudson, a pregnant survivor, could break the list, and they race to make sure she gives birth.

In the present day, Stefani Reyes finds a reference in her grandmother Iris's notebook to someone called "J. B.", who knows how to beat Death. It's Bludworth. As a child he was at the opening of the Sky View restaurant and survived because Iris warned everyone. He was the last name on her list.

Years later Iris tracked him down, and together they studied the accidents that killed the survivors and their children. He tells Stefani's family there are only two ways out: take another life, or die clinically and be brought back, as Kimberly Corman did. Sick with cancer, he knows he'll die once Iris's bloodline is gone. Then he leaves.