From Scream Queens To Warrior Women: The Women of Nightmare On Elm Street: Maggie Burroughs/Katherine Krueger

Lisa Zane as Maggie Burroughs/Katherine Krueger — Freddy’s Dead The Final Nightmare New Line Cinema

Since 1984 many women have gone into battle against Freddy and believed they won but their victories were only temporary. Of those women, Nancy Thompson and Alice Johnson battled him more than once. Alice, it appeared succeeded in her second victory while Nancy failed. But in Nightmare 6 Freddy has to face an enemy he wasn’t expecting and this one has an even closer link to his mortal past, only she doesn’t remember it. This woman is Maggie Burroughs, a therapist at a shelter for troubled teens. When John Doe, the last surviving child of the town of Springwood is trying to escape, Freddy manipulates him into going to another town and ‘go fetch’. We are to assume it’s for more teens to kill and bring back to Springwood where he seems to be trapped.

John unwittingly succeeds in his mission when three of the shelter residents Spencer, Tracy and Carlos stow away in the van Maggie is using to take John back too Springwood to try to find out what his real name is. But the arrival of John at the shelter is linked to nightmares Maggie has been having recently, nightmares she can’t understand. Her colleague at the shelter, Doc, like Nancy, believes controlling dreams is the key to helping the troubled teens with Tracy being one of his best students. He also believes mastering dream control will help Maggie with her own nightmares. She is skeptical.

When the group arrrives in Springwood they discover all the adults have gone insane and the town is essentially a ghost town. Spencer, Tracy and Carlos are lured to the old Elm Street house which was where Nancy Thompson used to live and Freddy starts to pick off the teens one by one except Tracy who is putting the dream control skills she learned from Doc to the test. Meanwhile John and Maggie learn Freddy Krueger had a child that was taken away from him after he was arrested. John believes he is that child which is highly unlikely. The child would be around Maggie’s age and Freddy confirms he sent John out of Springwood to find her before he kills him.

We learned in Nightmares 2 and 5 Freddy is imprisoned in the dream world and Springwood unless he has a vessel to transport him into reality. Jesse in Nightmare 2 and Jacob and Alice in Nightmare 5 were able to transport him temporarily but now that he has found the vessel who shares an actual biological link to his mortal self he can now travel in both realms freely. This link also allows him to manipulate reality and Carlos, John and Spencer are forgotten by everyone but Doc, Tracy and Maggie.

Before his death John warns Maggie Freddy’s missing child was a girl and this forces her to investigate whether the theory about the connection between her dreams and John’s is correct. She now knows she is Katherine Krueger, Freddy’s missing child and she has a choice to make; carry on her father’s bloody legacy in a new town or end it. She chooses to end it.

Once skeptical of Doc’s dream control therapy, Maggie knows it is the key to stopping her father. Like Nancy she has to fight him in both worlds but Maggie, since she is his biological child, can actually travel through her father’s memories. Her predecessors were only able to use knowledge of the final years of his mortal life to try to weaken him but Maggie has his entire history work with. She discovers his murderous desires began in childhood and though he had many chances to try to change his life around, he chose the darkness. She also learned through her memories and his that his murder of her mother is what prompted her to become the main witness against him and this betrayal both hurt and angered him in his mortal and immortal lives. He sacrificed his soul to the dream demons in the final moments of his mortal life to seek his revenge as one himself. She seizes him in the dream realm in order to transport him back out into reality as a mortal again.

Though Freddy is weakened he still has some of his dream world power and during his battle with Maggie she takes his razor glove.

Go ahead, put it on. It’s in your blood. It feels good, doesn’t it? Now let your daddy show you how to use it.

Freddy watches with pride as Maggie gets used to the feel of the weapon on her hand, the weapon he made himself years ago, the weapon that gave him absolute power over all his victims. Maggie is once again faced with a choice…does she, Katherine Krueger, carry on her father’s legacy or does she end it? She again decides to end it. She turns his own weapon on him and destroys his body, releasing the dream power demons and sends her father’s soul to hell.

Nancy, Alice and Maggie are the three most powerful warrior women in the franchise but Maggie being Freddy’s direct descendant gives her more of an edge over the other two and were Nightmare 6 the final chapter in the series, Maggie would be the most powerful one. Nightmare 7 however restores that honor the Freddy’s first nemesis, Nancy, and the actress who portrayed her.