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SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers await for John Wick: Chapter 4, which is in theaters now.
After killing countless High Table henchmen, falling down hundreds of stairs and dueling a blind swordsman, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick is…dead?
John Wick: Chapter 4 ends with Wick seemingly lying six feet underground after succumbing to three gunshot wounds sustained during his last duel with Caine (Donnie Yen). Winston (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) even pay their respects to the master assassin’s tombstone, which sits next to his wife’s final resting place.
But before he died, Wick finally freed himself from the clutches of the High Table. Instead of firing his third and final bullet in his duel against Caine, Wick held on to the round and fired at the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgard), who had walked over to deliver the final punch to Wick before checking to see if he could outside was of bullets. With the death of de Gramont, Wick gained his freedom, but was barely able to enjoy it before dying peacefully on the steps of Sacré-Cœur in France as the sun rose.
But is Wick really dead? We never actually see him die from his wounds, nor do we see his body buried. After all, he has survived an inhuman number of stab wounds, gunshots, brand marks, hard falls from absurd heights and other serious physical injuries in four films. At the end of John Wick 3, he faked his death before the High Table Justice (Asia Kate Dillon) and recovered from his wounds with the Bowery King Underground, hiding until the beginning of John Wick 4. His death has been staged before, so why not do it again?
In August 2020, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer announced that “John Wick 5” was already in the works before “John Wick 4” had even started filming. The original plan was for the fourth and fifth installments to be shot back-to-back, which ended up not happening. Last week, director Chad Stahelski told , “In our eyes, Keanu and I are done for now. We’re going to give ‘John Wick’ a break. I’m sure the studio has a plan. If everyone likes it and it gets crazy, we’ll take a quiet minute.”
“The thought process was when we had the opportunity after ‘Chapter 3’, what was the ‘why’?” Reeves said at a post-screening Q&A at the SXSW Film Festival. “When Chad and I talked about it, the ‘why’ was death, and it was the death of John Wick. That in some way he would gain his peace or freedom was the reason for making the film. You have to have the ‘why’.”
While a mainline John Wick movie is a while away, Reeves is already booked to star in the upcoming spin-off Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas. Set between the third and fourth John Wick films, Ballerina stars de Armas as an assassin named Rooney who hunts down her family’s killers. We’ve previously seen a young Rooney in John Wick 3, where she was played by ballet dancer Unity Phelan and was under the tutelage of Anjelica Huston’s director. Huston’s character is the leader of the Ruska-Roma crime syndicate that Wick was once a part of. Also joining the group is Katia (Natalia Tena), who brought Wick back into the adoptive family and branded him with her crest in “John Wick 4.”
“Ballerina”, which has no release date yet, could further break up the shadowy world of “John Wick”. In addition to Reeves, the cast includes Huston, McShane and newcomers Gabriel Byrne, Norman Reedus and Catalina Sandino Moreno. Lance Reddick will also appear as The Continental Concierge Charon in his final appearance, which was filmed last week before his death. Reddick’s character is shot dead by the Marquis de Gramont at the beginning of John Wick 4.
Also coming with the John Wick franchise is a prequel series that will explore the origins of The Continental and many of its main characters. In the future, The Continental will be set in Peacock in the 70’s and show how a young Winston gained control of the assassin hotel and safe haven. Colin Woodell plays a young Winston, Ayomide Adegun is Charon, Katie McGrath is The Adjudicator and Peter Greene is Uncle Charlie, who secretly disposes of bodies in the John Wick films. Mel Gibson plays a character named Cormac, and the cast includes many other newcomers playing a variety of Continental guests and hit men.
John Wick 4 also has a final, future story arc teased in the post-credits scene starring Akira (Rina Sawayama) and Caine. At the beginning of the film, Caine kills Akira’s father, Koji (Hiroyuki Sanada), who was Wick’s friend and manager of the Osaka Continental Hotel. Akira, the hotel’s concierge, approaches Caine in the post-credits scene to seek revenge for her father’s death, perhaps to provoke an imminent showdown.