WARNING: Contains major John Wick: Chapter 4 spoilers
For four films now, it’s been increasingly apparent that nothing can stop John Wick. Plummeting off the roof of the Continental? He’s handily scraped off the pavement to fight another day. Shot in the gut by an assassin disguised as a busking violinist? Mere minutes later, he’s brutalising someone with a pencil. Rolled down the entirety of Paris’ Montmartre steps just as he was about to reach the top? Like Sisyphus, Keanu Reeves’ mythological hitman simply gets back up to ascend it all over again. Surviving is his speciality. Or is it? Because, if the final minutes of John Wick: Chapter 4 are to be believed, the Baba Yaga is no more. After getting one over on Bill Skarsgård’s Marquis and beating the High Table for good, it appears John Wick has taken one bullet too many, and – gasp! – dies at Sacré-Cœeur while the sun rises, dreaming of his late loving wife Helen, before being buried in the plot next to her. The End. Well… maybe.
It wasn’t always going to go down like this. Back in 2020, it was announced that John Wick: Chapter 5 would shoot back-to-back with Chapter 4, suggesting there was plenty more life in the action hero yet. What changed in the meantime is currently unknown – did the two projects simply get rolled into one super-sized three-hour behemoth? Was it an artistic choice, or a knock-on effect of lockdown? Did Keanu simply want a rest? (He’s more than earned one, in all honesty.) Either way, the latest outing quite literally lays a tombstone on the central character’s journey, laying him to rest after four flicks of unending mayhem.
Plans for the franchise's future are as wide-ranging as the damage radius from a round of Dragon's Breath ammo.
But in Hollywood, death is never the end – and the end of John Wick, the man, doesn’t mean the end of John Wick, the universe. Plans for the franchise’s future are as wide-ranging as the damage radius from a round of Dragon’s Breath ammo. For one, there’s the big-screen Ballerina spin-off coming in 2024, springing from John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum as it dials into the dancers-as-assassins thread pulled from Wick’s own Ruska Roma family. Centre stage there will be Ana de Armas, who – after her brief, scene-stealing appearance in No Time To Die, and her highly capable action-packed turn in The Gray Man – has long been ready for a leading action role. Since it’s set between the events of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, it will feature an appearance from John Wick himself, plus Ian McShane’s Winston, and the late, great Lance Reddick as concierge Charon (the film shot in Prague in late 2022).
What it doesn’t have is director Chad Stahelski – the filmmaker who’s guided every Wick film to the screen, and whose one-upping partnership with Keanu Reeves has ensured the action sequences in the saga become increasingly jaw-dropping from film to film. While Stahelsksi is on board as a producer, and action specialists 87Eleven Productions (co-founded by original John Wick co-director David Leitch) are producing, it remains to be seen whether incoming director Len Wiseman can keep pushing the envelope of on-screen anarchy – a key driver to the main series’ success. Is a John Wick movie still a John Wick movie without not only John Wick, but his signature action style too?
The film's creators have remained circumspect on whether this really is the end of Reeves' rip-roaring revenge rampage.
That’s not the only new venture on the way. The Chapter 4 post-credits scene teed up a spin-off for Rina Sawayama’s Akira and Donnie Yen’s blind assassin Caine – an idea which certainly holds potential, given Sawayama’s impressive screen debut (alongside her ascent as one of the UK’s greatest and most creative pop stars) and Yen’s legendary status. Plus, there’s hotel-centric project The Continental – not a sprawling assassin-of-the-week serialised show, but a taut three-part miniseries, delving into the decades of history of Winston’s safe-haven stomping ground. That, too, faces the task of not featuring the films’ major stars (Colin Woodell is playing the young Winston), but does feature Stahelski, Leitch and screenwriter Derek Kolstad (behind the first three films) as executive producers.
The future of John Wick, then, largely doesn’t seem to feature John Wick himself beyond the odd, canon-permitting cameo – a potential sticking point for fans of Keanu, whose action mastery and inimitable aura are key ingredients to the carefully-calibrated brew. Except, the end of Chapter 4 might not be as definitive as we thought. In spoilery interviews (including Empire’s own upcoming Spoiler Special podcast conversation with Chad Stahelski – sign up here to hear that when it drops), the film’s creators have remained circumspect on whether this really is the end of Reeves’ rip-roaring revenge rampage. We never actually see Wick die on screen, or his body in the aftermath. There is ample wiggle room if the decision was made that he’d actually faked his demise – and given the labyrinthine lore that the sequels in particular have revelled in, the heightened tone of the franchise might allow for Wick to return without rankling viewers too much. The appetite will certainly be there – Chapter 4 earned a series-best $137.5 million worldwide on its opening weekend, sure to add urgency to those Chapter 5 talks. Yeah, we’re thinking he might be back.
Given the poignancy of that Chapter 4 ending though – of Wick finding peace at last, of closing on his memories of Helen, of finally resting alongside her – it would be a shame to go full Buffy Season 6 and demand that the character be clawed back from the beyond for our own gain, pulling him back in just when he thought he was out. Which is why this is the sequel we really want: a properly mythological John Wick movie, swapping the criminal underworld for the actual underworld. After all those allusions to ancient gods, circles of hell and devilish deeds, it’s time to finally commit and have Baba Yaga chase down Hades himself. There, the Boogeyman might finally meet a worthy adversary.