'John Wick: Chapter 4' Ending Explained: How the Final Scene Gives Way to Another Sequel

[Editor's note: Spoilers ahead for "John Wick: Chapter 4".]

John Wick has been through a lot in nine years. The brooding hitman, played by Keanu Reeves, attempted to retire from the profession in the first film and mourn his late wife, only to spring back into action seeking revenge for his dead dog. From there, John just can't take a break. He is forced back into service for the sequel, which ends with a contract on his head by the High Table, and decides to end the entire hitman business by the end of chapter three.

In the fourth entry, released this weekend, the renegade assassin closes in on his target, setting his sights on High Table boss Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) even as the Marquis hopes to take John down first.

As usual with the "John Wick" movies, the story stakes are mostly a giant MacGuffin for John to shoot, punch and smash his way through highly stylized environments, surviving many impossible trials along the way. This time John somehow manages to get through some pretty gnarly falls, smashing glass and, in one of the movie's funniest moments, tumbling down seemingly endless stairs, but he still manages to get himself up. get up and keep pushing through. .

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Until the end, that is, where the future of the whole series suddenly becomes harder to fathom.

The final act of "John Wick: Chapter 4" finds John agreeing to a sunrise duel with the Marquis, who appoints blind killer Caine (Donnie Yen) to take his place. After Caine hits John with a bullet that knocks him down and John appears to miss his target, the Marquess takes the gun from Caine in an attempt to fire the killing shot. But it turns out John didn't fire his gun and uses his last bullet to kill the Marquis, destroying the High Table and freeing John from the bounty on his head.

A bloodied John staggers up the stairs, sits down, and remembers his late wife before he falls. In the final scene, John's friends Winston (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) are in a graveyard regarding John's headstone and its place next to his wife. They walk away, the camera drifts through the trees and we fade into black.

So that's it, right? John is dead, finally at peace with the love of his life? Not so fast.

"It's an ambiguous ending," producer Basil Iwanyck, who produced all four "John Wick" films, told IndieWire. "I'll put it like that. We don't have that answer."

Iwanyck quoted where director Chad Stahelski said that if the new film was a success, he would sit down with Reeves in Japan over a glass of whiskey and discuss how they could pursue the story with another chapter. However this hypothetical discussion plays out, it's not hard to imagine a scenario in which John has essentially faked his death to start his life over.

“There are really two characters,” Iwanyck said. "There's John Wick and John, the civilian. The question for all of us is, OK, if audiences embrace the story and the box office works, is there another story to tell? I don't know. But I don't think we've locked ourselves in a corner, dead or alive, by the end of this movie."