So is John Wick dead or what?
Yes. Well, probably. Maybe. We do, in fact, see Wick, seriously wounded and bleeding after his literal pistols-at-dawn duel with Donnie Yen’s blind assassin, Caine (not to mention an entire night of getting shot, punched, kicked, and run over by seemingly everyone in Paris), keel over, lifeless, on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur basilica. After that, we cut to New York, with Winston (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), along with John’s dog, standing over his grave, where he’s been buried next to his late wife, Helen. “Loving Husband,” the gravestone reads, just as John himself had requested earlier in the film. “I never thought I’d see the day,” the King says, before asking Winston if he thinks John is in Heaven or hell. “Who knows,” says Winston. The King chuckles to himself as he walks away. Winston stays behind, touches John’s grave, and mutters, “Farewell, my son,” in Russian. Then he too walks away, as the camera cranes up.
Of course, scenes of people standing over the graves of heroes who didn’t actually die is a common motif in modern action cinema, so we keep waiting for that inevitable reveal. And there’s a hint of it as we see the dog turning off-screen. What’s next? A shadow in the distance watching them? A telltale mop-top quietly moving into frame? The dirt on the grave levitating mysteriously? No. We see none of these things, and the credits finally start to roll.
Surely there’s an end-credits stinger showing us that John Wick is still alive? Maybe lunching with his new family in a café on the banks of the Arno, Bruce Wayne style? In fact, there is an end-credits scene, but it’s not what we expect. We see Caine, now re-retired and supposedly free of all his obligations as a hired assassin, walking to listen to his violin-virtuoso daughter as she plays in a crowded outdoor plaza. He holds a bouquet of flowers, which suggests that he will finally be able to let her know he’s there. But then a hooded figure approaches him. It’s Akira (Rina Sawayama), whose father Caine killed earlier in the film. Revenge in her eyes, she pulls a knife. Fade to black. No John Wick. But perhaps a set-up for a sequel or spinoff of some sort.
