John Wick Chapter 3's Biggest Unanswered Questions
There's an old saying: curiosity killed the cat. It's a quick way of saying that if you ask too many questions, you may not like the answers — or troubles — you get as a result. This particular adage would certainly serve viewers of the John Wick series well: ask too many questions, and your head might start to hurt.
And yet, ask questions we must! In the assassin-happy world of John Wick, all actions have consequences — regardless of how much sense those actions or consequences might make when held up to the slightest scrutiny. As we learn more about John Wick's life and the complicated rules that make up his bullet-riddled society, it's only natural that some of this stuff is going to leave some viewers scratching their heads. Here are some (but not all) of the biggest unanswered questions that we came up with by the end of John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum.
What happened to Sofia?
Each installment of the John Wick saga seems to introduce more important characters from John's past, featuring some pretty big-time Hollywood actors playing the parts. While these new faces fill in some blanks, they certainly raise plenty of questions of their own. Sofia, played by Halle Berry, probably has some of the most memorable and exciting scenes with Wick. The two team up (along with her very good dogs) to get John on the road to meeting the Elder of the High Table, and kill a bunch of jerks together in the process. When all is said and done, Sofia's debt to John is paid — and she seems to think that he actually owes her another favor now.
But while just about everyone else who comes into Wick's orbit throughout his period of being excommunicado gets punished by the Adjudicator or Zero and his kung fu goons, we never see the consequences of Sofia's decision to help John. Will the High Table exact vengeance on Sofia in the next film? Will she be forced out of her own hotel management position as well? Will her mysterious hidden daughter come into play as a result?
What's up with this High Table anyway?
The biggest source of conflict within John Wick: Chapter 3 is the friction between the characters and the rules dictating their secret society. It all starts in John Wick: Chapter 2, when John breaks the rules inside the Continental by killing Santino D'Antonio, the crime lord who'd tricked John into killing his sister Gianna D'Antonio — all so Santino could ascend to her seat on the High Table. Everyone who helps John afterward is likewise punished for breaking yet more rules. Meanwhile, John travels across the world to meet with the Elder, who apparently runs the High Table, and who tasks him with killing Winston, the Continental Manager, to make things right.
But let's be real: how do you get to run the High Table? And just how do all these crazy rules get decided? For a group of lawless murderers, they sure do seem to be sticklers for regulations. Moreover, how does someone get a job with the High Table? Asia Kate Dillon's Adjudicator sure seemed pretty young to have such a powerful position. Were representatives from the High Table showing up at colleges, offering exciting jobs in rule enforcement among secret assassin societies? And how come John never managed to climb the corporate ladder and get his own seat considering how he's literally the greatest assassin who ever lived? You'd think they'd give him a seat just to give the other million or so assassins a chance to make a buck.
Just how many assassins are there?
The end of John Wick Chapter 2 features a pretty cool moment. In a park in New York City, Winston declares John excommunicado and the price on his head goes worldwide. After that, tons of phones start ringing all around John and his dog, seeming to indicate that in addition to all of the assassins John faced already in the movie, all these people are likewise hired guns. John Wick Chapter 3 continues with this thread, as would-be badasses all over the world spot John out in the wild and try to snuff him out.
But as the film continues, hardly a moment goes by when John isn't beset by highly trained killers just, like, hanging around, waiting for him to stroll by. It raises a pretty big question: just how many people in this universe earn a living wage as an assassin? Are all of these people just trading the same pile of money back and forth as each one of them kills some other assassin for one reason or another? Shouldn't they have run out of assassins by now? Do at least some of them have side jobs as dog walkers or Uber drivers? New York is expensive — you gotta hustle if you want to make your rent. Chances are good most landlords won't take fancy gold coins in lieu of a check.
How does this tie in to the Starz show?
In June 2017, news hit the web that the filmmakers behind the John Wick franchise had plans to develop a TV show set in the same universe called The Continental. The show will reportedly be set in the New York-based hotel of the same name, though it will supposedly feature a new cast of characters that will only somewhat intersect with the characters we've met in the movie franchise.
Knowing all this helps make sense of the turn of events toward the end of the film, when the Adjudicator agrees to allow Winston to retain control of the Continental, and to restore its status as neutral ground for the world's assassins. You can't have a show about the assassin hotel if the hotel goes out of business, right? And yet Ian McShane, the actor who plays Winston, has reportedly said that he has no plans to appear in the show. So will the show recast the part to keep the character around? Or will he conveniently be on vacation in Alaska throughout the show's run? Maybe he'll just have a different kind of food poisoning each episode, and won't ever come out of the bathroom. Yeah, that's probably what they'll do.
Did Winston expect John to live?
Now here's the biggest question of all. After agreeing to let Winston keep control over his hotel, the Adjudicator still declares that John Wick is a big problem: he's still excommunicado for breaking the Continental's rules in the previous movie, and he hasn't fulfilled his mission to kill Winston per his deal with the Elder. In response, Winston grabs a gun and shoots John repeatedly — pointedly aiming for his bulletproof suit, rather than his head — and Wick falls off the roof of the hotel, bouncing off of a couple fire escapes before he thuds onto the ground like Wile E. Coyote. And just like Wile E. Coyote, Wick is still breathing after his monumental fall. By the end of the film, he and the Bowery King have vowed to take revenge on the High Table in John Wick 4: Wacky Wicky.
When Winston learns that Wick is possibly still alive, he doesn't seem all that surprised. And yet, by any reasonable measure of logic and physics, even in a world as cartoonishly violent as the one John Wick inhabits, Wick for sure should have been a smear on the pavement. Does Winston know something we don't about John Wick's skeleton and organs? Is he secretly a cyborg?
Or is this really all just taking place in the Matrix, and now Neo and Morpheus are going to team up to take it to the machines one last time? Fingers crossed.