Are you wondering if there’s an end-credits scene in the latest Keanu Reeves movie? Well, we’ll tell you right here: There is one end-credits scene and no mid-credits scene.
Read on for full spoilers on that and more!
John Wick’s vendetta against the High Table reaches a fever pitch in Chapter 4, and the globetrotting battle royale that results has given us one of the best action films of our time. The latest movie in the franchise thrives and expounds on previously established John Wick mythology and character histories, while introducing new villains like the Marquis de Gramont to keep John chained to the violent life he longs to leave behind. So how does John’s latest attempt to get out from under the High Table go?
First, and importantly, there’s a dog in this movie belonging to Tracker, an independent operative who’s hunting John. That dog does not die. But he kills. Lots. Good girl. That has nothing to do with any of what’s to follow, but someone’s reading this for that information. Moving on…
John Wick: Chapter 4 Ending Explained
Chapter 4 sees John Wick and his allies openly challenging the authority of the High Table. In the opening scene, John returns to the Elder (well, an Elder) in the Moroccan desert who “sits above the High Table.” After some doomsaying on this new Elder’s part (the recasting is quickly glossed over), John kills him and takes back the wedding ring the previous Elder took from him in Chapter 3. John always goes back for his personal effects – he’s sentimental as hell. No luck on getting that finger back, though.
John’s assassination of the Elder, coupled with Winston’s (Ian McShane) admittedly obvious ploy to fake-kill John at the end of Chapter 3 by shooting him off the roof of the Continental, forces the Table to get serious about stamping out this rebellion. They deploy the Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) to oversee the hunt for John personally, imbued with all of their power and influence. His first act: firing Winston, leveling the New York Continental and murdering Charon (the late Lance Reddick) as punishment for aiding Wick. The Marquis pulls Caine (Donnie Yen) out of assassin retirement to hunt down and kill John by using his estranged daughter’s life as a bargaining chip. We’ll come back to that.
After a rather harried stay at the Osaka Continental, John and Winston reconnect. It’s here that Winston suggests a path for John to put his obligations to the Table behind him once and for all, by exploiting an archaic and mythic High Table rule: Members of the organization can challenge each other to duels. But John knows enough to recognize that as a pariah in the assassin underworld, he lacks the standing to challenge the Marquis in this way. Winston encourages John to reconcile with the Ruska Roma, the tribe that adopted him as an orphaned child. John essentially left the family in Chapter 3, having his “ticket torn” by Anjelica Huston’s Director in exchange for being smuggled out of New York City. He travels to Berlin to get himself a new “ticket” by carrying out the assassination of Killa (Scott Adkins), securing vengeance for his adoptive sister Katia (Natalia Tena), reinstatement as a member of the Ruska Roma, and of course, the right to challenge the Marquis to a duel.
High Table duel rules aren’t all that different from what you’d probably imagine the rules of a duel to be. Each combatant names a second - John chooses Winston (natch), and the Marquis chooses Caine - and over the course of a parley, they settle on the particulars with a game of chance. Round by round, John and the Marquis alternatingly flip numbered cards, with whoever turns the higher number getting to choose the rules of the duel. John’s able to select both the weapon (pistols) and the location (Sacré-Cœur), while the Marquis, crucially, sets the duel for sunrise the next morning instead of immediately, as John was hoping for.
As his final stipulation, the Marquis exercises his right to name a champion: Caine. He’s naming a blind duelist as his champion in a pistol duel with John Wick, a man whose nickname comes from the fact that he’s good enough at shooting guns to kill the Boogeyman. By this point, though, Caine has displayed such prowess in combat that the odds on this matchup still feel basically even. The Harbinger (Clancy Brown), the High Table parliamentarian overseeing the duel, declares that if either party doesn’t reach Sacré-Cœur, they forfeit the duel and their lives. Oh, and Winston’s thrown in that if John wins, the High Table has to rebuild the New York Continental that they leveled at the beginning of the movie and reinstate him as manager. Just like a little treat for himself at the end, there. Winston always gets his.
The extra prep time gives the Marquis time to marshal the High Table’s forces (and all contractible heavies in Paris) against John, leading to a third act comprised almost entirely of people doing everything in their power to kill the Baba Yaga, or at least slow him down long enough to make him late and forfeit the duel by default. Suffice to say, he makes good on his promise to those who would chase him from the end of Chapter 2: “I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all.” He does so, but he couldn’t have known at the time that he’d have to amend that statement to “we’ll kill them all.” Even though Donnie Yen’s Caine spends much of the film on John’s trail - and even kills their mutual friend Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada) for helping him - the assassin’s also a father, and much closer to John in ideology than any of the other killers on the hunt. Though John’s late arrival would mean a win by default for Caine, his sympathy for John’s plight and distaste for the Marquis leads him to help John murder the last of the grunts so that they can attempt to murder each other. Like gentlemen.
The duel between John and Caine begins with each man separated by 30 paces, with each landing glancing blows. They move in to 20 paces, and Caine’s shot wounds the already-battered John. They move in to 10 paces, impossible to miss now. Last round… and it’s John who goes down, critically injured. The Marquis moves in to take Caine’s gun, pleased as punch to be able to deliver the kill shot himself. But his overzealousness and sadism have him missing a pretty important read on the current situation: John never fired his gun. His final shot takes up residence somewhere inside the Marquis’ squishy brain meat and The Harbinger declares both John and Caine free of their obligations to the Table. After saying his goodbyes, John staggers down the steps of Sacré-Cœur to watch the sunrise over Paris. With his dying breath, John utters the name of his deceased wife Helen as he goes to join her in the hereafter. And their little dog, too. Winston returns John’s body to the States and, with the Bowery King, lays him to rest alongside Helen with a “farewell, my son” in John’s native tongue.
Is John Wick Really Dead?
But is John Wick really dead? True, we don’t see Wick’s head severed from his body, or his lifeblood running down the steps of Sacré-Cœur, but everything the movie tells us in dialogue and in its larger thematic movements says “absolutely.” John’s entire drive has been earning his freedom from the Table. There’s dramatic irony in seeing that freedom come in the form of death, but death has been a close companion of Wick’s for years now. Why not let his death mean sparing a friend the pain of losing the person they love most? You know, the same kind of pain that kicked off the whole franchise in the first place?
I have an opinion, but I don’t know if we should concretize it. Let the audience decide. -Keanu Reeves
In a post-screening Q&A with IGN, we asked Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski whether John actually perished in his duel. Here’s how they responded:
“I mean, I have an opinion, but I don’t know if we should concretize it. Let the audience decide,” said Reeves.
“I think we just wanted it to feel fulfilling to the end of John Wick’s journey, and whether it’s ‘John’ or ‘John Wick,’ we leave it to you guys,” Stahelski added, referencing the distinction the movie makes between “John Wick” the killer, and “John” the grieving husband. In any case, when the audience was asked whether they felt Wick was dead and most responded firmly that they did, a bemused Reeves responded with “Really? Cool.”
So is John Wick really dead? Let others speculate, but I’m saying “yes, John Wick is dead.” And that’s okay because, with no disrespect to Keanu Reeves… the John Wick franchise doesn’t really need John Wick anymore.
One of Chapter 4’s crowning achievements is how it expands the scope of the world of those that live under, sit at, or exist above the High Table. Caine, Winston, The Bowery King, Akira, Katia and the Ruska Roma… they’re all still in play. While John’s story feels resolved, the larger opera of the High Table’s rule is still teeming with possibilities. And Chapter 4 closes with what very much feels like a promise to explore those possibilities in the future.
We learn early on that Caine has distanced himself from his daughter to protect her from his violent legacy, much in the same way that the Casablanca Continental manager Sofia (Halle Berry) did in Chapter 3. It’s only after the Marquis threatens to kill his daughter if he doesn’t successfully carry out a hit on John that Caine returns to the fold. In contrast to John, Caine is characterized as having something to die, kill, and live for, all at the same time: his daughter.
Is There an End-Credits Scene in John Wick: Chapter 4?
Yes, there is one scene at the very end of the credits. There is no mid-credits scene.
In the post-credits scene, Caine returns to the public square where his daughter is performing violin, where we first met him. With John dead and his commitment to the Table fulfilled, Caine feels safe in approaching his daughter and moves towards her through the crowd. That’s when Akira (Rina Sawayama) emerges and pulls a knife on her father’s killer…
And that’s where we leave it. Another interesting note here: Rina Sawayama sings the song that plays over the end credits, which is titled “Eye for an Eye.” So, whether it’s “Caine: Chapter One” or “Akira: Chapter One,” there are still plenty of stories left to tell in the Wickiverse.
The Future of the Franchise
There are at least two projects set in the franchise still to be released: Peaco*ck’s The Continental, a 1970s-set prequel series following Winston and Charon’s early days, and Ballerina, a movie which will follow the Ruska Roma’s Rooney (Ana de Armas, taking over for Unity Phelan), who we briefly saw in Chapter 3 being directed by, well, The Director.
Taking place between Chapters 3 and 4, Rooney’s on the hunt for her father’s killer with the only information she has: an identifying tattoo. We also know that Keanu Reeves appears in that film and, at some point, has a fight scene with de Armas. Hmm… John Wick’s got tattoos. You… you don’t think… well, hey, a lot of people have tattoos!
However future stories set under the High Table play out, Chapter 4 brings John Wick’s story to an immensely satisfying close, while also leaving room for Keanu Reeves to make cameo appearances in stories set before his character’s death.
What did you think of the movie? Let’s discuss in the comments! And be sure to take a look at our guide to how to watch John Wick: Chapter 4.
