‘John Wick 4’ Almost Had a More Obvious Final Scene

‘John Wick: Chapter 4’: Director Chad Stahelski on the Final Scene’s Switch to Something More Ambiguous

The latest ‘Wick’ movie features something drastic, but in earlier edits, the scene was even more obvious than the final cut.

(L-R) Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves attend the Lionsgate CinemaCon presentation in support of 'John Wick: Chapter 4' at the Colosseum Theatre in Caesar’s Palace on April 28th, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo by Eric Charbonneau.

Before we get into the meat of this story, a quick yet vital SPOILER WARNING if you have somehow not yet seen ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’.

Still with us? Don’t try to make us excommunicado because we somehow broke a rule –– you were warned.

John Wick: Chapter 4

"No way back, one way out."

R2 hr 50 minMar 24th, 2023

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Watch John Wick: Chapter 4 Online

John Wick is dead.

At least, that’s what the end of ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ would have you believe. After defeating Bill Skarsgård’s Marquis and beating the High Table for good, it appears Keanu Reeves’ seemingly indestructible assassin has taken one bullet too many, and –– no! –– dies at Paris’ Sacré-Coeur while the sun rises, dreaming of his late loving wife Helen, before being buried in the plot next to her.

But could that have been a plot by our hero to fake his death? According to Chad Stahelski, there was originally a plan to point to Wick’s survival more clearly, but that test audiences didn’t buy that.

Stahelski on the scene

(L to R) Director Chad Stahelski and Bill Skarsgård as Marquis in 'John Wick: Chapter 4.' Photo Credit: Murray Close.

Here’s what director Stahelski told Empire Magazine about the scene:

“We had a different ending. [The theatrical ending] was the ending Keanu and I wanted, but we shot a different ending. We shot an ending where you actually saw John Wick at the end of the movie. So, it was very clear that he was still alive. The audiences we tested with absolutely preferred the ambiguous ending.”

The future of the franchise

(L to R) Ian McShane as Winston, Keanu Reeves as John Wick, and director Chad Stahelski on the set of 'John Wick: Chapter 4.' Photo Credit: Murray Close.

The End. Or is it? The movie does feature Wick getting buried, but a returning main character (and actor) is certainly something that studio Lionsgate would like to see, since according to its CEO, a fifth film is in development, and it has more Wick in the works than your average candle factory.

Stahelski, though, won’t be drawn on specifics of whether there will be more ‘Wick’. He and Reeves mostly knew they weren’t satisfied with how the third movie had left things.

Here’s Stahelski’s statement on coming up with ‘Chapter 4’s finale:

“We didn’t feel like we had done our best. We both felt like we could have ended the series better. We didn’t feel like we stuck the landing, and that’s a shitty feeling. Because we love the character, we love working together, we love the world. I said, ‘I’d be pissed if that’s how they ended the whole series. I’d be pissed at the director,’ And I had just read this treatise on samurai etiquette called Hagakure, the art of the way of dying. And we’re like, ‘Yeah, he’s got to die. And we got to come up with the coolest way to make the happen. We’ve got to make it all about, ‘you can only have a good death if you had a good life’.’ That’s the first line we wrote on a napkin in Japan, three years out. We wrote the movie backwards off that one thing.”

So, while there are currently no official plans for more main ‘Wick’ movies from the creative team, ‘Chapter 4’ has been successful enough that you can all but guarantee that something will arrive to go along with big-screen spin-off ‘Ballerina’ (starring Anna de Armas) and TV prequel ‘The Continental’.