This post contains spoilers for The Old Guard.
With its introspective tone, diverse cast, and restrained yet thrilling approach to action sequences, Netflix's The Old Guard breathes new life into the superhero movie. In the film, which is based on Greg Rucka's comics, Andy, played by Charlize Theron, leads an immortal band of warriors that spends the centuries trekking across the globe, fighting (mostly) for just causes and saving lives. Just as the group takes on a new recruit, US Marine Nile (Kiki Layne), they have to face off against a new, thoroughly modern foe: Merrick, the evil pharma executive who wants to kidnap them and study the source of their centuries-long lives. The movie's ending leaves the door open to a sequel—one that director Gina Prince-Bythewood says could be a very real possibility.
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What happens at the end of The Old Guard?
In the movie's climax, Andy and her fellow soldier Booker head off to rescue their comrades Joe and Nicky, who are already being held in Merrick's lab. To find their pals, they track down former CIA agent Copley, who earlier set a trap for the team with a fake mission in order to obtain video proof of their healing powers. But Booker, who has a genuine death wish after being alive for more than two centuries, double crosses his friends, and hands himself and Andy over to Merrick. In the course of the action, Andy is shot in the stomach, but doesn't heal instantly—revealing that she's lost her immortality, as all members of the Old Guard do in time.
Luckily, Nile, who'd earlier planned to rejoin her family, decides instead to rescue the rest of the gang. Copley, who turned them over in the hopes of finding a cure for disease in the wake of his wife's illness and death, decides to help Nile free her buddies. Nile successfully breaks Andy, Booker, Joe, and Nicky free, and kills Merrick by tackling him out of a high-rise window. (She's totally fine, of course.) In the end, the Old Guard pretty much returns to business as usual, but with the knowledge that any mission could be Andy's last and with Booker on a century-long time out for betraying the group.
But the movie also has a pre-credits scene that opens the door to a sequel. The exiled Booker, who now spends his time getting drunk in his native France, returns to his apartment to find Quynh waiting for him. Now, we learned Quynh's story earlier in the film, and she's a cautionary tale for why the Old Guard really do not want to be captured. Way back in the Middle Ages, Andy and Quynh were partners, before they were captured and tried as witches. The fact that no method of execution managed to kill them really seemed to back up the witch theory, so Quynh was locked in an iron coffin and thrown into the sea. She spent the next 500 years locked in a box, unable to die and slowly losing her mind.
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Will there be a sequel to The Old Guard?
So Quynh's back, and checking in on Booker. The fact that she didn't look up Andy and is instead knocking on the door on the one expelled member of the Old Guard makes it seem likely that she's being positioned as the Big Bad for any potential sequel. And having spent half a millennium in a box with nothing but her grievances for company, Quynh could definitely be ready to raise hell.
According to Prince-Bythewood, the Old Guard's future depends on how audiences respond to the film. "It is wholly up to the audience if they want to see more. I mean, Greg, his story of The Old Guard has always been a trilogy," she told Esquire. "And the new one actually just came out a couple of weeks ago. So, I know where the story's going, and it's pretty great. So, if the audience wants more, then there's absolutely more story to tell."
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