Breaking Down the Cliffhanger Ending of The Old Guard 2

Time​ Magazine

2 days ago

Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Old Guard and The Old Guard 2
The final scene of The Old Guard 2 teases a larger, exciting adventure, but after fans have waited five years for a follow-up to 2020's Netflix action film about a loyal and devoted band of immortal mercenaries, the sequel also feels like it stops mid-sentence. An adaptation of the comic books written by Greg Rucka, with art by Leandro Fernández, and published by Image Comics, both The Old Guard and its sequel tell the story of Andy (Charlize Theron), aka Andromache of Scythia, looking good for 6,000 years old, and her band of merry and melancholy soldiers who cannot die. The Old Guard 2, which saw some delays, finally released on July 2, picks up with newbie immortal Nile (KiKi Layne) fully accepted by the group on a high-octane mission in Split, Croatia, aided by the helpful CIA turncoat Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor). We learned in the first film that immortality can run out at any time, and mortality has caught up to Andy by the end of The Old Guard after she stops immediately healing from battle wounds. But it hasn't diminished her capacity for intense combat and badassery.
The Old Guard 2 picks up about right where the first film, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, left off. The Old Guard's final cliffhanger scene revealed that two characters we thought were old news would be back for any future sequel: the remorseful traitor Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) is surprised by Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo), an immortal, who Andy had lost hundreds of years ago. Quynh was persecuted for being a witch and submerged underwater for 500 years in an iron maiden – in the first scene of The Old Guard 2, Quynh's metal coffin is dragged back up to the surface by Discord (Uma Thurman), an older, crueller immortal who shares none of the compassion and loyalty of Andy's crew.
When the Old Guard first sees a security image of Discord, Nile recognizes her from her dreams. Andy goes to see Tuah (Henry Golding), who is basically an immortal archivist, collecting any written or reported evidence of their kind from across human history in a sprawling library of speculation and superstition. This is where Nile saw Discord in her dream, and what she saw was Discord stealing all of Tuah's books about the Old Guard. According to Tuah, Discord is the oldest immortal (older than Andy, even) and witnessing the persecution of her kind did not make her believe in immortal solidarity, but that she would only be protected by amassing wealth and power—and hoarding it for herself. She thinks their persecution is exacerbated by immortals like Andy interfering with humans.
What's Discord's plan with our heroes?
Discord knows reintroducing Quynh to the land of the living spells chaos for the tight-knit Old Guard—even though Andy et al. have been searching for her all these years, it didn't feel like that thorough from her perspective. Booker tells the team where to find Quynh, and as Andy and her vengeful ex have a painful reunion, Discord has an ominous conversation with Nile in a church where she drops a big lore bombshell: the birthmarks on Discord and Nile's arms shows that they're the first and the last immortals, and Nile has an unconfirmed power that Discord is hungry for.
The film builds to a massive showdown at an industrial facility where in an act of redemption, Booker gives his immortality to Andy. How come? Earlier in the film, Tuah shared a theory that if the last immortal wounds another immortal, then they would lose their immortality, and Discord likely wants Nile to make all the Old Guard mortal and then kill them. Legend says that a wounded immortal can also gift their deathlessness to someone who is mortal, which is how Andy is back to her magic-healing self by the time she faces down Discord in a battle of blades.
What questions does The Old Guard 2 leave us with?
At the end of The Old Guard 2, Discord has incapacitated Andy's team, including Nile, bagging them and carting them away on choppers. In a moment of tense intimacy, Quynh chooses to not lash out by detonating a bomb set up by Discord, a small step towards making peace with her feelings of betrayal at the world she came back to. Discord and Andy fight, with Discord eventually getting away with all of Andy's friends. It's worth pointing out that Discord is not in Rucka and Fernández's second volume Force Multiplied—their story focuses on the venomous return and revenge of Nokiro (a Japanese character rewritten for the films as Quynh, to suit Vietnamese actress Veronica Ngo). Force Multiplied is a far more confronting and personal story than what we get in The Old Guard 2, where a 'big bad' reveals in her final moments that she is mortal and wants Nile to gift her the immortality of all the Old Guard.
Recuperating at Tuah's library (it seems Nile accidentally robbed Quynh of her immortality in their skirmish; it's hard to track which of these people is really immortal in any given moment), the pair decide to wage war on their mutual enemy, reuniting for the first time in centuries.
This is where The Old Guard 2 ends: a rallying cry for a mission we never get to see, with a quick quip to show a rift has healed. 'Are you going to do what you do best and fight by my side?' asks Andy. 'No, you will fight by my side,' replies Quynh. Our leads run towards a door—and the credits hit before they even step outside. The Old Guard ended on a cliffhanger, yes, but it was more of a neat coda on a satisfyingly concluded journey than the sequel, which ends midway through the story.
Compare another bonkers sequel-tease ending from a recent genre film: 28 Years Later ends with a cliffhanger that introduces a psychotic and violent cult modeled in the image of one of Britain's most notorious children's entertainers. But 'the Jimmies' only appeared after our protagonist had completed his emotional arc, plus the sequel that will explain this cliffhanger has already been shot and dated for release. As of writing, there is no confirmation that The Old Guard 3 will be made. For an action series about the perils of time stretching on and on, it's a little ironic for The Old Guard 2 to cut itself so punishingly short.