John Wick Lives? Let's Unpack the Keanu Reeves Cameo in 'Ballerina'

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John Wick lives again–or does he?–in From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (now in cinemas) a new spinoff directed by Underworld's Len Wiseman. Ballerina follows Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), who is trained by the Director (Angelica Huston) of the Ruska Roma crime syndicate to be both an accomplished ballet dancer and a cold-blooded assassin. As Eve seeks revenge upon the men who murdered her father, she recieves a bit of help from Reeve's Wick.
There's been some confusion about Reeves's role in Ballerina, considering Wick was definitively killed off at the end of John Wick: Chapter 4. But the filmmakers have figured out a clever loophole to have their cake (their Wick?) and eat it, too.
Here's everything John Wick does in Ballerina, and how he fits into the movie's timeline.Ballerina takes place between the events of John Wick: Chapter 3–Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4. The break between part three and part four is the longest in-world interim period between John Wick movies. Both John Wick 2 and John Wick 3 pick up moments after the conclusion of their predecessors.
Parabellum ended with a grievously wounded Wick being left for dead by the High Table, only to be rescued by Jason Mantzoukas's Tick Tock Man (more of him, please) and brought to the safe haven of the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne). When Wick turns up in Ballerina, despite sharing a few of the facial cuts he had at the end of part three, he seems to be entirely recovered from his injuries.
Yes, John Wick has a small role in Ballerina. He appears briefly in one scene at the beginning of the film and returns for a slightly longer sequence during the third act.John Wick's role in Ballerina is entirely incidental, and Reeves's participation smacks of being added during reshoots. He first appears at the 32-minute mark, though except for his and Eve's exchange which appears in the trailers ("How do I do what you do?" "Looks like you already are.") this sequence is mostly recut footage from Parabellum.
In that film, Wick went to Huston's Director of the Ruska Roma crime syndicate, who also happens to run the ballet school at which Eve is training, to seek safe passage from America to Casablanca. That's repeated here, with much of the context removed, before he's cornered by Eve as he leaves the school.
In Ballerina, he provides Eve with some sage advice before promptly disappearing. As the third act kicks into gear, when it seems Eve will ignite a war between the Ruska Roma and Gabriel Byrne's Chancellor, the Director calls in Wick to assassinate Eve. Wick travels to her location, but instead of killing her, simply tells her to leave. She refuses, and the two roll around in the snow, exchanging punches.
Wick loses the fight, and then disappears from the narrative for a few minutes before randomly showing up in a sniper tower, picking off bad guys to assist Eve. (The film's troubled production is never more obvious than in the way characters disappear and reappear willy nilly.) There's a classic John Wick fight, after which he's suddenly back in his sniper position once again assisting Eve, and then he's gone from the movie for good. Honestly, despite Reeves's best efforts, all of the stuff here involving Wick feels labored and confusing.No, Ballerina does not retcon or in any way affect the ending of John Wick 4, which ended with the titular character definitively dead and six feet underground. Since Ballerina takes place between the events of Parabellum and Chapter 4, there's no intersection between the events of Ballerina and those depicted in part four. In fact, aside from Wick's first scene in Ballerina which occurs at the same time as one scene from part three, there is no plot carryover from the John Wick franchise to Ballerina.
If you're hoping to see the ending of part four reversed, you're going to be waiting a long time. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter this week, franchise megamind Chad Stahelski (who directed the first film, has shepherded the franchise, and oversaw extensive, months-long reshoots on Ballerina) said that, despite his and Reeves's ambition to make a John Wick 5, they have no intent of walking back the ending of Chapter 4.
"Keanu and I are not interested in going backwards," Stahelski said. "I'm not going to lie to you, it's a bit of a conundrum. Me and Mike Finch—the writer on four who's also writing five—we've got a pretty good story that I think is cool. Once we have a 50-page book, and if we're feeling it, we'll sit with Keanu and shape this thing. Look, everybody seems to want it. It's a matter of whether we crack it. We're actively working on it. [But] is it going to be satisfying?"In short, no. Stahelski told THR that Wick "wasn't in the original [Ballerina] script" and that he "was kind of against" the cameo was first suggested. In the end, the decision to include Reeve's character was a political decision to keep the franchise true to itself.
"I do see the benefit, and we wanted to help out [director Len Wiseman]," Stahelski explained. "We had just opened John Wick 4, and it was huge. He couldn't go back to the model of the first John Wick and do a little $18 million indie thing and try to build it up. In order to stay in the same game, you got to give [Wiseman] a fighting chance. And the easiest way to transfer that over—at least, from the studio point of view—was have Wick in Ballerina in a special timeline.At this time, there are no plans for John Wick to reprise his role in the spinoff series named after Donny Yen's fan-favorite blind assassin, who debuted in John Wick 4. "The Donny Yen spinoff doesn't have the John Wick character," Stahelski definitively told THR. "It's got Donny Yen and it's an ode to kung-fu movies. If John Wick was [inspired by] Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, this is about Chow Yun-fat, John Woo, and Wong Kar-wai. So, I think that one is a little easier to get across to audiences because it's in a sub-genre of what we love."John Wick Lives? Let's Unpack the Keanu Reeves Cameo in 'Ballerina' first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 6, 2025