The premise of Netflix’s The Old Guard was as simple as it was effective. The titular team are immortal warriors that have played major roles in shaping the direction of humanity over the centuries, and in true blockbuster movie fashion, there’s naturally an evil corporation who wants to harness their unexplained and relatively undefined superpowers for their own means.
While the dramatic stakes are inevitably lessened when none of your main characters can be killed, there were some interesting ruminations on life and humanity buried under the explosive action sequences and R-rated hand-to-hand combat. And after enticing 78 million viewers in the first four weeks it was available to stream, not to mention securing a solid Rotten Tomatoes score of 80%, The Old Guard is almost destined to launch a multi-film franchise for Netflix.
On that note, we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us the platform had Extraction 2 in development long before it was confirmed – that the plot of the sequel will revolve around the discovery of even more immortals, while finally diving into the backstory of why only a select few people have ever been lucky enough to be granted eternal life.
The first installment already added KiKi Layne’s Nile Freeman to the gang that had been together for hundreds of years, while the stinger set up the return of Quynh. She was the first ever ally of Charlize Theron’s Andy who was long thought to have been captured and sent to the bottom of the ocean to spend an eternity drowning. It’s presumably all going to tie together in the end, as no good sequel is complete without new faces being added to the mix while picking up cliffhangers from the last film, so The Old Guard 2 certainly has plenty of narrative threads to pull.
