‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ very nearly had a different ending, reveals director

The following article contains spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 4 and its ending.

It seems that John Wick: Chapter 4 originally gave our gun-toting hero a very definitive fate, but not the kind you’d imagine.

The fourth installment ended on a fairly ambiguous note, but not from a narrative standpoint. After confronting Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont, a powerful member of the High Table and the film’s main antagonist, Wick seemingly succumbed to his wounds on the steps of the Sacré Coeur church. 

We even see Winston and the Bowery King in another scene lamenting the death of their protege, with a grave dedicated to his name, but as Lionsgate has already confirmed that a fifth John Wick movie is in early production, Keanu Reeves seemingly won’t get to hang up the bulletproof suit and deadly pencil any time soon.

In fact, according to what director Chad Stahelski has recently told the Empire magazine, they shot an alternate ending that revealed John Wick as being alive.

“We had a different ending … [the theatrical ending] was the ending Keanu and I wanted, but we shot a different 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.”

Again, there wasn’t much ambiguity to go around after Chapter 4 came to a close, but I guess there’s an unspoken rule in Hollywood — unless you see a body, the character is very much alive. Stahelski also explained that both he and Keanu weren’t satisfied with how Parabellum ended things, so they needed to leave the world-class assassin on a much higher note this time.

And when the time comes for Chapter 5 to continue this evidently unending story, Stahelski and Reeves will find themselves with the peculiar challenge of one-upping “death” itself.