Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner finally got their happy ending when Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales arrived in theaters in 2017. Now, with the conversation about a new sequel resurfacing, Keira Knightley has offered her polite, but clear two cents on a possible return for the character who kickstarted her career.
“I mean, [Elizabeth] sailed away so nicely. She sailed away in brilliant style,” Knightley told ET. While the British actress’ comment speaks for itself on her intentions to come back to the franchise, that’s not exactly a true statement about her character’s final arc.
The last we saw of the aristocrat turned Pirate King, she was finally reunited with her husband Will, played by Orlando Bloom, after the curse that bound him to a ghost ship was broken by the couple’s son. Their very last scene, which aired after the credits rolled on Dead Men Tell No Tales, showed Elizabeth and Will sound asleep in their Jamaican home, as an intimidating shadow crept up on them. The last shot of a couple of barnacles lying on a puddle of water on the floor seemed to tease the return of one of the most iconic villains in the Pirates series, Bill Nighy’s Davy Jones.
If Jones did come back to haunt Will, and Disney decided to go with that storyline for a possible forthcoming film, then surely Elizabeth would play a big part in it. Regardless, the project is not yet a certainty. The last we heard about it, producer Jerry Bruckheimer said there were two scrips in the works.
“We have a very good script. We developed two of them — the one with Margot Robbie and one with a younger cast. The Margot Robbie one needs a little more work. The younger cast one is close. Hopefully we’ll get both of them,” Bruckheimer told The Hollywood Reporter in December of last year.
If the team’s sights are indeed turned towards a younger cast, then Knightley might be right after all, and Pirates will head in a new direction than the one hinted at in that post-credits scene. Or perhaps she’s giving the press the evasive treatment to keep her return as much of a surprise as possible. Seeing as the sixth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean series is still a long way away, there is not much we can do but wait to find out which interpretation is right.
