[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Extraction 2]

So you’ve seen stuntman coordinator-turned-director Sam Hargrave and the Russo Brothers’ sequel Extraction 2, starring Chris Hemsworth, and you’re curious about that ending. If you missed out on our early screening and Q&A, Collider’s Steve Weintraub did get to speak with Hargrave ahead of the movie’s Netflix premiere – which you can read or watch here – and saved the spoiler questions for after fans got to see Tyler Rake’s (Hemsworth) triumphant rise from the dead.

Extraction 2 picks up shortly after the events of Extraction, where audiences were introduced to Tyler Rake, a John Wick-esque Australian mercenary with less seedy criminal underground lore and more reality-grounded heroics. Rake’s character, due to his special-ops background and doggedness, comes off as near-mythical in combat, and with Joe Russo penning the scripts and Hargrave governing elaborate action set pieces, we have another sequel that aims to top itself in cinematic action. After Rake plummeted to what fans believed to be his watery grave, Extraction 2 resurrects him, this time on a mission to rescue a battered family from a Georgian gangster.
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In addition to Hemsworth, Extraction 2 stars Golshifteh Farahani, Adam Bessa, Olga Kurylenko, Tinatin Dalakishvili, Andro Jafaridze, Daniel Bernhardt, and at the very end of the movie, Idris Elba makes a second surprise cameo. Because so little is revealed about Elba’s character and his mysterious employer, Weintraub was curious to know if Hargrave and Russo discussed who would play this boss in future films. To intimidate someone like Rake, it’s implied it would have to be a pretty impressive name. Hargrave tells us, “We know who the character wants to be,” but adds, “We don’t yet know who that actor is who’s going to portray that character.” Though they haven’t tapped a name just yet, Hargrave does go on say that:

“By saying something like that, what you’re doing is, you just had two pretty wild movies with Tyler Rake. What is going to be upping the ante, what are the stakes? How are they elevated? And by just dropping a single line, like, “He’s a gnarly mother-effer,” you’re like, “Okay, one line then says this is someone who might be in the same league as Tyler Rake. Now, I’m intrigued.” And so, as a character, we know who this person is going to have to be. Who is going to portray that? I think that’s the beauty of that line. It’s like, now that single line can go out and attract a lot of cool, amazing actors to play that wild character. So it’s a little bit of both, but I think we wanted to leave it open, and yet, capture the essence of what was needed for the next film for Tyler Rake.”

Image via Netflix

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As far as how that scene played, Hargrave explains that it was very intentional to have Elba come in at the very end. Though “a lot of things throughout the movie changed,” he tells us that with Elba attached, they knew that was the perfect way to bring on the credits. “It was kind of like a version of a post-credits Marvel scene, right? You wanted to have him there at the end again so that people could start to speculate and go, ‘Oh, shoot, they’re going to be in a movie together after this.’” And if you were disappointed in the lack of post-credits teasers, that was an intentional decision, Hargrave says, for the simple fact that “you’re not really gonna out-Marvel Marvel,” but also because they wanted to allow Rake to move onto the next film “free and clear.”

Why Someone Had to Die in the Sequel
For fans of this developing franchise, however, Extraction 2 did take a few hits. Though the first movie was more popcorn-action-flick, in order to continue the story, it was pertinent to flesh out the characters more, and the stakes in this sequel were raised when Nik Khan’s (Farahani) brother, Yaz (Bessa), is unexpectedly killed off. So were the fallen always marked from the beginning? Hargrave tells us that it actually could have been anyone, going on to further explain:

“We went back and forth. I mean, there’s only so many characters that would affect Tyler in the way that you need him to be affected. Because you need that moment there for the team where you lose something valuable, you take a risk, you’re making this big move to take this family away from these super powerful people. You have to lose something, at least to raise the stakes for the third act. That’s what was my feeling.
So yeah, we played with some different characters but ended up with Yaz being the one to choose because we thought that helped motivate two beloved characters, which was Tyler Rake and Nik Khan. People are huge fans of Nik. She has garnered such a following from these movies that we wanted to make sure that she was serviced as well, meaning that her character had some really meaty stuff to hold on to. So we figured we landed with Yaz because it did two for the price of one, basically. We have the guilt that Rake feels of bringing them into this, his close friend and brother basically, and then the actual blood brother of Nik dies, so that she’s conflicted, like, what is she doing here?”

Image via Netflix

Though it was a heartbreaking loss for Nik, Hargrave and the Russos are setting the foundations for an Extraction Universe that has the potential to spin off in new directions. With the sequel taking a more character-driven approach, Hargrave tells us that there was a particular scene centered on Farahani’s Nik Khan, meant to plant those seeds. Did you catch it?

Here’s a fun kind of spoiler alert, we did this scene that was in and out, and it was out, and it was in – where Nik is talking, she brings in the strudels to the mom and kid who are in the bed in Vienna, and they have a talk about second chances. That was a scene that was kind of in, it was out, but we left it in because one, it means multiple meanings; she’s talking, yes, about the kid, but she’s also talking about Rake, and she’s also talking about the son. And we threw a line in there when she’s kind of empathizing with the mom, and saying, “I know what it feels like, I’ve been there,” and it’s subtle, it’s an Easter egg, but that’s kind of hinting towards her and Yaz’s own spinoff movie. So we’re gonna get to follow them.

There’s no official word on where Extraction 3 will take place or where the story will go, but it looks like Elba’s boss will take us down some interesting rabbit holes as the world of Tyler Rake continues to expand. Curious to know what qualities Chris Hemsworth believes make a good action hero? Check out our interview with him and Hargrave below.