John Wick 5 Needs to Answer These Franchise Questions

John Wick is back in action again with the forthcoming John Wick: Chapter 5, but there are still some major questions the Baba Yaga’s next movie will have to answer. John Wick: Chapter 5 was officially announced as part of Lionsgate’s presentation at 2025’s CinemaCon, which also included the news of a major expansion of the John Wick franchise with an animated prequel, Donnie Yen signing on to direct the Caine spin-off from John Wick: Chapter 4, and numerous other projects. With the monumental popularity of the John Wick franchise and the impact it has had on action movies, the incentive to build out the John Wick universe as much as possible is easy to understand from Lionsgate’s perspective. However, there is one big problem the John Wick franchise faces in that John himself is technically dead.

John’s demise came at the end of 2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4 when he and Caine (Donnie Yen) were forced to face each other in a High Table duel. Retconning character deaths is nothing new for popular entertainment franchises, but with a complete lack of sci-fi or fantastical elements in its toolbox, John Wick: Chapter 5 has a much more complicated task on its hands. Here are the five biggest questions that John Wick: Chapter 5 must answer.

How Is John Wick Alive (& Did He Even Really Die?)

The first and most obvious question for John Wick: Chapter 5 to address is how the Baba Yaga is returning in the first place after his apparent death in John Wick: Chapter 4. In his High Table duel against his reluctant old friend Caine, John took several gunshot wounds that seemed to be fatal, with his allies Winston Scott (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) even visiting John’s grave in the movie’s final scene. With how much John Wick: Chapter 4 went out of its way to emphasize John’s death, the next movie has quite a bit of explaining to do in accounting for his return.

An offshoot of that is also answering the question of whether John actually died in the first place. Since John Wick: Chapter 4, theories have run rampant that John faked his death, which would require a considerable amount of pre-planning on John’s part. It would also have almost certainly required Caine to be in on the plan, and likely Winston and the Bowery King, as well. The possibility of John Wick’s death being an elaborate ruse certainly sets up many possibilities for where John Wick: Chapter 5 could go, but it also necessitates pulling back the curtain on the sleight of hand at work in what initially appeared to be his last stand.

Who Else Knows That John Is Alive?

The return of the Baba Yaga is not something that stays secret for long, as the original John Wick kicked off when he came out of retirement to avenge the killing of his dog. With John Wick returning after seemingly dying, word is bound to get out swiftly the moment he dispatches his first enemy and sets him on a collision course with the High Table once again. That makes it necessary for John Wick: Chapter 5 to clarify exactly who knows, or is at least thinking, that John Wick is back. Right from the start, there are already quite a few individuals who would either be aware of John’s survival or among the first to hear about it.

With the aforementioned theory of John’s death being an elaborate hoax, Caine, Winston, and the Bowery King are the most immediate candidates to know John is alive before anyone else does. John will likely try to keep knowledge of his survival a secret for as long as possible, which means keeping a very tight inner circle of those aware he is alive and limiting it to a few people. However, John might seek out a few other allies as his mission gets underway, so associates of John’s like Anjelica Huston’s The Director and others like Aurelio (John Leguizamo), Ballerina‘s protagonist Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), Sofia (Halle Berry), and the Ruska Roma’s leader and John’s own sister by adoption Katia Jovonovich (Natalia Tena) seem like possibilities of individuals who could learn of John’s return before the secret is fully out.

What Is John’s Plan for Dealing With the High Table?

Ever since coming out of retirement to avenge his dog’s killing, John Wick has been struggling to escape the High Table’s rule, only to continually find himself pulled back into a world he wants to escape. John Wick even did the unthinkable in assassinating the Elder “who sits above the High Table” (George Georgiou) in John Wick: Chapter 4, and went to extreme measures to set up the long-standing tradition of a High Table duel to permanently escape their grasp. With John back in the game in John Wick: Chapter 5, one has to wonder what his new plan of attack is in what will almost certainly be another major reckoning with the High Table.

Undoubtedly, the moment news of John’s survival reaches the High Table, the reaction will not be one of pleasant surprise, especially if the High Table uncovers the truth behind John’s death hoax and those who assisted him with it. Considering the difficulty that even John Wick has had in dealing with the ruling powers of the High Table, his strategy for facing them again needs to be the most carefully thought-out and detailed one of his career. John faking his death might have been step one, but the question John Wick: Chapter 5 must answer after that is what steps two through 10 are.

[RELATED: John Wick Star Teases Surprising Connection Between Ballerina and “Baba Yaga”]

Is John Going to Help Caine Against Akira?

John’s old friend Caine was in as difficult of a position as the Baba Yaga himself in John Wick: Chapter 4, being forced out of retirement to hunt down John with the life of his daughter under threat by High Table official Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård). Caine’s mission unfortunately leads to him slaying another ally of John’s, the Osaka Continental’s manager Shimazu Koji (Hiroyuki Sanada), and as one would expect, Shimazu’s daughter Akira (Rina Sawayama) is left feeling vengeful over her father’s death at the hands of the blind assassin. Akira was last seen approaching Caine in John Wick: Chapter 4‘s end-credits scene with a blade in hand, setting up their impending confrontation, and John Wick: Chapter 5 should address how involved John will be in that confrontation.

Akira was left feeling extremely bitter towards John, angrily castigating him for her father’s death, but her anger at Caine is much more direct since he was the one to actually take Shimazu’s life. Despite being forced to fight each other for the bulk of John Wick: Chapter 4, John and Caine end the movie on good terms, which could lend credence to the theory that Caine helped John fake his death. By the same token, John was aware that Caine had been unfairly cornered into fighting him in order to save his own daughter’s life, and this could lead to him trying to mend fences between Caine and Akira. While Caine and Akira’s showdown is far more likely to be the subject of Donnie Yen’s Caine spin-off, John Wick: Chapter 5 can still address it, setting up John to try to make peace between Caine and Akira and possibly even recruit the latter into his battle with the High Table.

What Is John Wick’s Endgame?

John Wick has spent four movies and counting trying to both get away from the High Table and unleash his vengeance upon them, and that amount of effort clearly shows how formidable the High Table is. If John did indeed fake his death, it would seem that he had the perfect way out, able to disappear forever from the High Table’s view and live out the rest of his life as a free man. The fact that John Wick: Chapter 5 is moving ahead indicates that John’s battle with the High Table has at least one more showdown on the way, and that raises the question of what John’s ultimate goal is.

Sure, freedom from the High Table is obvious, but that’s a tough goal to achieve if he is seemingly going to voluntarily put himself into yet another confrontation with the very governing body that has already sent dozens of assassins his way. In the long term, John Wick’s ultimate aim might be to completely bring down the High Table, but with how deeply entrenched the High Table already is within the John Wick universe, that’s much easier said than done. Even the legendary Baba Yaga is still just one man, which will require John Wick to team up with as many allies as he can, such as Caine, Winston, the Bowery King, and others, in a war as daunting as one against the High Table. In any case, what John Wick’s ultimate plan is and how he intends to achieve it are two major questions hovering over the Baba Yaga’s return from the grave, and both are essential for John Wick: Chapter 5 to provide a definitive answer to.

From the World Of John Wick: Ballerina will be released in theaters on June 6th.