With its slick and unruffled anti-hero, the meticulously-crafted world of the assassin underground, elaborate fight choreography and neon extravaganza, the John Wick franchise embodies a new breed of action-noir. Each film has been much bolder and more theatrical than its predecessor, resulting in one of the most popular action film franchises of all time.
It is hardly surprising that the massive success of the series has spawned two more spinoffs: the TV miniseries The Continental and the movie Ballerina. While The Continental is set to release later this year, Ballerina has an estimated release date window of the spring or summer of 2024. The highly-anticipated film will feature Ana de Armas in the lead role of Rooney, an assassin who also had a small cameo in John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum. Even though only a few details of the story have been shared so far, John Wick: Chapter 4 may have dropped a few hints about what fans can expect from the spin-off.
John Wick’s Ties to the Ruska Roma
For the large part, the John Wick franchise distanced itself from revealing any specifics about the formidable hitman’s past. It was only until the release of the third installment that some meaningful insight was given regarding the identity of the titular character and his connection to the criminal faction Ruska Roma.
The film begins with a severely injured John stumbling through Manhattan, on the run from a society of assassins after being declared an excommunicado for killing the High Table crime lord Santino D'Antonio on the premises of The Continental. He visits the New York Public Library to retrieve a hidden stash of objects (including a rosary and markers) from a volume of Russian folktales, each of which symbolize an aspect of his past.
He then sets out to a seedy performing arts institute led by the Director, who is also the head of the Ruska Roma. She holds a prominent position in the assassin underworld, but is still subject to the rules of the High Table (because of which she is technically not allowed to speak to John either, due to his excommunicado status).
Under the guise of a ballet studio, the center is where both young boys and girls are trained in combat. All students are branded with tattoos of Catholic imagery, just like John — indicating that this is where his martial arts training first began. The male students can be seen performing a certain maneuver during sambo training, which John himself has used during fights.
Initially, the Director refuses when John requests her a safe passage to Casablanca so that he can seek out the only person above the High Table who can free him. It is then that he offers her the rosary, which represents a past debt owed to him by her, and reveals that he is Jardani Jovonovich, a former member of her tribe. This implies that his current name — with ‘John’ meaning ‘Jardani’ in Romani and ‘Wick’ derived from the end of ‘Jovonovich’ — may have been adopted when he became an assassin.
The Director reluctantly accepts his ticket, telling John that she will honor the code of her tribe, which she had brought all the way from Belarus to start a new life. John refers to himself as "a son of Belarus" then, which can mean that he had been brought up by the Ruska Roma as a child. Since the ticket can only be used once, the Director brands it over his cross tattoo on the back, signifying that it has been accepted and that the family is no longer John’s ally. Afterwards, a High Table Adjudicator pays her a visit and orders for her "helping hands" to be stabbed with a sword as punishment for aiding John in his escape.
When Does Ballerina Take Place?
Keanu Reeves recently revealed that the Ballerina director Len Wiseman had let him decide when the spin-off should take place in the John Wick timeline, and he eventually chose for the story to be set during the time period between Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. The latter picks up about 6 months after John is shot by Winston and falls from the top of The Continental, eventually to be saved by the Bowery King. Since Chapter 4 begins with John still in hiding, it can be assumed that not much has occurred during the gap between the two movies. This could mean that Reeves’ role in Ballerina would be most likely a brief appearance to connect it to the same world of John Wick.
Actors Ian McShane and the late Lance Reddick, both of whom reprise their roles in Ballerina, confirmed this in an interview with Collider: "Our participation in it is so much about helping to — for the audience — connect that it’s part of the same world."
However, the spin-off will not entirely deviate from the original storyline; Ballerina screenwriter Shay Hatten teased in an interview with Screen Rant that the film could finally answer some of the most pressing questions regarding John’s past: "It’s a character who we know went to the same ballet academy as John. I think in Ballerina you’ll get to see some of the hints of what John experienced during his origins in that place, but through the eyes of a different character."
How John Wick: Chapter 4 Sets Up Ballerina
In Chapter 4, John discovers that an ancient duel ritual can free him from all his obligations to the High Table. However, he needs to belong to a crime family to demand a duel. As he had previously ended his ties with the Ruska Roma, he travels to the syndicate’s headquarters in Berlin to rejoin. Upon arrival, he finds out that the family’s leader had been killed by the High Table as vengeance for John’s reckless acts.
His adoptive sister Katia agrees to his request on one condition: he has to kill Killia, her father’s murderer and a High Table senior. This is similar to the plot of Rooney seeking vengeance for her family’s murder in Ballerina — leaving a possibility that both characters’ stories could somehow be intertwined.
While the film highlights the connection between the Ruska Roma and the Catholic Church, it is never fully explained. It also focuses on the family’s ritual of accepting a previously expelled member, but still does not provide any details regarding the orphans they take in to train in the first place. Finally, the complicated relationship between the High Table and the family is still ambiguous. Why is it that the family is deemed powerful enough to be part of a duel, but not to earn a seat at the High Table? The biggest mystery arrives at the end of Chapter 4, when there is a glimpse of the tattoo on Winston’s hand: the mark of the Ruska Roma.
While it still remains to be seen how Ballerina would tie into the franchise, it is highly probable that it would explore the several unanswered questions the latest installment has left behind.