RecapRevisit the Ending of The Old Guard Ahead of The Old Guard 2Andy and the immortals are assembling again. Here’s what you need to remember about the first film.By Stephan LeeJune 22, 2025
Andy (Charlize Theron) and her army of immortal warriors became a global phenomenon when The Old Guard stormed up the Netflix charts, and if you’ve been eagerly awaiting their next chapter, you’re not alone. “We really missed each other,” Theron tells Tudum of the core cast’s bond. “And we really loved working with each other.”
The wait is over. The Old Guard 2 is assembling on July 2, and it’s best for us mortals to come to battle armed with our double-bladed axes — after all, Theron and the cast stayed ready to continue the warriors’ saga. “We really loved where the sequel went with each and every one of us, the whole team,” says Theron. “Everybody really felt like their characters and relationships were honored. And that, to me, meant a lot because if we were going to do this, we had to do this in a way where these characters were still living and breathing in the glory that they did in the first film.”
It’s time to dive back into that glory with a rewatch of The Old Guard, available only on Netflix. Here’s what you need to know about the ending of the first film so you can come into the sequel guns blazing.
This article contains major character or plot details.
But first, what is The Old Guard about?
Let’s clear the ancient cobwebs from our memory with a quick refresh:
Based on the acclaimed graphic novel by Greg Rucka and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights), the first film introduces Andy —which, by the way, is not short for Andrea but rather the infinitely cooler Andromache of Scythia. Andy leads a covert group of tight-knit mercenaries with a mysterious inability to die. Her team consists of her right-hand man Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), who once fought alongside Napoleon; and Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), who met on the battlefield on opposite sides of the Crusades, only to fall in love.
The quartet has fought alongside each other for centuries to protect the mortal world, and they’ve quite literally done and seen it all — until the team is recruited by mysterious ex-CIA operative Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to take on an emergency mission. It turns out the mission is a setup — there are surveillance cameras that capture their extraordinary abilities to heal instantaneously, and the footage is sold to Merrick (Harry Melling), a pharmaceutical exec who wants to capture the immortals to run tests on them. It’s up to Andy and Nile (KiKi Layne), the newest soldier to join their ranks, to help the group eliminate the threat of the villains who are trying to replicate and monetize their power by any means necessary.
Does Merrick get a satisfying villain death?
Oh, yes. At Merrick’s headquarters, Andy and Nile join forces to come up with a clever distraction to confuse Merrick before Andy slices into him with her axe. Nile goes in for the kill by jumping out of the window with Merrick to cushion her fall. Of course, only one of them will spring back to their feet unscathed.
Andy even gets a catchphrase befitting an action icon as she peers down at Merrick’s body: “Play dead, mother—r.”
Why does Booker betray Andy?
Booker’s act of disloyalty is one of the most shocking moments of the film. Instead of backing up Andy, as he’s done for centuries, Booker turns and shoots her in the leg when they arrive at Copley’s headquarters. That gives him time to tie Andy up as she screams out in pain — more from the betrayal by her best friend than the bullet wound. Andy asks what we’re all thinking: “Why?”
It turns out Book’s tragic decision isn’t motivated by evil — he’s simply weary of being immortal. He’s convinced that if Merrick could discover how immortals keep living, then he can find out how to end immortality for them. Andy and the others have been fighting to save humanity for centuries, and now they’re beyond tired, having experienced more grief than any one individual should. Now he wants to give Andy and himself the opportunity to rest — which, for them, means to die.
Andy, however, isn’t grateful — trading the fate of humanity for her own peace isn’t her style. “Oh, Book, what have you done?” she asks in a heart-wrenching moment. Booker comes to regret his decision almost instantaneously when he realizes Andy isn’t healing from the gunshot.
Booker ends up joining back up with the team to defeat Merrick, but the damage has been done, and there must be a price to pay. Even though Andy forgives Booker, she decides that he must be banished from the group for 100 years. If only we could all do the same to our frenemies …
Is Andy really losing her immortality?
It appears so. Her power first seems to fade when a wound sustained during Merrick’s raid on the group’s Paris hideout doesn’t heal right away. As of the end of the film, we don’t know exactly why — she may have spent too much of her immortality, or it may be fading as she gets older — but we do know from an earlier flashback that it’s possible for immortals to lose their ability to regenerate.
Who is Quynh in The Old Guard?
Quynh (Veronica Van, formerly Veronica Ngô) is another immortal, and one of Andy’s closest friends. She’s also been missing for centuries. Before meeting Booker, Nicky, or Joe, Andy and Quynh fought thousands of battles together. The two were captured in England during the era of witch trials and were executed over and over again — to no avail, of course. Finally, the priests separated them by locking Quynh in an iron maiden and sinking it at the bottom of the ocean, relegating Quynh to an unthinkable fate: to repeatedly drown in a metal prison for the rest of eternity. It’s why the immortals fear capture more than any other threat.
Andy searched for Quynh for decades, but she could never find where she was cast from the boat. It’s been 500 years, and Andy still blames herself for losing a soldier. Meanwhile, Nile has been having dreams in which she can feel Quynh’s pain and rage.
At the very end of the film, just before the credits, Quynh returns. She has somehow escaped and tracks down Booker, who’s staggering around Paris, drunk and desolate in exile. We’ll discover in the sequel whether she comes in peace or if she’s back for vengeance.
Does Copley see the error of his ways?
Unlike Merrick, Copley isn’t a total bad guy. He had good intentions to save lives; unfortunately, he went about it in disastrous ways. However, by the end, he promises Andy that he’ll use his position and influence to help the team find jobs that will make a difference for humanity.
What happens to Nile in The Old Guard?
Throughout the film, Nile struggles with the question of whether to join the team or not. The audience first meets her as a young U.S. Marine in combat in Afghanistan, before she’s killed during a dangerous mission. Or is she? When Nile’s slit throat miraculously heals, Andy locates her via the shared dreams that connect immortals, and arrives in Afghanistan to recruit Nile to her small army.
Spending the rest of your existence as a warrior is a monumental sacrifice, and Nile doesn’t go with Andy without a fight — note the brutal brawl between the two aboard a cargo plane. In the end, Nile decides she can’t go back to her old life. She sees the potential impact of Copley’s research into the immortals, and chooses to allow Copley to delete her former life from the record. With her loved ones believing she died in combat, she commits to the team.
Are Nicky and Joe alright?
Rest assured, they escape torture at Merrick’s labs and will return for the sequel — we would gladly lay down our mortal bodies to protect Nicky and Joe after Nicky’s declaration of undying love, which he delivers to one of his captors:
“He’s not my boyfriend. This man is more to me than you can dream. He’s the moon when I’m lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in the cold. and his kiss still thrills me even after a millennium. His heart overflows with a kindness of which this world is not worthy of. I love this man beyond measure and reason and he’s not my boyfriend. He’s all and he’s more.”
What can we expect from The Old Guard 2?
Six months after the events of the first film, Andy and her team of immortal warriors are back with a renewed sense of purpose in their mission to protect the world. With Booker still in exile after his betrayal, and Quynh out for revenge after escaping her underwater prison, Andy grapples with her newfound mortality as a mysterious threat emerges that could jeopardize everything she’s worked towards for thousands of years. Andy, Nile, Joe, Nicky, and Copley enlist the help of Tuah (Henry Golding), an old friend who may provide the key to unlocking the mystery behind immortal existence. Directed by Victoria Mahoney, and also starring Uma Thurman as Discord, The Old Guard 2 is an emotional, adrenaline-pumping sequel, based on the world created by Greg Rucka and illustrator Leandro Fernandez.
You can also expect that the magic between the cast will be just as you remember. “We just picked up where we left off,” Theron says.“I think that’s a testament to the chemistry that this cast has. And I think that’s a huge part of the success of The Old Guard.”
When can I watch The Old Guard 2?
The Old Guard 2 comes roaring to life on July 2. In the meantime, The Old Guard is streaming now, only on Netflix.