John Wick

Chapter 4 closed out Keanu Reeves' arc in 2023 with the best-reviewed and highest-grossing entry in the series, giving Chad Stahelski a genuine mic-drop ending — John Wick free, and dead. Lionsgate immediately tried to extend the universe anyway: Ballerina, built around Ana de Armas' assassin-in-training and directed by Len Wiseman, arrived in 2025 to a soft reception that fell well short of the mainline films, and the Peacock prequel series The Continental had already landed with a muted response back in 2023.

Our take: the Wick-verse's problem isn't quality control on the action — Stahelski's team still choreographs circles around nearly everyone else in the genre — it's that the mythology (the High Table, the coins, the endless rules) was always a delivery system for gunfights, not something that rewards being expanded on its own terms. Spinoffs that foreground the lore over a star with Reeves' specific commitment to the stunt work expose how much of the appeal was him, not the universe.

Watch what happens with John Wick 5, which Stahelski has discussed as a prequel or in-universe expansion rather than a resurrection gimmick. If Lionsgate lets him dictate the terms again instead of chasing a cinematic-universe org chart, the series has a path back; if it keeps greenlighting spinoffs by brand recognition alone, Ballerina's reception is the preview, not the exception.