Extraction 2 Ending Explained: Never Stop Never Stopping
This piece contains massive spoilers for "Extraction 2."
During the finale of director Sam Hargrave's "Extraction," black ops mercenary Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) was fatally wounded while trying to help a young boy escape from a ruthless drug lord, having been shot through the neck (by another young boy, in an ironic touch) and then falling to his death off a tall bridge. Although his job broker and partner Nik Kahn (Golshifteh Farahani) is seen hunting down that drug lord and assassinating him later on while the boy Rake saved appears to catch a glimpse of him while at a swimming pool, it seemed clear that the troubled merc had reached his end.
"Extraction 2" begins right where Tyler Rake left off: on that fateful Dhaka bridge, broken, wounded and bleeding. In a twist that would make Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and half the cast of the "Fast & Furious" movies proud, reports of Rake's death turn out to have been greatly exaggerated, and the resilient antihero washes up on an Indian shore, shortly to be rescued by Nik and her brother Yaz (Adam Bessa), and whisked away to a hospital in Dubai.
Hargrave, writer Joe Russo, and Hemsworth don't make Rake's resurrection an easy matter, however; the man takes months to recover enough just to wake up and climb out of his hospital bed, let alone get mobile again. During his extensive physical therapy, Nik tells a brooding, ungrateful Tyler that "You fought your way back ... You just have to find out why." "Extraction 2" examines that "why" in detail, as Rake is drawn into a new mission that relates to his past mistakes, revealing more of why he does what he does and why he'll never stop.
You don't turn your back on family
After he's well enough to leave the hospital, Nik and Yaz bring Tyler to a remote cabin in the snowy Austrian woods to fully recover and get his groove back. Not long after he's logged several hours of TV sports with his pet dog and chickens, Rake is approached by the mysterious Man in the Suit (Idris Elba) with an offer for a new mission. Although the details are certainly compelling — a young woman in Georgia named Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) and her two children Sandro (Andro Japaridze) and Nina (Miriam and Marta Kovziashvili), are being held in prison because of Davit (Tornike Bziava), their crime lord father with connections, demanding they be with him while he serves a murder sentence — the real reason Rake can't refuse the offer is because Ketevan is the sister of Mia (Olga Kurylenko), his estranged ex-wife.
As if breaking into a Georgian prison and extracting three people wasn't difficult enough, Davit is no ordinary criminal; he and his brother, Zurab (Tornike Gogrichiani), are the leaders of a crime organization-cum-cult dubbed the Nagazi, with a legion of fanatical followers throughout the country, including the impressionable and confused young Sandro. Enlisting Nik and Yaz's help to put a team together, Rake breaks the family out of prison in a stunningly virtuosic 21-minute long take, during which Davit is killed.
Rake, Nik, and the team manage to escape Georgia by the skin of their teeth and head to a safe house in Vienna. However, family ties are not so easily broken, and when Sandro learns that Rake killed his father (as well as the fact that his mother was partially behind the escape itself), he informs a vengeful Zurab of their whereabouts, leading to the Nagazi unleashing a devastating ambush. Although Rake and company are able to flee to his cabin in the woods, Yaz is tragically killed during the fight.
Rake can't fix the break from his biggest mistake
While Nik mourns the loss of her brother and Ketevan worries over a wounded Nina and a missing Sandro (who'd run off with Zurab during the safehouse battle), Mia arrives to comfort her sister. Yet things between her and ex-husband Rake are still uncomfortably tense, thanks to Rake's selfish act years prior: as detailed during the first "Extraction," Tyler and Mia had a son who died slowly from lymphoma, a tragic process that Rake (then an Australian SAS soldier) couldn't stand being present for, volunteering to be deployed in Afghanistan instead. His overwhelming guilt at this act of cowardice likely resulted in his becoming a mercenary, and certainly resulted in both the destruction of his marriage as well as his death wish during the first film.
Although Mia states plainly that she doesn't wish to hear Tyler's apology for his actions, Rake nonetheless can't stop trying to atone in every way possible. Not only does he attempt to give Sandro advice (which the confused boy ignores at first), but, as the two "Extraction" films demonstrate, he chooses missions to help save families and especially boys from their criminal fathers in the hopes that he can both make up for his own mistakes as well as give these kids a better future than his own.
Most indestructible action heroes have an engine that keeps them going in an almost preternatural way: John Rambo has the weight of neglected soldiers on his shoulders, Ethan Hunt will not allow any innocent to die on his watch, The Bride and John Wick must exact their revenge, and so on. As Hemsworth demonstrates with his heartfelt performance and Hargrave extrapolates visually with bravura long takes and moments of brutal violence, Tyler Rake will never stop, as he's always guilt-ridden and trying to fix his mistake.
Know thyself
They say a hero is only as good as his villain, and by that same adage it can be said that a villain is only a step or two removed from their hero. As such, Zurab is a man who refuses to back down just as much as Rake does, going so far as to murder his closest advisor in cold blood and set a trap for the man who killed Davit, as much for revenge as for fixing his own mistake of not properly protecting his brother.
Responding to Zurab's phone call/throwing down of the gauntlet, Rake heads out to meet the Georgian at St. George's church, and after fighting his way in discovers Sandro wearing a bomb vest. Zurab uses the vest to both force Rake to surrender his weapons as well as attempt to fully initiate Sandro into the Nagazi fold, ordering the boy to shoot Tyler. Sandro cannot kill his ex-uncle, however, and then Rake, helped by the surprise arrival of Nik, manages to subdue Zurab as Sandro removes the bomb vest with the assistance of a now-wounded Nik.
In a perfectly framed two-shot, the bloody and beaten bodies of both Zurab and Rake lie next to each other on the ground as Zurab confesses his inner truth: "I will not stop." Rake's response is just as truthful and succinct, shooting Zurab dead point blank through the head.
Absolution is possible
Due to their wounds, Tyler and Nik are unable to escape before the Austrian authorities arrive, and are subsequently arrested and imprisoned. As Nik recovers in a hospital ward of the facility, Tyler is visited by Mia and reassured that the now-reunited family of her sister is safe. However, the real reason for Mia's visit is to confess to Tyler that their son did not think of his father as a coward, as Rake has convinced himself over the years. Instead, the boy remarked how brave Rake was, and hoped to emulate him when facing his imminent passing. "He said, 'I wanna be brave like dad. That's how he saw you," Mia explains, before bidding farewell to her ex-husband. While the revelation doesn't make up for Rake's actions, it at least gives the troubled man some well-earned absolution.
As to the karmic price of saving other people, however, Rake's bill is still unpaid; spirited away to a secret location, Rake discovers the Man in the Suit again, who makes him a new offer: he'll spring Rake and Nik from prison if they agree to complete another mission for his boss. While the Man refuses to reveal his own name or that of his boss, he promises the mysterious employer is "a gnarly motherf***er," reassuring Rake — and us— that "You'll love him."
The mission is never going to stop
Just like Rake's resurrection, it's a bit of a miracle that "Extraction" has become a franchise at all, given the original film's apparently closed ending. As Hargrave revealed recently, a prequel was never really an option for him or the rest of the filmmakers because it would be too much of "rehashing the similar things of [Rake's] past." Instead, it was more attractive to push forward, both in a narrative and thematic sense, as the films still deal heavily with Rake's past without going over the same exact plot points as have already been hashed out numerous times.
While the tone, style, and backstory of "Extraction" is now very well-established, its future is just as mysterious to Hargrave as it is to the audience and Rake himself. /Film's own Ryan Scott recently spoke with Hargrave about the possible future of the Rake saga:
"There is definitely an appetite at Netflix and AGBO for an extension of this Tyler Rake story. What exactly that is, I am not aware of at this moment, but I know there has been some talk of where this could go. I know everybody who is involved in this project as fans love the idea of Tyler Rake continuing. Perhaps, who knows if Idris is involved, that'd be amazing to see these two expand this 'Extraction' universe. What that is exactly, I can't say at this time."
Just like us action fans saw how the war was never over for John Rambo, that John Wick will always be caught up in some new revenge plot, and that the Universal Soldiers can always come back from the dead, it seems clear that Tyler Rake's mission of atonement is fated to never stop, at least as long as people keep enjoying his efforts.
"Extraction 2" hits Netflix on June 16.