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James Bond’s loss is John Wick’s gain judging by the first trailer of Ana de Armas in Ballerina. Nearly four years after the Cuban actress stole the show in No Time to Die, de Armas will finally be getting her own spinoff… but not in the series you might have expected. Like Daniel Craig’s 007, Keanu Reeves’ beloved John Wick character appears to have been given a permanent dirt nap after the events of John Wick: Chapter 4. Nonetheless, the series lives on with a new lead played by de Armas.
And she still appears to kick plenty of ass in action scenes as evidenced in the first trailer for Ballerina, which sees de Armas’ Eve Macarro going from ingenue soloist in the Ruska Roma Ballet Company to a rogue agent punching the ticket of underworld sleazes in need of killing. We also learn from the trailer that she’ll be doing this, like John, as an act of vengeance, this time over a murdered father instead of a dog.
What might most surprise casual fans watching the trailer, however, is that we see de Armas’ Eve interact with the Baba Yaga himself, Mr. John Wick. For those who haven’t kept up with the press releases, seeing old Johnny emerge from the smoke behind a Russian locomotive as if he were stepping out of an Anna Karenina movie might be a bit jarring. Didn’t we see the man in the bulletproof suits earn a much needed rest six feet under?
The answer is yes, and yes, but that’s because Ballerina will be taking place before the events of John Wick: Chapter 4 in the franchise timeline. In case you missed it, before the trailer descends into Elton John and killing spree goodness, we also see some of Eve’s backstory. Apparently she was recruited into the criminal underworld as a child and orphan by Ian McShane’s dear Winston. A rapid montage of her training regimen at the ballet also includes shots of de Armas being inserted into a scene from John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.
In that movie, Reeves’ then truly friendless John seeks support and protection from the Director, a grand dame of the Ruska Roma Ballet played by Anjelica Huston. It’s a role Huston is expected to reprise in Ballerina. In this way, we know that at least part of Ballerina will be set before and during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3.
It would appear that Ballerina spans a lot of time, though, given that it begins with its heroine as a child and goes on beyond the events of Chapter 3, a movie which concluded with McShane’s Winston shooting John Wick off the rooftop of the Continental. (Don’t worry he got better… that time.) When we next see John, an indeterminate amount of time has passed, and he’s chasing High Table scuzzbuckets across the Arabian desert as if he were T.E. Lawrence in Chapter 4.
It would seem Ballerina is using that space between John’s narrow escape from death at the end of Chapter 3 and his sand dune odyssey in Chapter 4 to fill in some lore… including the fact John seems to take on a protege to continue his fight against the High Table’s underhanded corruption. Hence in the new trailer, when the Ballerina asks the Baba Yaga, “How do I start doing what you do?” the Baba Yaga replies, “Looks like you already have.”
Ballerina, which will see director Len Wiseman (Underworld) stepping in for Chad Stahelski, opens on June 6, 2025.
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