John Wick has been through a lot in three chapters of his story, and with John Wick: Chapter 4 the seemingly unkillable assassin will have a new challenge to face and try to survive. The High Table wants John Wick dealt with, and that task will fall to the Marquis de Gramont, played by Bill Skarsgård, one of several new faces joining the cast of John Wick: Chapter 4. Now the actor has revealed a bit more about just who this character is and how he fits into the lore of the world of John Wick.
This character of the Maquis is one we haven’t seen before but as Bill Skarsgård tells Total Film (via GamesRadar) that the Marquis is something of a young upstart who has been making moves within the underworld run by the High Table. He wants to kill John Wick simply for the status it will bring him. He’s a man in a quest for power and he knows being the man who kills John Wick would give him that. The actor explained…
The Marquis is a young man of unknown origin who has quickly climbed the ladder within the High Table doing god knows what. I always saw him as someone from the gutter that now savors the glittery suits he’s wearing. He functions as the new sheriff set out to rid the world of John Wick once and for all. John’s getting old and tired, the Marquis is offering him a way out. To be the one who finally kills the Baba Yaga would secure his status and power within the High Table.
The first trailer for John Wick: Chapter 4 sets up the basic structure of the story. John Wick is given the opportunity to challenge the Marquis in single combat. If Wick wins by killing the Maquis, then the High Table will agree to stop trying to kill him. After all,Wick has had a price on his head since the end of John Wick: Chapter 2. If Wick dies…at least he no longer has to keep running for his life.
What’s most interesting about this particular battle is that, while it will surely involve plenty of weapons, it’s made clear that guns are not the main thing the Marquis will be fighting with. There’s no question that John Wick is the better fighter of the two, so Skarsgård’s character will be using the rules of the High Table to manipulate the situation in order to give him a better chance of surviving against Baba Yaga.
Of course, there is one piece of meta-information that we all have that the Marquis does not. We know that John Wick: Chapter 5 is on the way. This certainly indicates that John will survive the events of this new movie, although, if he does win and the High Table keeps its word, it raises an interesting question about what that next movie will even be about.