July 2, 2025
by Carla Hay

Directed by Victoria Mahoney
Culture Representation: Taking place in Italy, France, South Korea, and Indonesia, the sci-fi/action film “The Old Guard 2” (a sequel to 2020’s “The Old Guard,” based on the graphic novel series of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A team of immortal superheroes do battle against another immortal, who has nefarious plans and a team of thugs to help her.
Culture Audience: “The Old Guard 2” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, “The Old Guard” movie and graphic novel series, and action movies that are made to look like big-budget versions of poorly constructed video games.

Fans of Netflix’s 2020 blockbuster hit “The Old Guard” will be disappointed by how “The Old Guard 2” badly fumbles the continuation of the story. The entertaining banter from “The Old Guard” superhero movie has devolved into simplistic and stilted dialogue in “The Old Guard 2.” It’s a soulless sequel whose action scenes, visual effects and story are downgrades from “The Old Guard.”
Directed by Victoria Mahoney and written by Greg Rucka and Sarah L. Walker, “The Old Guard 2” is based on graphic novels of the same name written by Rucka. “The Old Guard” movie was written by Rucka and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. It’s obvious more care was put into making “The Old Guard,” compared to the generic dullness of “The Old Guard 2.”
“The Old Guard 2” does a terrible job of re-introducing the main characters because it does what no good movie sequel would do: It assumes that everyone watching this sequel has seen the first movie in the series. Without seeing “The Old Guard” or at least knowing what happened in “The Old Guard,” viewers of “The Old Guard 2” will be constantly lost and confused by what’s going on and who these main characters really are.
Here’s a summary of what people need to know before watching “The Old Guard 2”: A group of immortal warriors—led by Andromache of Scythia, nicknamed Andy (played by Charlize Theron, one of producers of the movie)—travel around the world as underground hired mercenaries. All of these immortals can lose their immortality for any reason at any time. They will not know in advance when they can lose their immortality.
Andy (who has a tough and occasionally tender personality) and the other longtime colleagues on her team have been alive for centuries: Gay couple Joe (played Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (played by Luca Marinelli) are a Middle Eastern man and an Italian man who became immortal while they were fighting on opposite sides of the Crusades. Joe is more of an impulsive rulebreaker than steadfast rule follower Nicky. Nile (played by KiKi Layne), a former lieutenant in the U.S. Marines, joined Andy’s team in “The Old Guard.” Nile, who is sensitive about being the team’s rookie, has psychic visions in her dreams.
Here are spoiler alerts from “The Old Guard” that people should know if watching “The Old Guard 2”: Someone who used to be Andy’s right-hand man is Booker (played by Matthias Schoenaerts), an adventurous French soldier who became an immortal during the War of 1812. In “The Old Guard,” Booker betrayed Andy’s team and was exiled to Paris by the end of the movie. By the end of “The Old Guard,” former CIA agent James Copley (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) went from being an enemy to an ally of Andy’s group of immortals. Andy also lost her immortality.
Andy’s biggest heartache and regret is how she couldn’t save her best friend Quynh (played by Veronica Ngô, also known as Van Veronica Ngô) from being put in an iron maiden cage and buried in the ocean about 500 years ago, when Andy and Quynh were captured and persecuted for being witches. In the beginning of “The Old Guard 2” (which takes place six months after the events of “The Old Guard”), Quynh is able to escape from the iron maiden when two men on a ship are seen opening up the iron maiden with Quynh inside. :ater in the movie, it’s shown that Quynh blames Andy for Quynh’s long and torturous imprisonment, so an enraged Quynh goes looking for Andy.
The first big action scene in “The Old Guard 2” cuts to Andy, Copley, Nile, Joe and Nicky doing a stakeout of a heavily guarded villa in Lake Como, Italy. It turns into the most impressive action sequence in the movie. Joe and Nicky distract the security guards by stealing two luxury cars that are parked outside the mansion. The chase scene is thrilling because it takes place on winding cliffside road.
Nile does combat on a nearby lake, while Andy and Copley get involved in a shootout inside the mansion. However, inside the mansion (which has a lot of tacky décor), there are some designs in bright blue that look like unnatural, as if computer-generated-imagery (CGI) was jused for everything. After all the fighting ends, the movie still doesn’t make it clear what this immortals’ mission was in this battle.
It should come as no surprise that the immortals win this battle. They go back to their headquarters to party. Andy says to the group: “The worst part of being mortal? The hangovers.” Nile looks at Andy with concern and asks, “I know you talk a lot, but how are you doing?” Andy replies, “Really happy. Peaceful.” This conversation takes on a different context of meaning if people know that Andy is now coping with losing her immortality less than a year earlier.
“The Old Guard 2” doesn’t explain a lot of things from “The Old Guard” that are necessary to fully understand “The Old Guard 2.” It’s a failure that comes down to lazy screenwriting. There are a few fleeting flashbacks to show why Quynh has a grudge against Andy, but these explanations arrive much later in the movie than they should. In the meantime, Quynh spends about half of her screen time scowling and talking out loud about how she wants to get revenge on Andy and her team.
Somehow, Quynh finds Booker in Paris, where he’s been living aimlessly with guilt and spending many days and nights getting drunk. The movie shows the outcome of this encounter and what Booker decides to do when he’s given the choice to get revenge on his former friends or reunite with them.
Nile has been dreaming about seeing mystery woman in a secret library but doesn’t know at first who this woman is and what’s the significance of this library. And that’s where another immortal named Tuah (played by Henry Golding) comes into the story. Tuah has a lot of answers, but his personality is so generic, the most memorable things about Tuah are his name, his physical attractiveness, and the fact he’s the immortal who discovers the book that gives a possible way that an immortal-turned-mortal can regain immortality.
The mystery woman in Nile’s dreams is another person targeting Andy’s team of immortals. Her name is Discord (played by Uma Thurman), who’s supposed to be the very first immortal—and that’s just about all the information that “The Old Guard 2” says about Discord’s backstory. She wants to kill all the other immortals and has a group of thugs (usually masked and wearing all black) as her team of assassins. Discord is a stereotypical snarling villain who might as well be a robot because this villain’s personality is very empty and flat.
All this means is that “The Old Guard 2” will have an inevitable showdown between Discord and Andy. And although it sounds very cool in theory to have action movie veterans Thurman and Theron battling it out in a combat scene, the fight between Discord and Andy is not as impressive as it could be and is marred by very corny dialogue. There are missed opportunities for Andy and her team to build on their camaraderie as a group because the movie has various individual members of the team going off in different directions, as they globetrot in cities such as Paris, Rome, Seoul and Jakarta.
“The Old Guard 2” is so caught up in going from fight scene to fight scene, it doesn’t take enough time to give viewers a clear sense of the characters’ backstories and personal histories with each other, which were told very well in “The Old Guard.” The acting performances in “The Old Guard 2” are serviceable, but they can’t disguise the lackluster conversations that drag down the movie. The ending of “The Old Guard 2” (where a character has a drastic, not-very-believable change in attitude) just feels like it was rushed in to set up a sequel that less people will want to see now that “The Old Guard 2” has made a boring mess of this movie series that could’ve been great.
Netflix premiered “The Old Guard 2” on July 2, 2025.