Warning: This article contains spoilers for From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.From the World of John Wick: Ballerina follows Ana de Armas’ Eve Macarro as she embarks upon a quest for revenge, invoking the ire of multiple factions of this criminal underworld, which leads her to a fateful encounter with Keanu Reeves’ John Wick. John and Eve first meet in pᴀssing at the time of his meeting with The Director (Anjelica Huston), which happens during John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. However, as Eve breaks more rules and is relentlessly determined to learn the truth about her past, John is sent to kill her to prevent a war between clans.

However, as some may have guessed, John does not kill Eve in Ballerina‘s ending, an action that the director has now commented on in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Len Wiseman said that John spares Eve and aids her mission because he “is seeing […] himself in her,” and decides to help a kindred spirit. Check out his comments below:

It comes down to John and what John has gone through in his life and what circumstances he’s been put in at this point […][ And there’s an understanding of how sometimes this life takes things from you. He was somebody that is having to deal with the consequences of the revenge path that he went on and what he had lost, and so it really is him seeing a bit of himself in her and how personal it is and what has been destroyed about her life. So he feels for her in that moment.

What The Director’s Comments Mean For Ballerina’s Ending

John & Eve Are One And The Same

John helping Eve creates a stronger connection between the spinoff and the main series than merely taking place in the same setting, as it depicts two similarly determined people who have been cheated by a system they are stuck in, forming a brief, powerful alliance. John also went down a path of revenge, which might have been a simple story in and of itself, but then he spends the next three movies dealing with the chain reaction of consequences. The series has always been a captivating narrative about cycles of violence, which Ballerina continues.

Because of when Ballerina takes place, John himself is a fugitive himself at this time and preparing to fight the High Table head-on. He probably thought that doing this favor for The Director would grant him some useful goodwill to leverage somewhere down the line. But he sees himself in Eve, how she escaped one path to becoming a killer, only to find herself in another, with no one giving her straightforward answers, and fervently, desperately wanting justice. There is a resonance that is much more poignant than if she and John had just fought and then she escaped.

Our Take On Why John Doesn’t Kill Eve In Ballerina

Eve Is Set Up To Become Another Vigilante Of This World

The fact that the terrible, invincible John Wick can’t bring himself to kill Eve sharply illustrates the connection he has with her. Ballerina then ends with Eve having a mᴀssive bounty put on her head, which necessitates a lot of follow-up when it happens to John. However, she simply walks off before the credits roll. Eve has been situated as someone who exists much in the same way as John Wick — always fighting the rest of this cruel world. Thus, it makes so much sense that John would aid her, as they are ultimately fighting the same battle.

Source: Entertainment Weekly