The Director of JOHN WICK 3 Explains Why Winston Ended Up Shooting Wick at The End of The Film

There was a big unexpected twist at the end of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum when Winston (Ian McShane) ended up shooting John Wick (Keanu Reeves), which seemingly sent him plummeting to his death as he fell off a building. Thankfully, John didn’t die because he’s unkillable. But, what was the reasoning behind Winston shooting him?

Well, John Wick director Chad Stahelski recently talked about this decision in an interview with THR and explains that there's much more than meets the eye when it comes to this moment in the film:

"When we came up with the whole John Wick way we wanted to do this on the original, my partner David Leitch, Keanu and I all sat down, and we were like, 'Look, these are the things we hate about some of the action movies that are currently going on. Everything’s spelled way too much out for everybody. If you get notes from the studio, or anything like that, everything’s got to be on the nose. We just wanted to be ambiguous about the world, where John’s from... That’s why we leave some of the questions at a fork in the road."

The big questions are, did Winston mean to shoot Wick? If so did he also mean to kill him? The filmmaker went on to say:

"Did Winston mean to shoot him? He meant to shoot him. Did he mean to kill him? That’s open for interpretation. You can take it one of two ways, and that’s kind of where we pick up some of the unanswered questions in John Wick 4. Again, I like open-ended questions, sometimes, where not everything gets answered. I also like satisfying the audience, but I like leaving a little to your imagination and a little open for debate. And remember, the John Wick world is a little wacky."

I’d like to think that Wick’s mentor didn’t mean to kill him, but you never know! After all, the shooting ended up causing Wick to fall off the top of a building, which would in the real world send anyone to their death! Winston didn’t know he would survive that, but maybe he was willing to take the chance in hopes that he would survive. Stahelski added:

“Winston was kind of boxed in. Did he hope that John was going to live? Eh? He likes John. I would hope so. Did he know he was going to survive the 56-foot fall down to an alleyway? I don’t know. That’s a little ambiguous. Winston is a bit of a gambling man. So, I’d like to think, personally, that Winston’s a very smart guy, and he doesn’t do anything that wasn’t planned. I don’t think he’s impetuous at all, so I’m going to leave you with that.”

Well, I can’t wait to see how the story plays out in John Wick 4! What do you think? Do you think Winston meant to Kill Wick, or do you think he wanted him to live?