The Gray Man ending explained: How Netflix movie sets up sequels

When the film was first announced, the Russo Brothers and Netflix expressed their hopes for it to develop into the next major action franchise.

With all manner of action and explosions as Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans attempt to out-kill one another, the first film certainly sets up future instalments.

Read on for everything you need to know about the ending to The Gray Man, and what it means for the future. Be warned: spoilers follow.

The Gray Man ending explained

Most of The Gray Man's runtime is essentially building up to an epic showdown between Sierra Six (Gosling) and his adversary – the psychopathic Lloyd Hansen (Evans), who has been hired by the CIA to murder him.

Towards the film's latter stages, the hard-drive Sierra Six has been protecting – which contains incriminating evidence about the activities of the CIA – is stolen by another adversary. At the same time Claire (Julia Butters), the 12-year-old niece of his handler Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton), has been kidnapped by Lloyd and his men.

And so a massive shootout at a castle ensues, at the end of which Six's CIA ally Dani (Ana de Armas) is able to retrieve the hard-drive, before Six finally finds himself one-on-one with Lloyd – in the middle of a maze in the castle's grounds.

At the star of their encounter, the villain has Claire at gunpoint but he agrees to let her go so that he can duke it out with Six. Their final battle takes place mainly with fists rather than weapons – although at one point Lloyd stabs Six and almost succeeds in drowning him, before the latter regains the upper hand and strangles him almost to death.

But in the end, the final blow comes from a rather unexpected source – CIA bigwig Suzanne (Jessica Henwick), who appears on the scene and fatally shoots Lloyd in the chest. Quite a turn-up for the books given he had seemingly been working for her...

How The Gray Man sets up sequels

Suzanne's decision to shoot Lloyd is crucial in terms of setting up future instalments. After she has killed him, she explains her motivations for doing so to Six: she had previously been at Harvard with both Lloyd and her boss Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page), and the friendship between the two men had prevented her from being able to warn Carmichael about the threats Lloyd posed.

Her plan now is for the dead Lloyd to take the blame for everything that has gone wrong – and she forces Six to comply by shooting him in the kneecap and insisting he returns to prison (although she does promise Claire's safety in return).

Thanks to this plan, Suzanne and Carmichael are both cleared of any wrongdoing, and the latter is successful in destroying the aforementioned hard drive which contained evidence of his past misdeeds.

But it's also clear that Suzanne and her boss are increasingly not seeing eye to eye, especially given he has constantly undermined her throughout their careers working together – all the way back to their time at Harvard.

This dynamic in their relationship seems sure to further factor into the events of the next film, when they'll undoubtedly find themselves up against Six for a second time.

That's because, in the very final moments of the film, we learn that Six is on the run once again – having broken out of prison, reunited himself with Claire and escaped somewhere in a black truck.

As for where exactly they've gone, we'll have to wait for the sequel to find out...

The Gray Man is available now on Netflix.

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