UPDATE: Another new photo has now been released and can be seen in the gallery below alongside the original one.
If you’re a dog in a John Wick movie, then your chances of living to see the end credits are almost as bad as the average human’s, so perhaps it only makes sense that the upcoming John Wick 3: Parabellum brings not one but two new canines into the action. After all, it never hurts to carry around a spare.
A new photo courtesy of Entertainment Weekly shows Keanu Reeves wandering the desert with Halle Berry, the latter of whom joins the series as an assassin named Sofia. Accompanying the actors is a pair of Belgian Malinois dogs that director Chad Stahelski has clarified hold symbolic weight for Berry’s character, telling EW:
“Whereas John’s puppy was symbolic of his wife, Halle’s two dogs are symbolic of someone she’s lost.”
If you’re wondering where John’s latest pup is, the dog was confirmed by previous set material to still have some screen time, which only figures seeing how the new film picks up right where the last one left off.
“The third chapter is literally connected to 2 and starts with John Wick on the run,” Reeves told EW. “It goes crazy from there.”
As much as we worry about John’s pet, Sofia’s hounds have been described by Stahelski as “canine assistants” who “work very well tactically,” so maybe these two can take care of themselves. In any case, Reeves has offered a few more details on Sofia herself, explaining that his character turns to her now that the rest of the assassin community is after him.
“She has a past with John,” Reeves said. “I end up going to find her to see if she can help me.”
The third and reportedly final chapter in the John Wick saga is said to delve further into its lead’s personal history, with Stahelski claiming that the movie is “a little bit of an origin story.” There’s definite untapped potential to our hero’s early, pre-assassin days, but after the cliffhanger that the last film left us on, we’re more concerned about what’s next for the character, and we’ll find out when John Wick 3: Parabellum hits theaters on May 17th, 2019.