🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐 

Chris Hemsworth pitched Idris Elba on his Extraction 2 ending cameo in a fittingly explosive setting: as fireworks hit the sky. “We were at a New Year’s Eve party together and over a few beers started throwing around ideas,” Hemsworth recalls. “And then I was pitching him this character. It really wasn’t even in the script yet.” Hemsworth pitched the concept to his Extraction 2 team, and the rest is history. “I believe I fist-bumped Chris Hemsworth and said, ‘Hell yes!’ ” director Sam Hargrave says.

Soon enough, the Thor co-stars were reuniting for Elba’s brief cameo as the mysterious Alcott, a besuited official who recruits Tyler Rake for an impossible mission. Unlike the last film, this has immediately personal stakes for the hired gun: the family he’s rescuing from a Georgian prison belongs to his ex-wife’s sister. One massive train chase, a roof fistfight and plenty of explosions later, Rake is once again a bit worse for wear — and he’s lost one of his beloved partners, Yaz (Adam Bessa). 

Director Sam Hargrave Breaks Down Every Fight Sequence in Extraction 2

But there’s no rest for the weary, at least not when you’re Tyler Rake. When one of Rake’s young charges, Sandro (Andro Japaridze), is kidnapped by his merciless uncle Zurab (Tornike Gogrichiani), Rake leaps into action again. It all comes down to a ruthless battle in an abandoned church between a gangster with nothing to lose and a mercenary with a heart of gold. 

“The reason we set it in a church was for the villains –– there’s a bit of a cult-like connection within that group,” Hargrave says. “They’re following this charismatic leader in Zurab and he has a mission and he doesn’t waver from that.” The setting also had significance for Rake, who’s battling to save a child years after he left his cancer-ridden son to fight in Afghanistan. “On Rake’s side, it’s a story of redemption and his atonement for his past sins,” Hargrave says. And atone he does, finally defeating Zurab after enduring an intense duel that brings all manner of hacksaws, nails and hammers into play. 

All’s well that ends well? Not quite. Rake is still, you know, a wanted criminal. When we next see him, he’s sharing a heart-to-heart with his ex-wife Mia (Olga Kurylenko), from the other side of a prison partition. Tyler Rake may just need an extraction of his own.

And he gets one soon enough, in the shape of Alcott, who returns in the film’s ending. “We wanted to hint at an expansiveness to this world by introducing a figure that we could contrast against Tyler Rake as much as possible,” Hargrave told Netflix. “Rake’s a man of few words, he’s crass but lovable, and we wanted to juxtapose him with a guy who’s a bit of the opposite.” These two may be very different people, but they may just have to learn to work together — in the movie’s ending scene, Alcott offers Rake, and his partner Nik (Golshifteh Farhani) a job working for his mysterious boss. 

Behind the Stunts of Extraction 2

Will there be an Extraction 3?

As for what could come next for the Extraction crew, producer Anthony Russo says the team subscribes to an old adage: write yourself into a corner. “Put yourself in a place creatively where you don’t know how to move forward, and then figure out how to move forward,” he says. “That’s what we’ve done over and over again with Extraction — put it all on the table, put everything on the screen and then figure out if there’s a way to tell another story in this narrative universe. We were able to find Extraction 2, and the big challenge now will be, can we find an Extraction 3?”

Hemsworth is quick to point out that Elba’s cameo was originally positioned as a universe-building opportunity. “It was more of what we could do in the third one if we were so lucky,” he says. “I think having emotionally finished the chapter on his backstory, we could now be looking forward, and see a different side of the character.” That different side might just play to Hemsworth’s strengths — and we’re not talking his muscles. “Tonally, there’s a charisma and a sense of humor that Idris has in the film that I would love to expand upon in [a] third film.” 

Could we be seeing a Tyler Rake who takes on the characteristics of one of Hemsworth’s funnier characters (think the befuddled Kevin in Ghostbusters)? “That’d be a certainly unexpected turn for the character,” Hemsworth laughs. Well, maybe not that funny. 

Extraction 2 is now streaming on Netflix – catch up on everything that happened in Tyler Rake’s first mission with our Extraction quiz below: 

How Well Do You Remember Extraction?And who exactly was being extracted?