Back in 2014 Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua came together post-Training Day for a very different sort of movie in The Equalizer. At the time, it was one of many post-Taken attempts to bring older actors into the action genre, but The Equalizer was clearly a cut above the rest. It was a box office hit big enough to spawn a sequel. And now, despite its success, the Equalizer trilogy is coming to an end.
The Equalizer 3 release date is set for September 1 and on that date, we will see what the end of the story for Robert McCall will be. Considering how successful the previous films have been, it may seem a bit short-sighted to wrap up Equalizer with three films, but Washington tells Empire that the new movie “seems to be a good place to stop.” He explained…
I don’t want to say he’s found happiness, and I don’t want to give it all away, but he meets someone lovely, he’s in a lovely town and he seems to be at peace. That seems to be a good place to stop. I didn’t know that there were going to be three. Definitely didn’t know that when we did the first one. I didn’t know how it would end.
The Equalizer sees Denzel Washington’s character as a John Wick-style one-man against the world. He has found himself in a couple of situations where he felt compelled to get involved, and his sort of involvement involves shooting lots of people dead. In a story like this, there are a couple of different ways the story could end. It sounds like Equalizer 3 at least has the potential for a happy ending, where the character will be able to find peace and truly be happy.
The other way the story ends, as with the recent John Wick: Chapter 4 ending, is with the death of the character, because finding true peace and happiness probably isn’t possible. Of course, the John Wick franchise has been so successful that even though the character is presumed dead, it appears that John Wick: Chapter 5 isn’t entirely off the table.
One certainly has to wonder if something similar could happen with Equalizer 3. If the movie is a hit there will almost certainly be a studio interested in more. And if Washington's character survives the trilogy. it will certainly be easy enough to bring him back.
Of course, you also have to have a star and a director who are equally interested in doing the same. Denzel Washington says he clearly wasn’t expecting this to become a franchise, and he’s not the sort of actor that tends to get involved in big franchises. In fact, The Equalizer 2 was the actor's first-ever sequel, so this new movie marks his first trilogy.
