The following contains spoilers for the end of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a fantastically fun movie, one that nearly perfectly balances the adventure of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign with…the frequent silliness of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It’s one of the most fun times I’ve had at the movies in a while and based on the Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves ending, there’s a chance we’ll all be able to have more fun with this series before too long.
Honor Among Thieves certainly leaves itself open for a potential sequel, which is exactly what you’d expect from a movie like this, franchise possibilities had to be part of the initial conversation. While the film’s box office will ultimately determine what happens with that, I’m certainly ready for the potential future D&D movies, not just with sequels to this story, but the countless other stories that could be told.
How Dungeons And Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Ends
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves sets our team of heroic adventurers against a red wizard named Sofina. She’s revealed to be the true power behind the throne of Forge (Hugh Grant), the acting Lord of Neverwinter. And while Forge is only after riches, Sofina is looking to use an ancient magical artifact to convert the people of the city into an army of the undead that will serve her master, Szass Tam.
In the end, Edgin, Holga, and their friends win out. Simon the Sorcerer is able to counteract the spell that got the best of him previously, and Doric the Druid goes all Hulk Smash on Sofina in owlbear form. We’re not sure she's completely dead, she was undead, to begin with, but after that beating, she probably wishes she could die again. Forge goes to prison, where one assumes we’ll find him if a future sequel needs him.
Holga very nearly dies, she is played by Michelle Rodriguez after all, so of course she does. In fact, she actually does die, but death isn’t always the end in D&D. Edgin uses the resurrection magic he’d wanted for his deceased wife in order to save his friend who had been with him through so much. Edgin and his daughter are back together. Simon and Doric are going to give their own relationship another try.
How Honor Among Thieves Sets Up A Sequel
While the primary and secondary villains of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves are dealt with -- with one of them dead and the other in prison -- the movie is still sure to leave the door open for that potential sequel. It’s made clear in the final moments of the film that while Sofina is dead, Szass Tam, the lich ruler of Thay that she served, is still very much alive.
The adventuring party agrees that if Szass Tam does become a problem in the future, they will still be there to fight him, setting up a potential sequel that would continue the events of this story. There’s still a villain out there to be fought, which gives us an easy opening for a new adventure.
And there’s also Forge to be potentially dealt with. While he ends the movie in prison, we already see him trying to escape once, and so the possibility of him eventually succeeding is also there. He’s likely not a major threat on his own, he was only dangerous before because of Sofina’s power, but if he does get out, the possibility of joining forces with someone, or something, else has to be considered.
Dungeons & Dragons Could Become A Cinematic Universe
If Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves does well enough at the box office then we can be all but assured that another movie will get the green light and all the main stars of this movie will be back. It seems likely that they'd all have the option for a sequel in their contracts. However, there’s even more potential for the future of Dungeons & Dragons as a film franchise because it’s the sort of property that could easily be turned into a cinematic universe. Not only could we get sequels to the movie we have, but numerous spinoff stories, and, dare I say it, a multiverse.
The beauty of Dungeons and Dragons as a brand is that the tabletop role-playing game is, by design, an open-ended platform for the creation of unique and original stories. There are countless campaign books developed over the last 50 years that tell specific stories, but even they are designed to give the players the freedom to tell that story their own way within the adventure.
Even within this movie, we had the character of Xenk played by Rege-Jean Page. He wasn't a main member of the cast and his character sees the least development. In the language of D&D, he's an NPC, but there's no reason he couldn't become the leader of his own party in a future movie that has little, if anything, to do with Honor Among Thieves.
Not only that, but Dungeons & Dragons has created multiple planes of existence for stories to be created. Honor Among Thieves takes place around the city of Neverwinter, on the continent of Faerûn on a planet called Toril. As that implies, there are literal other worlds within this galaxy, never mind other locations in the same world, where future Dungeons & Dragons films could be set. They can all take equal inspiration from the game, but because of the very different worlds that are available, they can be very different movies.
Part of the beauty of Honor Among Thieves was that the movie held tightly to the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons by not basing itself on any previously known events or story and simply creating its own adventure using the core components of the game. And this process can be used again and again to make more movies.
While I’m all for seeing more movies with the Honor Among Thieves cast, they’re fantastic, we can also see entirely different adventuring parties go on completely unrelated adventures. Some of them can have races of people, locations, and creatures that are entirely unique from the others.
