WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Old Guard, now available on Netflix.
Netflix's The Old Guard adapts the Image Comics title from Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández that focuses on a group of immortal mercenaries who are targeted by a pharmaceutical tycoon, Merrick (Harry Melling), and an ex-CIA agent, Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor). The plan is to harvest their genes but it all changes when the newest addition, ex-Marine Niles (KiKi Layne), enters the fray.
This leads to a high-octane finale that changes the future of the group as leader Andy (Charlize Theron) finally accepts they should be out there making a difference rather than hiding in the shadows.
THE SINISTER BETRAYAL
Andy's squad is ambushed outside of France with lovers, Nick (Luca Marinelli) and Joe (Marwan Kenzari), taken. Booker's (Matthias Schoenaerts) left badly wounded, but after Andy slaughters the rest of attackers, they decide to recover their friends. Unfortunately, Niles leaves the group because she can't handle this life and abandoning her family, -- at least until she realizes Andy gave her an unloaded gun and is walking into a trap.
At Copley's lair, Booker turns on Andy, revealing he was a mole all along. Merrick's goons arrive and take the rest of immortals, with Booker admitting if Merrick's scientists could unlock the key to their immortality, maybe they can take it away. He's just tired of living for centuries, enduring deaths of loved ones like this three sons. Copley doesn't like Merrick's confession, however, about monetizing their genes, but when he objects, he's beaten.
THE BIG RAID
Merrick's team somehow forgets about Niles, allowing her to return and work with Copley who reveals he just wanted to help people recover from illness as his wife suffered terribly when she passed years before. He provides Niles access to Merrick's lab and she wages a one-woman war, rekindling her fire for battle per her Afghanistan days. She eventually frees the other immortals and they forgive Booker as they need all hands on deck for the escape.
They cut a bloody path through the facility and it ends with Andy and Niles confronting Merrick, who's wielding Andy's medieval ax. Andy can't risk getting shot as her immortality is running out, however. But using a "play dead" trick seen earlier in the film, Niles rushes Merrick and takes the bullet, allowing Andy to then grab the ax and plant it into Merrick's neck. Niles then spears him through a window and they fall multiple stories down onto a car. Andy and Co. come down, proud that Niles has embraced her destiny as one of them, with Merrick crushed in a bloody scene.
THE WORK CONTINUES
The team nurses its wounds but at a meeting deciding Booker's fate, they banish him for a hundred years. They agree to meet at the same bar when that period expires but he admits by then, Andy would be dead as she's lost her power naturally. They hug it out because they've been through a lot together, with Booker also offering Niles advice after she fakes her death and is reported to her family as KIA, just like her dad. From there, she's finally ready to move on and save the world.
This ties into the final scene where Copley shows the immortals their history indicating that they have a higher calling. All the people they've saved went on to make contributions to science, politics and tech, so they are guardian angels of sorts. He can't explain their powers or trace its origins, but it does seem to be divine. Andy concludes by telling him it's time to get back to work and he'll be their handler, wiping digital trails of them and helping find missions that paint them as true social justice warriors.
Starring Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Harry Melling, The Old Guard is now streaming on Netflix.