If you like action movies and you also like genre stories that dig into one key conceptual
hook and its many implications along the way, The Old Guard is a film for you.
From how it wraps up to where it might go next, this is the ending of The Old Guard
explained.
Here's your warning: spoilers ahead for The Old Guard.
The chief threat of The Old Guard is Merrick, a pharmaceutical tycoon who becomes convinced
that Andy and her near-immortal crew are the key to opening up all sorts of pathways to
curing disease, slowing the aging process, and perhaps even stopping death.
Merrick has vast financial resources, tremendous tenacity, and the help of Copley's research.
He also has Booker's help, and with all of that at his back he's very nearly able to
capture and incapacitate every single member of the Old Guard.
Of course, by the end of the film Merrick has fallen out of his own skyscraper with
an axe in his neck, so he won't be coming after them again any time soon.
That said, as Andy notes near the end of the film, it's almost impossible to stay hidden
in the modern world they live in.
If Merrick was able to track them down and deploy his wealth to very nearly cage them
all, who's to say an even wealthier business tycoon somewhere can't do the same, particularly
after they learn about what Merrick went through?
All it takes is one person with knowledge of the team who's willing to say what they
know.
When we first meet Nile, she's an American Marine just trying to do her best who discovers
quite by accident that she's immortal.
Much of the film's emotional core is devoted to Nile coming to terms with her abilities
and the massive implications they have, including what it means for her relationship with her
loved ones.
As the other members of the Old Guard explain, if she tries to keep in touch with her family
and stay with them until they die, they'll grow to resent her.
"And you will never forget the hate and despair in their eyes."
Still, Nile persists in her desire to keep in contact with her family, to the point that
Andy even relents and gives her back her phone.
In the end, Nile chooses her new family of immortals, but reveals in the final scenes
of the film that she still has her phone, and therefore still has a lifeline to her
family even though Copley has promised to make it look like she was killed in action.
Though Nile seems content with finding her way as an immortal, it's very possible she'll
seek out her family again even after her family learns of her presumed death.
It's possible she won't be able to resist, and will open a box that she finds very hard
to close.
From the beginning of the film, it's clear that the Old Guard values their privacy.
Andy goes so far as to offer to take a photo for some tourists just so she can delete a
picture she happened to be in the background of.
Then, of course, Copley reveals that he's been doing research on them going back decades,
complete with photographs, old ID cards, news clippings, and much more.
As penance for his attempts to sell them off to Merrick, she tasks Copley with becoming
their new eraser of sorts.
He will be in charge not just of helping them coordinate new missions, but of erasing every
trace that they were there in the first place.
By the end of the film, the Old Guard has a new and powerful layer of secrecy in their
corner.
Though Merrick is the chief villain of The Old Guard, he's not alone in his journey to
capturing the crew and learning their secrets.
Arguably the most important ingredient is Booker's betrayal.
Andy and her crew very nearly go down because her best friend and fellow immortal decides
it's worth it to turn them all over to medical researchers in the hope that one day, they'll
learn how to finally die.
By the end of the film, Andy has found new purpose in life after her struggle with Merrick,
and while she shares a part of that with Booker, the group still votes to punish him by exiling
him from the team.
"One hundred years from today they'll meet you here.
Til then you're alone."
But just as he's preparing himself for a lonely century, Andy's old partner Quynh tracks him
down, presumably to use him to get to Andy again.
Booker already betrayed the Old Guard once.
With a potential unstable immortal now hunting him down, will he do it again?
Quynh's return is brief, so there's still a great deal we don't know about her.
What we do know is that she's been through a lot.
She suffered a kind of torture that mortal humans can only imagine, and it probably hasn't
done anything good for her mental state.
There's no doubt that she'll at least put Booker in a difficult position, whatever her
plans may be.
The members of the Old Guard know they can die.
They just never know when.
Each time they go down in a fight could be the last, but none of them has any idea what
triggers that final death, or what the signs are.
Near the end of the film, Andy realizes that she has lost her own grip on immortality when
Booker's shot to her stomach refuses to heal.
Though she's apparently now vulnerable enough that she could be killed, Andy is at peace
by the end of the film.
She sees her newfound mortality as a tradeoff for Nile's emergence as the first new immortal
among them in ages.
Seeing her young sister in arms fills her with a new sense of wonder, and seeing Copley's
research into her past reveals to her that she has a purpose she can still serve while
she lives.
So, with all of that in mind, how much longer does Andy actually have left?
Will she age conventionally and die in a few decades?
Booker seems to think that's the case, though she seems to know something we don't, telling
him to have faith.
Is it possible that her lingering gifts could prolong her life, or even make her somewhat
harder to kill than a normal human?
We don't know, but Andy's definitely not done testing her limits.
The members of the Old Guard know quite a lot about how their immortality works.
They know that it is finite, they know that they dream of each other when they're apart,
and they know that they are rare.
What they don't know is why they've been given these strange gifts and others haven't.
By the end of the film, though, Copley has shown them why.
In the course of his research into the Old Guard, he discovers that Andy and her crew
have a ripple effect on people they save on missions.
If they rescue someone, that person's descendants will do something great in the world, creating
a cumulative good that multiplies the longer they stay alive.
"She saves a life, two or three generations later we reap the benefits."
This discovery is perhaps the most important driving factor in the entire film, because
it confirms for Andy that she still has something worth living for.
The world might be getting worse, but she has a palpable power to make it better, and
so the crew sets out at the end with a renewed sense of purpose, even though they still don't
have all the answers.
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