Warning: SPOILERS for Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver are ahead!
Arriving to Netflix subscribers on December 22, 2023, Rebel Moon: Part One - A Child of Fire kicked off the story of Kora, a former Imperium soldier who’d built a life for herself in a farming community on the moon of Veldt and, despite initially being hesitant, agreed to assemble a team of warriors to help protect the villagers from Atticus Noble and his forces. Although Kora managed to kill Noble towards the end of A Child of Fire, Noble was resurrected in its final minutes by Regent Balisarius to end the insurgency against him and bring Kora, his adoptive daughter, back to him alive.
Four months later, the second half, titled Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver, has dropped on the 2024 movies schedule, but if you thought it wrapped everything up in a proverbial neat bow, think again. There are various plot threads left over at the end of this second half, but will Rebel Moon: Part Three happen? That’s what we’re here to talk out, and that’s accompanied by statements CinemaBlend got from Kurt Johnstad, who cowrote the Rebel Moon movies with director Zack Snyder and Shay Hatten. But before we get into that, let’s talk about The Scargiver’s ending.
Where Rebel Moon: Part 2 Leaves Things
The good news is that Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver ends with the good guys emerging victorious, and with Gunnar’s help, Kora was able to permanently kill Noble aboard his crashing Dreadnought. However, all this came with a tremendous cost. Along with widespread damage across the village on Veldt, there were numerous casualties, including Den, Nemesis and Gunnar. That last one hit especially hard, as Kora had fallen in love with him.
Fortunately, the movie ended on a hopeful note. Earlier in the movie, it was revealed that Kora had killed Princess Issa on Balisarius’ orders, but then he immediately proceeded to pin the blame on the King and Queen’s murders on her too, pretending as though this tragedy was all her doing. Following the battle on Veldt, Kora confessed to the survivors that she killed Issa, but General Titus shared that he not only already knew about this and her being Balisarius’ adoptive daughter, but that the princess is actually still alive. Kora is now determined to find Issa and “fight,” and she has allies willing to accompany her on this journey.
The Rebel Moon Saga Is Supposed To Last A Lot Longer Than Two Movies
When I spoke with Kurt Johnstad ahead of Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver’s wide release, he informed me that it’s always been the plan for these movies to leave behind plot threads left to explore in another movie, if not many more. In his words:
In all actuality, we figured this out. In our minds, it was always going to be a trilogy. What we have seen now, what’s dropping on the 19th, is Part 2 of Movie #1. If the trilogy is so big that we needed to break each movie, it would be six movies now. That’s incredibly ambitious and we will be lucky if we get to do that. I don’t know what the plan is, but we have figured out the structure, the timelines and the character arcs and the histories and all the backstories, all the way until the end. In our minds, if it’s a trilogy in two parts each, that we know where we’re going, and we just hope the fans are excited enough to go there with us.
So rather than simply wanting to wrap things up with Rebel Moon: Part Three, if Johnstad and Snyder have their way, four more movies will follow, with each of the next two pairs comprising another chapter, just like A Child of Fire and The Scargiver did. They’ve already made major progress breaking down where the story will go from here, but that doesn’t mean Part Three is ready to film as soon as possible.
The Rebel Moon: Part 3 Script Hasn’t Been Written Yet
After Kurt Johnstad said the above statement, I asked for clarification whether or not he’s started writing Rebel Moon: Part Three’s script. He responded:
We have very detailed treatments, so we have not started commencing a draft, but that would happen very quickly. So when Zack is given a green light, if he is, then we’re ready to start working, and that would be Shay, Zack and I.
This makes sense. Why begin Part Three’s script when Netflix hasn’t officially ordered it yet? While there are the Rebel Moon director’s cuts to look forward to later in the year, it’s hard to say when we’ll learn whether or not the threequel will move forward, whether it’s just as one feature or, as Johnstad, Snyder and Hatten would like, two more movies comprising what would technically be Chapter 2. It’s a good bet the streamer will wait to study the viewing numbers on The Scargiver and the director’s cuts before deciding one way or the other.
Future Rebel Moon Movies Will Explore These Plot Threads
If the full scope of Kurt Johnstad, Zack Snyder and Shay Hatten’s Rebel Moon saga comes to pass, there are a few things we can expect to see in these upcoming movies. In July 2023, Snyder shared with Empire that the title world of this franchise doesn’t refer to Veldt, but rather a planet called Vanna. When I asked Johnstad to share more details about this world, he said:
Vanna is a place where really it’s the staging point in the middle and kind of the ends of how Zack and I and Shay have, as a collective, talked about taking the fight to the Motherworld. Vanna is that staging platform and place geographically where everybody trains up, and then they take the fight to Balisarius.
To be clear, it’s not necessarily guaranteed that Vanna will appear in Rebel Moon: Part Three, although Johnstad describing it as a training ground suggests seeing it in the next movie and/or a fourth movie seem solid. Once the training is done on Vanna, then in the final installments of the Rebel Moon saga would presumably be primarily set on the Motherworld empire’s main planet, i.e. where Balisarius rules with an iron fist.
In addition to The Scargiver revealing that Princess Issa is still alive, we also shouldn’t forget how A Child of Fire showed that the young girl has healing powers, and when she was shot by Kora, her body gave off a mysterious white glow. When I speculated about how Issa might be considered a messianic figure within the Rebel Moon universe, Kurt Johnstad told me:
I think that Zack certainly plays with those archetypes and ideas. The princess is certainly central all the way to the end of what consider the full arc of all the stories, as is Kora. There’s of course many characters that will come on board. There’s a lot more of Jimmy and he’s fantastic. We’re just hopeful.
So if you enjoyed watching Jimmy in these first two Rebel Moon movies, not only are you guaranteed to see more of Anthony Hopkins’ character in the director’s cuts of A Child of Fire and The Scargiver, he’ll also be sticking around for Rebel Moon: Part Three, as he agreed to accompany Kora on her search for Princess Issa. This group also includes Titus, Tarak and Millie’s, but in order to learn what challenges await them next, the threequel needs to be greenlit.
If/when that day comes, CinemaBlend will pass along the big news. For now, if you’ve already watched Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver, then look over the best movies on Netflix to watch this month, or you can delve back into the Rebel Moon mythology with the comic book series following Devra and Darrian Bloodaxe years before the events of the first movie.
