Series / The Continental

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"Listen... if we kill Cormac, we're not only taking his life. We are taking his goddamn house and everything that comes with it."

— Winston Scott

The Continental is a 2023 crime drama miniseries acting as a prequel to the John Wick film series. It is developed by Greg Coolidge, Kirk Ward, and Shawn Simmons, and stars Colin Woodell and Mel Gibson.

Set in The '70s during the Great Garbage Strike and the rise of the Mafia, the series follows a young Winston Scott as he begins his journey to become the manager of the New York City Continental Hotel — a glamorous establishment that also serves as a safe haven and neutral ground for the world's deadliest assassins.

The cast also includes Peter Greene, Katie McGrath, Adam Shapiro, Ray McKinnon, Jeremy Bobb, Ben Robson, Mishel Prada, and Marina Mazepa.

The miniseries premiered on Peacock in the US and on Prime Video internationally, on September 22, 2023.

Previews: Teaser, Trailer

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The Continental includes the following amenities:

• The '70s: The show takes place in the 1970s, complete with disco-nightclubs, references to the recently ended Vietnam War and the dirt and decadence of crime-ridden New York during the garbage strike.
• Advertising by Association: In the teaser, the show's title is given the subtitle "From the world of John Wick".
• Ancient Conspiracy: The High Table is stated to predate the Roman Empire.
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: Winston says at several points that he has plenty of money but doesn't specify how much. Whatever the amount is, it's enough for him to buy a large, empty bank building and racks full of business suits without breaking a sweat.
• Artistic Licence – History: During the banter between Cormac, Charon and Winston in the final chapter, Cormac taunts Charon to kill him, otherwise he'll send him back to Zimbabwe. This is meant to convey Cormac's Global Ignorance (Charon corrects him with "It's Nigeria!"), but at the time^note until June 1979 there was no Zimbabwe. Outside the circle of the ZANU, ZAPU and their Africanist sympathizers, the country was known as Rhodesia, and it was a rogue British colony under White minority rule a la its neighbor Apartheid South Africa.
• Ax-Crazy: Cormac rapidly devolves into this as he loses control, committing extreme violence for little provocation.
• Bad Boss: Cormac O'Connor is the kind of boss who'll threaten an employee's family to compel him to kill himself. He also has a Hair-Trigger Temper and no problem braining someone over even the slightest hint of disloyalty.
• Big Rotten Apple: The series is set in the New York City of the 1970s, when crime was rampant and the streets were piled with garbage due to ongoing strike action by sanitation workers.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Winston stops the Continental's self-destruct protocol at the last second by severing Cormac's hand and using it on the biometric lock. Though the Adjudicator later claims that she was the one who actually stopped it.
• Broken Pedestal: Winston says that he and Frankie used to worship Cormac but that they eventually turned against him after seeing the extent of his capriciousness and cruelty.
• Call-Forward:
  • Once he decides to go on the warpath against Cormac, Winston tells Miles that he requires guns, in the same manner as John Wick's request before the High Table stormed the New York Continental.
    Winston: I need guns. Lots of guns.
  • Prior to launching his final gambit against Cormac, Winston utters "And away we go". He will repeat this phrase when John Wick's excommunicado status takes effect.
  • When KD checks into the Continental in the finale, she's put in Room 818, John Wick's room in the first film.
• Dawn of an Era: Winston and his crew invade the Continental, killing all of the assassins inside as well as Management, transitioning from the cruel criminality of the past to the honor and loyalty of Winston and Wick.
• Didn't See That Coming: The Adjudicator is as smug and assured of her own superiority as her future counterpart. She's therefore taken completely by surprise when Winston unexpectedly guns her down outside the Continental, in order to send the High Table a message that he means business. It works of course, and he assumes full control of the hotel.
• Creepy Twins: The Twins, a pair of eerie pale-skinned brunettes who work as assassins and don't say a word to anyone, not even each other.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Adjudicator has the authority to de-consecrate Continental grounds and declare anyone excommunicado, meaning they're fair game for those who live under the High Table. Cormac, who holds enough power and sway to compel minions to jump to their deaths, lives in terror of falling out of favor.
  • The Continental itself has this reputation with the police, as KD finds out when her surveillance of Uzan (a gun buyer who just lost several fingers to spiked ammunition as well as several of his men during a failed attempt to double cross Lou and Miles) takes her to the hotel. The second she mentions being outside the Continental, her partner and some other plainclothes officers quickly race over, assure the doorman that they're not there to cause trouble, and spirit her away. Mayhew has to warn her that the Continental is off-limits. Despite this warning, KD goes back to the Continental later on her own time, and quickly withdraws once she notices that every single person in the building is being casual about the fact that they're packing a gun.
• Due to the Dead: After they've successfully taken the Continental, Winston pours everyone a drink, then struggles to come up with a toast. Miles finally does it for him. "To Lemmy."
• Establishing Character Moment: Just so we know he's a prick, Cormac shows that he's a Bad Boss by going on at length that Mr. Avery has a large family who could all be killed and gives him a Sadistic Choice: walk out the door and let his family be killed or throw himself off the balcony.
• Face Death with Dignity: Recognizing how thoroughly screwed up everything is, Frankie performs a Heroic Sacrifice so his wife and little brother can escape the wrath of the Continental.
• Facial Horror: The Adjudicator wears a mask over her jaw and mouth. When she removes it, Cormac and Charon react with barely concealed horror, with Cormac referring to her as a "rat-chewed mutant" at one point. When Winston kills her, the mask falls off as her body hits the ground, revealing that her lips have been completely removed.
• The Fagin: Don Li, the crime lord of Chinatown, is also called the Orphan Master. He's willing to mutilate orphans because "a one armed beggar earns twice as much. Ironic, isn't it?".
• Fantastic Drug: Charon prepares a towel with multi-colored liquids for Cormac to huff. The series doesn't specify what the liquids are but they're clearly potent, judging from Cormac's reactions.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: A small detail, but a very important one to anyone familiar with the High Table's rules. Just before he guns down the Adjudicator, Winston purposefully steps down to street level from the bottom part of the stoop that ascends up to the Continental's doors. As a quick refresher, the protection, and therefore rules, of the Continental only extend to the property itself, not the surrounding street. By leaving the Continental grounds, however slightly, he is simultaneously no longer under its protection, but also not beholden to its rules, so he can kill the Adjudicator without consequence. This is further added onto when the Adjudicator accuses Winston moments before she is shot of not knowing the rules, and he answers back that he does, indeed, know the rules. Therefore an added layer of his message is that, by showing he is willing to leave the Continental's protection to kill, he will get his hands dirty to defend his position, but not violate the sanctity of the property he is sworn to protect and maintain.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In his first scene, when describing the consequences of what would happen if he were to be excommunicated and lose the Continental's protection, Cormac says, "Imagine me walking out these doors, y'know, alive... but suddenly unprotected from all the people that I've hurt over the last 40 years. My enemies would hunt me down." In the finale, Winston and his allies take out all of Cormac's allies during their assault on the Continental, leaving him vulnerable to be killed by KD di Silva, who seeks to avenge her family's deaths which were committed over 20 years ago on Cormac's orders.
  • After having sex with Mayhew, a close-up of KD's upper body shows that she has burn scars on her left shoulder and neck, hinting at her being the Sole Survivor of Winston's fire bombing in the past.
  • In the third episode, when talking to Lou, KD tries to connect with Lou by saying she understands what she's going through with Miles, because "I had a brother". Note the past tense. It's then revealed that it was her family that Winston and Frankie were tricked into burning alive on Cormac's orders.
• Generic Graffiti: This is 1970s New York City, so everything is covered in graffiti. Walls, subway cars, garbage trucks, trash cans...
• Genre Shift: Though the show has the franchise's signature fight scenes and car chases, it is far more a Spy Fiction (stale beer) and Film Noir than the jam-packed high octane action films that preceded it, at least until they finally invade the Continental.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: We are given an extensive montage of various killers in the Continental readying their weapons for combat when the red light is activated during Winston's assault on the hotel.
• Locked Out of the Loop: KD di Silva is a police detective who's not in on the secret of the Continental, investigating one of its members for running guns and to avenge her family's deaths. She slowly pieces it together, even as her boss/lover tells her to leave it alone.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Because Frankie's partner decides to rip him off in the vault, Frankie shoots him and the man's machine pistol fires upward through the floor of the disco in the lobby of the Continental, alerting everyone to the theft and launching the plot of the series.
• Non-Action Guy: In the World of Badass of Assassins, Winston stands out as a noncombatant. Charon later joins him as a fellow noncombatant (though clearly he Took a Level in Badass prior to Chapter 3).
• Once an Episode: The first episode continues the franchise's tradition of introducing and then brutally destroying gorgeous classic muscle cars, and the series ends with KD telling Winston, "Be seeing you".
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Gene Jenkins is introduced stalking and sniping a convicted child molester before he can claim another victim.
• The Plan: The series builds toward the plan to infiltrate the Continental and kill Cormac... and all of the assassins. However, there was another plan before the series started, to steal the coin press. It was instigated by the Adjudicator to give the High Table an excuse to eliminate Cormac, only Frankie went off the rails.
• The Precious, Precious Car: Charlie loans Winston his prized Mustang and provides a gun because Winston is going into a rough neighborhood — not for personal protection but to keep would-be thieves and vandals at bay.
• Rags to Riches: Winston's family experienced extreme poverty when he was a child. By the start of the series, he's amassed a large, but unspecified, fortune as a conman.
• Riches to Rags: Mazie, the Bowery Queen, says that she was born into money but rejected her family's wealth in favor of helping — and living amongst — New York's downtrodden.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The main trailer is a tense affair with the franchise's signature action sequences... set to Earth, Wind & Fire's "Shining Star".
• Those Two Guys: In addition to showing how Winston came to be the enigmatic figure thoroughly in charge of New York, it shows the beginning of the Undying Loyalty between him and Charon.
• Young Future Famous People: The series gives us a glimpse of many characters from the John Wick saga decades before they met John.
  • Winston and Charon meet for the first time and the series tells the story of how they will take over the Continental and run it for decades to come.
  • Charlie runs a junkyard and has not yet entered the body disposal business.
  • Aurelio is just a little boy whose father works for Charlie.

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♫ From my party house, I'm afraid to come outside
Although I'm filled with love, I'm afraid they'll hurt my pride
So I play the part I feel they want of me
And I pull the shades so I won't see them seein' me
Havin' hard times in this crazy town
Havin' hard times, there's no love to be found. ♫