Expendables 4 Ending Explained: The Dead Don't Die

Major spoilers for "Expend4bles" follow.

Ever since "The Expendables" was released in 2010, the identity and tone of the franchise has been heavily in question. That first film seemed to want to have things both ways, presenting the trials and tribulations of the (very fictional) titular team of mercenaries while metatextually commenting on (and piggybacking off of) the action stars playing them. Put another way, it's as if the crossover formula seen in Marvel's "The Avengers" franchise was reversed: the coming together of the film's stars are the big draw, while the characters are (at least initially) not well known.

While 2012's "The Expendables 2" leaned far more into the meta aspects of people like Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris showing up in the same film, 2014's "The Expendables 3" attempted to find a similar balance to the first film, establishing its characters in their own right while still making winks and nods to the actors' cinematic legacies. As with any franchise, the bar has to continually be raised with each installment, and, eventually, a direction has to be chosen in order to keep moving forward.

"Expend4bles" (which, if you couldn't tell from the goofy title, is the 4th installment) seeks to shake things up yet again for the New Orleans-based mercenary crew. Not only are there new additions to the team, there is also a subtraction (or two, depending on how you look at it), and even the entire structure of the film breaks apart from the three prior entries. While The Expendables have faced on-screen change and loss before, "Expend4bles" marries the metatext and literal text of the franchise aptly, insofar as it puts the audience in the place of the mercenary's mindset: always expect the unexpected.

Even though "The Expendables 3" featured Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) recruiting a new generation of younger Expendables, "Expend4bles" sees Barney and lifelong pal Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) still riding around New Orleans on their motorcycles and throwing knifes at dartboards in between deadly missions. This is much to the chagrin of Lee's new flame, Gina (Megan Fox), a fellow Expendable herself who breaks up with Christmas during a heated argument. Christmas has certainly had a spotty record with women in the past — there's no mention of his old girlfriend, Lacy (Charisma Carpenter), from the first two films (likely because, according to Simon West's commentary on "Expendables 2," Christmas was meant to announce he'd broken up with Lacy at the end of that movie, but the moment was cut). Even so, it seems he's met his match in Gina, as she's more than capable both on and off the battlefield.

Helping his buddy blow off some steam, Barney brings Christmas to a local biker joint, where a sleazebag going by the name of Jumbo Shrimp (Mike Möller) has won Barney's lucky skull ring in a thumb wrestling contest (in what is a sly reference to Stallone's infamous arm-wrestling movie, "Over the Top"). Christmas cleans Jumbo Shrimp's clock, along with a slew of other bad dudes, getting Barney's ring back for him.

Meanwhile, in Libya, a far more unscrupulous mercenary named Rahmat (Iko Uwais) tears apart the compound of a general, searching for nuclear detonators while coldly executing the general's innocent family members.

Following Willis' Church and Harrison Ford's Drummer is the Expendables' latest CIA contact, Marsh (Andy Garcia). He informs the group about the Libyan situation, sending Barney, Christmas, the returning Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Gunner (Dolph Lundgren) along with the new recruits Easy Day (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson) and Galan (Jacob Scipio) — son of Galgo (Antonio Banderas) from "The Expendables 3" — on a mission to stop Rahmat before he can get his hands on any detonators. Along the way, Toll informs Easy about the mission's codename "Ocelot," a reference to a mysterious terrorist known only as Ocelot whom Barney has been a part of trying to expose for years now with no luck. The scuttlebutt is that Ocelot is who Rahmat is attempting to acquire the detonators for, and, should the terrorist get their hands on them, it's bad news for the entire world.

Thus, The Expendables hit Rahmat's forces in Libya hard and fast, the majority of the team taking the fight to them on the ground while Barney pilots the group's signature Grumman HU-16 Albatross plane above. The team does a decent job of mopping up Rahmat's forces before the evil merc fires off a missile or two at Barney's plane. With the rest of the team unavailable, it's up to Christmas to choose whether to complete the mission and take out Rahmat or attempt to save Barney. He chooses the latter, and fails miserably, unable to stop the cargo plane from hitting the ground and roasting Barney alive. When he and the other Expendables see Barney's charred corpse (complete with lucky skull ring) in the cockpit, they know the fate they all secretly fear has finally come for their leader.

To add insult to injury, Christmas is informed by Marsh and his ex, Gina, that due to his failure to follow orders and capture Rahmat, he's being kicked out of the team. It's here that writers Kurt Wimmer, Tad Daggerhart, and Max Adams (along with Spenser Cohen) get to explore the theme of mercenarydom from another angle: while Barney kept fighting until it killed him, Christmas experiences a more metaphorical death, struggling to find any sort of definition or direction for his life outside of being an Expendable. He attempts a career as a personal bodyguard to an obnoxious social media influencer, but ends up beating up the guy he was supposed to protect (and accidentally becoming a minor viral sensation in the process).

Fortunately, the humiliating experience allows Christmas to get his proverbial mojo back. He reconciles with Gina, their tumultuous relationship expressing itself first in the form of a tussle, then in the form of lovemaking. When Gina nonetheless refuses to allow Christmas to accompany the rest of the Expendables on a mission to get Rahmat, Christmas gifts her his signature knife, supposedly as a symbolic way of getting his own revenge on Barney's killer.

Christmas has his own plan of attack in motion, however. He jets off to Thailand in order to track down a mysterious ex-Expendable and old pal of Barney's, the mysterious Decha (Tony Jaa). It turns out that Decha has attempted to leave his old life of war behind, transforming himself into a humble, monk-like figure living a quiet life in seclusion. After Christmas informs him of Barney's demise, Decha agrees to take Lee to where Rahmat is: wherever Lee's knife is going, as he planted a tracker inside it, knowing that Gina and the Expendables would be going after Rahmat.

Indeed, that's exactly what the Expendables are doing, with Gina as the leader, Marsh as a tag-along member, and the additional help of Lash (Levy Tran), Gina's own number two. Thanks to the CIA's intel, the Expendables learn that a recently declassified file on Ocelot means that a former colleague of the terrorist, now imprisoned, could identify him. Rahmat has stolen a US aircraft carrier, loaded it up with a nuke, and is taking it deep into Russian waters, using it as blackmail to get hold of Ocelot's old colleague. It's not clear what he intends to trade in exchange for the prisoner — until, that is, the Expendables arrive on the carrier and are ambushed and captured.

Fortunately, Christmas comes just in time this year, as Lee secretly arrives on the boat and does a "Die Hard" the best he can, taking bad guys out both silently (with his signature knifework) and spectacularly (using a motorcycle equipped with machine guns that he finds on board). While prior "Expendables" movies tended to feel a little overstuffed and unfocused given the rampant star power (and, one assumes, oversized egos) that was present on those sets, the more subdued "Expend4bles" allows Statham to take center stage for a good full act of the film, and the relatively smaller locale of an aircraft carrier allows for a tighter focus on the action setpieces, such as a motorbike chase through the corridors of the ship.

This is far from an ego trip, however, because the Expendables manage to free themselves from their entrapment thanks to (checks notes) Toll Road peeing on a panel that opens when it becomes too wet. In any case, the team reunites just in time for Ocelot's old colleague to be delivered via helicopter by the CIA.

Christmas takes out Rahmat, assuming that he holds the all-important kill switch for the now-activated nuke on board the ship. Marsh, who'd been apparently taken prisoner by Rahmat when the Expendables were captured, is brought out to the helicopter for the prisoner exchange, only to shoot Ocelot's old companion in the face (along with his attendant CIA guards). That's because, of course, Marsh is revealed to be Ocelot himself. Armed with this shocking revelation, the Expendables now realize the full extent of his evil plan: to detonate the onboard nuke deep in Russian territory, essentially jump starting World War III.

While Christmas manages to blow up the helicopter (Ocelot's intended getaway vehicle), the terrorist himself proves to be as dastardly as his reputation, throwing the kill switch overboard and ensuring that the nuke will go off in a matter of minutes. Moving into evac mode, the Expendables are joined by the now-a-warrior-again Decha, and one by one they board his boat in order to escape the doomed carrier. However, Christmas has learned his lesson from earlier, and he deliberately strands himself on board the carrier, allowing his colleagues to escape while he completes the mission.

Lee heads to the ship's controls, using the anchor to forcibly turn the ship around and back into friendlier waters. While Ocelot intimidates what remains of his goons, trying to have them come up with an escape plan, Christmas prepares for his inevitable demise, comforting himself with the notion that at least this way he'll be able to see Barney again.

As if his prayers were being answered, a hail of gunfire rains down from the heavens, taking out the last few Ocelot lackeys and leaving only the man himself. Christmas decides to go mono a mono with the terrorist, but even that last-ditch display of machismo isn't necessary, as a helicopter dispatches Ocelot with ease. Who's at the controls? None other than a very-much-alive Barney Ross, who implores Christmas to get to the chopper (no Arnold in this movie, sorry) before the nuke goes off. Ross shoots the ship enough to sink it, and Barney and Christmas barely manage to escape from the underwater explosion, which is still powerful enough to send a massive tidal wave their way.

Celebrating back in New Orleans, everyone congratulates Barney and Christmas on returning from certain death. Gina and Lee announce that they're officially back together, too, while the rest of the team bond over their dangerous ordeal.

Of course, Christmas can't help but ask Barney some follow-up questions. One: why did Ross fake his own death? Barney explains that the CIA file that revealed Ocelot's old imprisoned accomplice wouldn't have been declassified until the occasion of his demise, so he arranged the ruse in the hopes it would lure Ocelot out of hiding, which it did. Two: how did Barney accomplish this deception, and just whose corpse did he and the other Expendables find burnt to a crisp in the cockpit? Barney wryly answers, "Did you ever wonder what happened to Jumbo Shrimp?," and we're shown how Ross brought a captured Jumbo out of a hiding place on the plane while it was crashing, threw his lucky ring on the sleazebag's finger, and jumped out of the plane to safety himself by using a parachute.

While "Expend4bles" is more or less a standard adventure featuring these characters on their latest mission to save the world, it still manages to sneak in some meta-commentary on the actors involved. Even though some of the bigger names like Schwarzenegger, Ford, and Banderas are MIA this time around, the film demonstrates how vintage stars like Stallone, Lundgren, and Statham can mingle with newcomers like Tran, Jackson, Jaa, and Uwais with relative ease, and it doesn't require anyone giving up their legacy in order to pass the torch. Like Stallone's John Rambo once said, "Nothing is over," and it seems clear that Stallone doesn't consider Barney Ross nor the franchise that features him expendable at all. Despite their reputation within the films and without, "The Expendables" are not so easy to kill, and resurrection is always possible.