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SPOILERS ahead.
Luther ending spoilers follow.
Idris Elba is back in the trench coat as John Luther returns in new Netflix movie Luther: The Fallen Sun – and it could his darkest case yet.
The new movie starts with Luther banged up in prison for his actions during the final series of the BBC show. However, it’s not long before he decides to break out to catch David Robey (Andy Serkis), a gruesome serial killer terrorising London.
It all builds to a tense finale that takes place outside of London (shocking for Luther, we know), and an open-ended climax that sets up a potential sequel and could leave you wondering just what it all means.
So let’s delve into the ending of Luther: The Fallen Sun to explain all. Major spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
In a Blofeld-esque twist, Luther: The Fallen Sun reveals that Robey was largely responsible for Luther being locked up in the first place. Luther was close to tracking down a teenager who Robey had abducted, so he leaked a dossier of Luther’s misdeeds to the media.
Unable to leave it there, Robey taunted Luther while he was behind bars which, with hindsight, was a terrible decision. After a near miss in Piccadilly Circus, Luther tracks Robey down to his icy fortress somewhere near Norway.
Luther is there in tow with his replacement, DCI Odette Raine (Cynthia Erivo), who is looking to save her kidnapped daughter. Robey thought he could use her daughter to get Raine to kill Luther, but they just teamed up instead.
Robey has the upper hand for a while, making them participate in his twisted Red Room (basically, an online site where people can watch people get tortured). Luther refuses to play ball and eventually chases Robey out onto the ice where have a chilly tussle in the water and Robey drowns.
While this is happening, back in the Red Room Raine manages to save her daughter, while Luther somehow uses Robey’s phone under the ice to unlock the room and the two of them escape.
Martin Schenk (Dermot Crowley) – who had been helping track down Luther – arrives just in time to save Luther meeting the same fate as Robey under the ice, and it all seems like a happy ending. Sure, Luther has been beaten up a lot and stabbed by Raine (part of Robey’s Red Room game), but he’s fine.
Of course, there’s still the pesky matter of Luther having broken out of prison to capture/kill Robey. It doesn’t matter how many serial killers you stop, even Luther has to pay for a prison break – or does he?
After being arrested, Luther is airlifted back to London to be treated for his injuries. He wakes up an indeterminate time later in a government safe house, where he’s greeted by Schenk.
The reunion happens just in time for a convoy of mysterious cars to arrive and even Schenk doesn’t know who they are. “I don’t think you’re going back to prison,” he tells Luther, before suggesting that they might be there for a “job offer”.
Luther meets civil servant Tim Cranfield (Guy Williams) who commends Luther on the job he did stopping Robey. Cranfield then tells Luther that “Chief would like a word”, and gestures for Luther to get into one of the cars.
And that’s all we get for now. Luther appears to be going along with it, but who is he going to meet? It’s a fair assumption to say that since he’s no longer a police officer, Luther could be getting a new job as a secret agent or a spy.
Idris Elba has been talking about turning Luther into an ongoing movie series like James Bond, so what better way than to give him a licence to kill? Luther already basically does what he wants when tracking down serial killers (and he’s very good at that), so it would make sense to make it official.
It might even be that to the wider public, Luther died during the hunt for Robey. As we hear on the TV before Luther wakes up in the safe house, he was “believed to have sustained life-threatening injuries”, so faking his death is potentially an easy step.
We’ll likely see exactly what the job is if we get a Luther sequel or if he decides to just turn it down. However, the series will have to get around the fact that he’s no longer a police officer, so going down the secret agent/spy route makes sense.
As long as he gets to wear his trench coat, we imagine Luther will be game.
Luther: The Fallen Sun is available to watch now on Netflix.
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