'The Continental' Is a New TV Series Prequel to the World of 'John Wick'

The “John Wick” series, even with its latest installment, left us with a lot of questions. What is the High Table, and how did it come to be so powerful? Why can’t anyone conduct business at The Continental? Why is it so important to Winston? Why does such a wealthy criminal organization use 1940s technology?

Peacock dropped a new teaser trailer for a limited series that might answer some of our questions. “The Continental: From the World of John Wick,” begins in September 2023 and explores the foundations of the High Table’s most illustrious hotel.

As fans of the Wick films know, the Continental hotels are actually a chain that crisscross the globe, acting as a neutral ground where criminals, even those living “under the table,” can’t conduct their business. Violating the terms of neutrality means being declared excommunicado, having their hotel privileges revoked and usually being executed.

The excommunicado is the catalyst for “John Wick” chapter Nos. 3 and 4. While much of the fictional criminal underworld gets an explanation through the series, the films raise just as many questions as they answer. And while we assume John Wick is a Marine Corps vet, the franchise has yet to confirm that. With no sighting of a younger Wick in the preview, we don’t know whether he’ll make an appearance in the prequel.

Now actor Mel Gibson (“Braveheart”) leads the cast of the new three-part limited series set in New York, 40 years before the events of the “John Wick” film series. It also stars Colin Woodell (“The Flight Attendant”) as a young Winston, played in the films by actor Ian McShane. A young Charon, the future concierge of The Continental, will be played by Ayomide Adegun (“The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”).

The new series steps back four decades to weave the hotel’s – and Winston’s – background. According to the show’s official description, it will explore the origin of the hotel “through the eyes and actions of a young Winston Scott, as he’s dragged into the Hell-scape of 1970s New York City to face a past he thought he’d left behind.

“Winston charts a deadly course through the hotel’s mysterious underworld in a harrowing attempt to seize the hotel where he will eventually take his future throne.”

“What we’re exploring in ‘The Continental’ is the young Winston and how it came to be that he and his team of confederates found their way into this hotel which we have met for the first time in the movie franchise 40 years later,” Lionsgate Television Chairman Kevin Beggs said in a 2021 interview with Deadline.

“[The Continental is] about a crumbling New York in the 1970s with a garbage strike that has piled up bags of garbage to the third floor of most brownstones, the mafia muscling in on that business which is why in ‘The Sopranos,’ he’s in the sanitation business. And other things that are really real as an interesting backdrop to explore the origins of The Continental.”

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on LinkedIn.

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