Which Ballerina Character Are You?

Learn More About Ballerina

Released in June 2025 under the full title From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, the film is the first theatrical spin-off from Chad Stahelski's action franchise, and it arrived with an unusual amount of scrutiny. Spin-offs from action series have a poor track record, and this one had a complicated production history — but it also had a clear reason to exist: a character seeded in John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum whose story the main films never had room for.

Ana de Armas plays Eve Macarro, a young woman raised by the Ruska Roma, the Belarusian crime organization that trains assassins under the cover of a ballet academy. The Director, played by Anjelica Huston, runs it. Viewers who remember Parabellum will recall the Ruska Roma as the institution John Wick himself came from and the source of the marker he called in there — which is what makes Eve's story a genuine extension of the world rather than a marketing exercise.

The plot is deliberately simple: Eve's father is killed when she is a child by members of a shadowy cult led by a figure known as the Chancellor, played by Gabriel Byrne. She is taken in, trained, and eventually goes looking for the people responsible, against the explicit instructions of the organization that raised her. What elevates it is the choreography. Stahelski's team built the fight sequences around the premise that Eve is physically outmatched in nearly every encounter, which forces the action to be inventive rather than overpowering — improvised weapons, environmental advantage, and a now-widely-discussed sequence involving flamethrowers.

Keanu Reeves appears as John Wick in a supporting capacity, and the film also features Ian McShane as Winston Scott and the late Lance Reddick in one of his final performances as Charon, the Continental's concierge. Reddick died in March 2023, and the film carries a dedication to him. Norman Reedus and Catalina Sandino Moreno round out the cast.

The production was not smooth. Len Wiseman directed, with Stahelski producing, and reporting during post-production described substantial additional photography overseen by Stahelski — a process both men later characterized publicly as collaborative rather than adversarial, though it delayed the release by roughly a year. The finished film is stylistically continuous with the main series, which suggests the extra work achieved its purpose.

Critically, it landed better than most expected, with particular praise for de Armas's physical performance and the fight design, and the usual criticism that the plot is thin. Commercially it performed modestly — solid rather than spectacular — which has left the future of the spin-off strategy somewhat open. The franchise continues regardless, with further John Wick projects in development.

What the film does best is expand the world's institutional texture. The John Wick series has always been more interesting for its rules than its violence: the markers, the High Table, the gold coins, the neutral ground of the Continental. Ballerina adds the Ruska Roma's internal logic to that map, and the result is a world that feels administered rather than merely dangerous.

If stylish, rule-bound action is your thing, our Gentlemen character quiz covers a similar criminal-etiquette world, and our MobLand quiz takes on organized crime from the family-business angle.

So are you the one seeking the reckoning, the one who just wants out, the one who built the system, the one who negotiates it, or the one who upholds it? Take the quiz above and find out.