Which The Bad Guys 2 Character Are You?

Learn More About The Bad Guys 2

The first Bad Guys film arrived in 2022 as something of a surprise. DreamWorks adapted Aaron Blabey's wildly popular children's book series into a heist comedy with a visual style borrowed more from graphic design and 1970s crime cinema than from the studio's house look, and the result was sharper and funnier than the marketing suggested. The Bad Guys 2, released in August 2025 and again directed by Pierre Perifel, keeps that identity intact while asking a harder question than the original did.

The first film was about whether criminals can reform. The sequel is about what happens after they do, when the world declines to believe it. Mr. Wolf, voiced by Sam Rockwell, and his crew have gone straight, and they discover that a clean record is not the same as a clean reputation. Nobody will hire them. Everyone assumes the worst. When a new crime is committed and the evidence points their way, the presumption of guilt is instant and total.

That premise gives the film genuine stakes underneath the slapstick. Rockwell plays Wolf as someone holding the whole operation together while pretending it costs him nothing, desperate to be seen as good rather than merely clever. Marc Maron returns as Mr. Snake, prickly and sincere in inverse proportion, and the Wolf and Snake friendship remains the emotional core of both films. Awkwafina, Craig Robinson and Anthony Ramos return as Ms. Tarantula, Mr. Shark and Mr. Piranha, each given more to do than the first film managed.

Zazie Beetz is back as Diane Foxington, the former Crimson Paw who has lived on both sides and is not embarrassed about either. Diane is the film's thesis in character form: she believes people can change because she did, and she has no patience for anyone who wastes the chance. The sequel adds an all-female crew of antagonists, voiced by Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne and Maria Carolina Robledo, who complicate the moral arithmetic considerably.

Visually, the film continues to be one of the more distinctive things in mainstream animation. The chase sequences are staged with real geography, the character designs stay chunky and expressive rather than photorealistic, and the whole thing moves at the tempo of a caper rather than a cartoon. It is the rare animated sequel that seems to have been made by people who liked the first one for the right reasons.

It also does something quietly useful for younger viewers. The film takes seriously the idea that reputation is sticky, that doing the right thing does not automatically produce recognition, and that the temptation to become what everyone already believes you are is genuinely powerful. That is a more sophisticated moral than most family films attempt, and it is delivered without a lecture.

If animated ensembles are your thing, try our Zootopia 2 quiz or, for the other side of the moral ledger, our Zootopia 2 villain quiz.

So where do you fit in the crew? The leader carrying everyone, the cynic who cares too much, the one running on pure feeling, the shapeshifter, or the one who already did the hard part? Take the quiz above and find out.