The Gray Man Ending Explained: How The Movie Sets Up The Future For Ryan Gosling’s Court Gentry

Updated on July 23, 2022 17:27 PM by Ava Sara

Russo’s Massive Spy Thriller

Finishing an action-adventure spectacle like The Gray Man might leave its audience trying to catch their breath. The latest in the library of original Netflix movies, Anthony and Joe Russo’s massive spy thriller, adapted from author Mark Greaney’s book of the same name, packs a lot of action into its running time.

Simultaneously, the tracks to the future are laid pretty effectively, as Ryan Gosling's protagonist Court Gentry has been mixing it up with his enemies for 11 books, with a 12th on the way.

The future for Gosling’s character, and the rest of The Gray Man cast, is shadowy at the moment, but there are some threads that The Gray Man is ending puts into play that set things up.

If you haven’t watched the movie yet and want to go in the cold, this is the point of no return. Should you wish to know more about the film without spoilers, read our official review of The Gray Man. Otherwise, let the madness begin, starting with what happened at the end of Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans’ insane confrontation.

What Happens At The End Of The Gray Man

Never let it be said that The Gray Man doesn’t know how to use a setting. Pitting Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) and Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) against each other in front of an ornate French fountain was quite the choice for the film’s final fight.

However, after all of the snarky one-liners, gunplay, knife play, and fisticuffs, it wasn’t Court that took out Lloyd in the end.

Former ally Suzanne Brewer (Jessica Henwick) was the person who pulled the final trigger on the psychopathic contractor, whom she was overseeing in the quest to silence Court Gentry.

Leaving Court alive but still severely wounded, Suzanne makes a deal: he and Claire Fitzroy (Julia Butters) get to live. However, there are two conditions: Court goes back to prison, and the niece of his late mentor, Donald (Billy Bob Thornton), is placed under CIA lock and key.

Suzanne’s Story

One could say it’s a small price to pay for backing Suzanne’s story that Lloyd Hansen was behind every single screwup we saw in The Gray Man. However, it’s a price that’s soon voided out.

Court Gentry escapes prison and busts, Claire Fitzroy, out of her metaphorical birdcage. The pals escape in an imposing pickup truck, going on the run from those who would do them harm.

The first clear thread that The Gray Man leaves open is that Court Gentry and Claire Fitzroy are on the run.

As both know what happened throughout this entire CIA shit show, they’re pretty much public enemies #1 and #2. Or at least, that would be the official viewpoint of the two parties with the most to lose from this mess.

The Gray Man’s Events

Not only does Suzanne Brewer’s career rest on keeping these events under wraps, but so does that of Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page), CIA center chief. You could say that The Gray Man’s events were his fault, right from square one, and we’ll get into why in a moment.

But for now, there’s one more ally to Court Gentry, who’s currently tied up in this bureaucratic web of secrecy.

Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas) reluctantly joined Court’s quest to expose a CIA program that’s at the heart of the madness that Denny Carmichael has created. She’s so helpful that Dani does some heavy damage to the enemy stronghold in the final act with what seems like an unlimited amount of rockets.

Unfortunately, she now has to back the official story that Suzanne and Denny have cooked up; otherwise, Court and Claire's existence could be considered collateral damage.

Operation Matador: The Reason Court Gentry Is Hunted Down, Explained

Why is the CIA so obsessed with taking out Court Gentry and anyone else on his side? Well, it all tracks back to the first op where we see the man, also known as “Sierra Six,” taking part.

As The Gray Man opened in Bangkok, Court is sent to take out “a nasty dude” that turns out to be “Sierra Four” (Callan Mulvey). Handing off a microchip with some sensitive information to “take the bastard down,” Court is now officially read into Operation Matador.

The Sierra Program was the brainchild of Donald Fitzroy and former CIA director Margaret Cahill (Alfre Woodard). In recruiting convicts in prison and training them “to kill bad guys,” Donald Fitzroy so eloquently put it, The Gray Man’s title comes from the fact that these people were considered gray in existence and ethics.

The Sierra agents were on-call hitmen for the U.S. clandestine services in exchange for commuting their sentences.

CIA Leadership

It all leads to the mess that The Gray Man sees its characters at the heart of, as the ambitious Denny Carmichael gets both Fitzroy and Cahill out of CIA leadership. Once he’s installed as the new boss, one of his pet projects is, naturally, wiping out the Sierra Program.

Operation Matador is his effort to turn the Sierra agents against each other by sending them out to kill nasty dudes. Those dudes just happen to be their brethren upon secretive orders to clean up a program that has outlived its usefulness in Carmichael’s eyes.

In examining this ending, we’ve barely mentioned Chris Evans’ Lloyd Hansen, and the Gray Man villain critics can’t stop talking about.

This also leaves everyone wondering about the answer to an unexpected question: did Lloyd die, and could Evans return for some of those Gray Man sequels? Well, there’s a definitive answer to that question, which comes from the Russo Brothers.

The Gray Man’s Field Of The Battle

While being interviewed by our own Eric Eisenberg, Joe and Anthony Russo were both asked about whether there was a version that saw Chris Evans walk away from The Gray Man’s field of the battle alive.

As their Marvel Studios background gave them experience in impossible survival, that’s a fair question. However, as The Russos told CinemaBlend, you shouldn’t be expecting Lloyd Hansen back any time soon, and for the following reasons.

I mean, he was so entertaining when we were shooting the movie, Evans, that we're like, ah, can we kill this character?

Joe Russo Said

It seemed, yeah, we struggled over that for a long, long time, Seemed too, it just, again, like, we, we used always to say this with the Marvel work, you know, there have to be staked, you know what I'm saying? If you don't, if there isn't a sense of loss on the audience's part, everything is free and easy when you get to the end of the movie.

I think in the spirit of like, you can't have everything, you know, we sort of had to commit to that.

So in the same way, we intended to, you know, put to rest forever, you know, Black Widow and Iron Man, Lloyd is, you know, he's in the graveyard of fictional characters. Joe said, he burned bright.

The Gray Man Series

So there you have it, folks: Lloyd Hansen has run up the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. While The Gray Man series has plenty of adventure in store for Court Gentry, it seems that Lloyd played his hand too heavily and suffered the consequences.

Speaking of which, there are plenty of implications to go around in this universe, but all of that naturally depends on how well this first Sierra Six adventure does with the crowd.

To that effect, it's OK if you want to revisit The Gray Man or somehow read through this ending rundown without seeing the movie. Netflix subscribers can now stream that film, or if you feel up for a trip to the movies, it’s still showing in limited theatrical release.

If you’re hungry for more knowledge, our last offering is this rundown of what we knew about The Gray Man before actually seeing the film.