John Wick’s Parreled Experience to Dante
Image Credit: “John Wick: Chapter 4”
John Wick, the Baba Yaga, “boogieman” is an incredibly complex character developed throughout his namesake's current tetralogy. A four-part movie series depicting the fictional life and final moments of an assassin's journey of re-entering the criminal underworld after experiencing a tragic loss of a loved one. Dante’s work depicts his fictional journey through personal cleansing and redemption in his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. A character who is most likely not an immediate thought when speaking about Dante Alighieri's “Divine Comedy” works. However, through small details and even major plot points from the movie series, it becomes slowly yet increasingly clear how much John Wick and Dante Alighieri have in common as characters. They’re respective stories, worlds, and calls of the divine overlap immensely.
Foundationally, both of their stories revolve around consequences. Dante’s character of himself in the Divine Comedy witnesses the consequences of sinners throughout his time in inferno and purgatory. John Wick acts as the executioner and dealer of consequences throughout his four-part “John Wick” movie series. The two characters both go through their quests of self-discovery and redemption in the case of Dante he finds himself fulfilling the punishments in Purgatorio alongside other dead souls and Aided by Virgil. John Wick is in a different situation since he becomes indebted to the higher powers of the criminal underworld after breaking the established laws that it has which put into motion the fourth film from the Tetralogy, but through his journey fights extremely hard for his freedom and becomes relieved of his burdens. The world-building in the stories also shares key characteristics like being “hidden” from mortal eyes and structured by a hierarchy of power in crimes. It's almost an inverse relationship since Dante Descends the levels of hell and going deeper results in more vile sinners being punished more harshly, and in the world of John Wick the audience becomes introduced to higher authorities in the crime world as the movies progress with each beholding more governing and lawful power in the criminal empire.
Although completely separate in the settings, and overall story beats, the message that “Actions have consequences” hangs over the heads of all characters presented in both stories. No one is exempted from the fact that the punishment serves the crime both in the afterlife and in the land of the living.