Note: Contains spoilers for 6 Underground.
Netflix might have its own Christmas movie shared universe, but it's yet to launch a blockbuster franchise (sorry, A Christmas Prince fans).
That could be about to change with Michael Bay's 6 Underground, which arrived on Netflix on December 13. The big-budget action movie centres on a team of international operatives, recruited by a tech billionaire to take out notorious criminals.
And if you were paying close attention in the moments between the Bayhem, there's a clear set-up to a potential sequel and maybe more beyond that. But to explain it, we need to go into spoilers, so look away now if you haven't seen the movie yet.
After the death of Six (poor Dave Franco) in Florence during the movie's hectic opening, One (Ryan Reynolds) recruits army sniper Blaine (Corey Hawkins) – now known as Seven – to his team of 'ghosts' and takes him to their "haunted house" in the Californian desert.
One outlines their mission to take out "truly world-class evil motherf**kers" and to "do the dirty work the living can't or won't", showing Seven the team's "target hit board" and adding: "These nine men have been placing too much sh*t inside the box. So now they answer to us."
(The "box" is a metaphor about how we compartmentalise all the evil things in the world, putting them in a box and forgetting they exist. Something the 'ghosts' can't do as they've "lost our ability to pretend".)
The first target on the board is the brutal dictator of "Turgistan", Rovach Alimov (Lior Raz), and it's the team's attempts to take him down – and replace him with his democracy-loving brother Murat (Peyman Maadi) – that forms the plot of 6 Underground.
Unusually for an action movie, the team's plan works with minimal fuss. No double-crosses, triple-crosses or shock deaths here.
They have to be resourceful at times, but they manage to rescue Murat from Hong Kong – where Rovach had been keeping him under guard in a luxury penthouse – and kickstart a revolution in Turgistan.
An action-packed finale sees One turn Rovach's yacht into a giant magnet (naturally) and Murat take control of the army, stopping them committing genocide, before the team capture Rovach and give him to the rebels, likely leading to his death.
But that's just one target of nine crossed off the list.
We have no idea who the other eight targets are or if One has a personal vendetta with them, like he did with Rovach, who bombed a hospital that One happened to be visiting at the time before he faked his death.
So we can assume that if 6 Underground gets a sequel, then it'll be the second (or more) of these targets who will be the new focus for the team.
The team all still alive at the end and we don't really know all that much about them, so a sequel could flesh out their backstories too.
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At the end of 6 Underground, we discover that One has a child with Arianna (Elena Rusconi), but know little about their relationship other than that they met at a play, while Two (Mélanie Laurent) and Three (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) are now together.
But that's it as far as their personal lives go, with the focus in 6 Underground very much on the action. The world and concept has now been established, so Bay could expand the world in a second movie.
Of course, the movie would have to be a success first for Netflix to greenlight a sequel, especially given the reported $150 million budget for the movie.
For now, we'll just have to watch this space.
6 Underground is now available to watch on Netflix.
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Ian Sandwell
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
