Extraction 2: How Taylor Rake Is Still Alive

As announced at Netflix’s TUDUM event, Extraction 2 will see Chris Hemsworth return as Taylor Rake, but how exactly is the mercenary still alive? Extraction saw Hemsworth’s Rake take on the job of returning Ovi, the kidnapped son of an Indian drug lord. Despite its mixed critical response, the film was a smash for Netflix, quickly becoming the platform’s most-watched original film at the time, streamed 99 million times in its first four weeks alone.

This success meant that work on the sequel started soon after its release, with Hemsworth, the Russo brothers, and director Sam Hargrave all slated to return. However, the Extraction‘s narrative hardly left room for a sequel, with a bullet-riddled and dying Taylor Rake catching a last slug in the throat before falling from a bridge into a river. Despite Rake’s apparent demise, a distinctly Hemsworthian figure appeared in the film’s epilogue, giving Extraction a nonsensically ambiguous ending. The trailer for Extraction 2 confirmed this, with the heavily wounded Rake surfacing from the river to a voiceover lifted from the first film hinting that Rake still has enough fight to overcome his many, many wounds. It may have seemed inevitable, especially considering his apparent reappearance in Extraction‘s epilogue, but it’s now an absolute certainty. This begs the question: exactly how could Rake have survived?

The answer is actually quite simple, and it’s not likely to surprise fans of Extraction‘s comic book source material. After Rake’s tumble into the river, a distraught Ovi is bundled into a helicopter by some of the mercenary’s team, finally achieving the titular extraction. However, keen-eyed viewers may have noticed that some members of Rake’s team actually remained on the ground as the helicopter took off, and they can be glimpsed bundling into two separate SUVs. It only makes sense that they’d at least try to recover Rake – he was alive when he fell, after all, and despite his wounds looking quite severe, he’d already proven to be a pretty tough customer. The comic book actually shows Tyler waking in a hospital, confirming that he survived.

However, Extraction gave Chris Hemsworth’s morally ambiguous Tyler a reasonably satisfying redemption arc. Starting with his near-suicidal obsession with his work after a massive personal loss, the film shows him learning to care again as he keeps Ovi safe, even going as far as to state that Ovi’s welfare is all he cares about shortly before the final scene. While this lends itself nicely to a poetic death just as Rake rediscovers his humanity, it actually makes more sense for him to survive for a sequel. After all, as the teaser trailer indicates, Tyler has a newfound will to live that prevents him from going quietly into that good night, and it was all set out quite plainly by the events of Extraction.

Exactly what to expect from Extraction 2‘s story isn’t entirely clear. However, Tyler Rake’s ambiguous status at the end of Extraction has already been cleared up, and now it’s clear that he survived, the scenario surrounding his rescue and recovery becomes more concrete and believable. Exactly how he’ll return to mercenary life after his near-death experience remains to be seen, but these are questions that Extraction 2  will have no choice but to answer.

About The Author