'Onslaught's Ending Sets Up A Wild Super Soldier Trilogy From Adam Wingard
Onslaught (2026) is Adam Wingard’s most brutal movie yet, which is saying something considering he also helmed You’re Next (2011) and Blair Witch (2016). The film follows three super soldiers created by the government to be remorseless killers, getting loose and laying waste to everyone and everything in their wake. It’s also not the first time the director has explored those kinds of themes.
Wingard also helmed The Guest (2014), which had a similar underlying concept but a different tone and style. The thematic connections could easily become pronounced on the surface of the narrative, tying them together and making Onslaught something of a sequel to the previous movie. Given the lingering threads left open by the film, though, there’s enough material for Wingard to return to this concept and build off the ending of Onslaught to complete his super soldier trilogy.
The Ending of 'Onslaught', Explained
Onslaught is a bombastic and brutal movie up until the final scenes, where the denouement teases that the story might not be done yet. After escaping from confinement, the three murderous super soldiers Butcher, Crybaby, and Cockroach carry out their ingrained mission to cause chaos and bloodshed in civilian populations. Despite their enhancements and skill sets, all three end up killed while fighting against Celeste and her remaining neighbors, although only Celeste, her daughter Daisy, and fellow veteran Josiah survive the end of the movie.
However, the arrival of Hanna Kammler raises some interesting questions about what happens next. Hanna mentions that they’ll need to monitor Celeste going forward, suggesting that they may have plans for how to weaponize that maternal instinct that gave the retired sniper the crucial edge she had to take down Butcher. Onslaught’s credits also underscore the terrifying vision of the government that the filmmakers have for this world, where super soldiers can be developed specifically to cause discord and chaos amid civilian populations.
What Happens to Celeste, Daisy, and Josiah in 'Onslaught'
Onslaught’s final scene implies that Celeste, Daisy, and Josiah are going to be placed into witness protection, largely to keep them from exposing the truth of what happened in their trailer park. While the world at large seems to believe they are missing, given all of the posters that sprinkle the credits, this also gives Hanna the chance to more directly observe (and potentially even experiment) on Celeste.
Celeste’s husband, Hans, had attempted to create the perfect soldier as part of their shared dream, with Hanna rolling with the loss of her beloved husband to continue monitoring his final creations. The best-case scenario for the trio of survivors is that they get to live out their lives in peace, with one clue in the Onslaught hinting that they have been moved to the small coastal town of Seward, Alaska. However, it’s possible that this could be a cover for further experimentation. Given that the government was perfectly content with countless innocent deaths earlier in the film, it wouldn’t be a surprise for them to use a mother-daughter relationship as the bedrock for a new test.
Adam Wingard Needs to Finish His Super Soldier Trilogy
One of the things that makes Onslaught especially interesting is the way it continues the themes and concepts that director Adam Wingard had initially addressed in his film The Guest. That movie, which also starred Dan Stevens, focused on a similar concept of a rogue enchanted soldier terrorizing a civilian population, albeit in a more restrained way. While The Guest left a lot of questions about how Steven was specifically upgraded and conditioned into a more lethal state, it has a lot of similarities to the mysterious defense contractor that hired Hans to make the three new soldiers in Onslaught.
What makes the two movies especially effective sibling stories is the way they approach the shared central concept from very different tonal places. The Guest is a tense character thriller, while Onslaught goes the full action/horror approach. Onslaught highlights the kind of visceral brutality at the core of this story. At the same time, the overarching mystery of who is funding these super-soldier experiments and why they seem to hate the American public serves as a clever thematic throughline for a potential franchise. A third film could make the story a complete trilogy, emphasizing the themes that Wingard is clearly intrigued by when it comes to soldiers, PTSD, and the military-industrial complex that turns people into weapons and little else. Onslaught leaves enough lingering threads that a follow-up would be incredibly exciting, especially if it served as the real connective tissue between Wingard’s Super Soldier movies.
