John Wick wasn’t always a one-man killing machine, but his less-than-fortunate upbringing set him up for a hard life full of loss and assassinations.
John Wick is one of the most iconic modern movie characters to grace the big screen, not to mention one of the most lethal. The expert assassin is well-known in the criminal underworld as the "Baba Yaga," with his deadly actions earning him quite the reputation. Unfortunately for the utterly tragic man, his backstory more than paved the way for such a dark life.
John Wick didn't quite start out as the well-trained killing machine he would become. Likewise, he didn't even start out as an American citizen either. The mean streets of his birth were in many ways reflective of the life he would go on to live, and how family and love would be ripped away from him at a second's notice. Here's how John Wick's lack of a real family set him on a dangerous path that would ultimately ruin his life.
Though he's more well-known by his later name, John Wick was actually born Jardani Jovanovich in what's now Belarus. With his parents dead, the young boy was taken in by a friend of his father's. Much of his youth would be explored in the John Wick comic book miniseries from Dynamite Entertainment, which showed him spending a lot of time in Mexico. There, he would first become acquainted with the Ruska Roma criminal organization, with this fateful encounter being the most influential in his entire life.
Under that group's Director (played by Anjelica Huston), the young man would become incredibly well-trained in all the many attributes that would help him later in life. The Director would even treat him as a sort of adoptive son, though this distorted version of family in the place of a real one was always the most dangerous thing to the future John Wick. He would later choose the name John Wick as an Americanized version of his original last name.
At one point, John would meet Lance Reddick's Charon, later saving him and earning the future Continental concierge's eternal respect. Using the skills taught to him by the Ruska Roma, John Wick would become a member of the Continental (which catered to assassin guests) and join the Tarasov Mob. There, his uncanny lethality made him a vital asset to Viggo Tarasov's group, and vicious actions, such as his killing three men with a pencil, earned him the nickname "the Baba Yaga." Though it afforded him a gritty form of glamour, such a reputation would bring about an end to Wick's short-lived peace down the road.
Though John Wick had become an expert level assassin as a part of the Tarasov Mob, the love of a good woman would finally make him reconsider his tumultuous path. Falling in love with a lady named Helen, he requested to retire from Viggo's employ. The Tarasov patriarch reluctantly agreed, though he had no intention of letting his greatest asset go. Giving Wick an "impossible task" that involved killing off everyone one of his mob's enemies, Viggo was sure that even the Baba Yaga would be unable to pull it off. He was somewhat correct, with John requesting the aid of Santino D'Antonio to complete his mission.
After leaving the criminal underworld temporarily behind, John was called back to save his Continental associates Charon and Winston. Though his loyalty to these friends was already high, Wick's saving them was somewhat related to the strings pulled by the High Table, the secretive rulers of the underworld. Of course, once John reluctantly entered that dark world again five years later, it was due to his actions running afoul of this High Table, who quickly turned him into a walking target. In the end, the killer "family" that John had all his life in many cases outlived him, and only his faithful and innocent wife offered him any true peace from the world of assassinations and death. All his allies ever helped him do was be a veritable angel of death in a kill-or-be-killed world, and said prophecy would eventually come true.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is now playing in theaters.
Timothy Blake Donohoo is a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he majored in Communication and minored in Creative Writing. A professional freelance writer and marketing expert, he’s written marketing copy and retail listings for companies such as Viatek. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, playing video games, watching documentaries and catching up on the latest Vaporwave and Electro-Swing musical releases.