Wanted Ending Explained: Why Does Wesley Kill Sloan?

At the end of the 2008 action thriller ‘Wanted,’ Wesley Gibson is devastated to uncover the truth of what his actions have led to thus far. However, instead of letting his failures define him, the protagonist moves for a final reckoning with his real enemy. New revelations are made which threaten the integrity of the Fraternity comprised of assassins, and by extension, that of Fox. She finds herself at a crossroads, in a fierce tug of war between her morals and her reality. Both the characters’ actions ultimately change the fate of the world, quite literally. When the dust settles, Wesley carves a new future for himself, putting everything he has learned throughout his magical gun-slinging adventures to good use. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Wanted Plot Synopsis

Wesley Gibson lives a miserable life, trapped in a thankless office job under a domineering boss and stuck with a girlfriend who is cheating on him with his best friend, Barry. Things take a turn when a mysterious woman named Fox informs him that his estranged father, recently killed, was a legendary assassin, and that the murderer, Cross, is now after him. During a sudden shootout between Fox and Cross, Wesley is forced to flee. He later wakes up in a textile mill surrounded by assassins led by a man named Sloan. Forced to shoot the wings off the flies at gunpoint, Wesley learns that his panic attacks are actually a genetic trait linked to intense adrenaline surges, giving him unnatural reflexes. Sloan claims that Wesley’s father was part of a secret order called the Fraternity, whose members eliminate threats to maintain balance globally. He wants Wesley to join and help eliminate Cross.

Wesley initially refuses, but everything changes when he finds millions wired to his bank account overnight. Suddenly emboldened, he confronts his boss and beats up Barry before returning to the mill for training. Under the Fraternity’s brutal methods, Wesley begins mastering his heightened abilities. Once trained, he is introduced to a fabric within which lies a secret code written in Loom’s mystical language, discovered by the Fraternity, a clan of weavers from thousands of years ago. Sloan interprets these names and assigns targets accordingly. After this, Wesley begins fulfilling his assignments and finally encounters Cross in a shootout that claims the life of one of his allies. Sloan then sends Wesley to kill Cross, and secretly orders Fox to eliminate Wesley as well, implying the Loom has named him.

Elsewhere, Wesley retrieves Cross’s bullet and tracks it back to a man named Pekwarsky. He manages to find the man and, with Fox’s help, forces him to arrange a meeting with Cross aboard a moving train. Cross and Wesley fight until the train derails, but before the latter falls, Cross saves him, only to be shot moments later. With his dying breath, he reveals the truth: he is Wesley’s real father. Fox admits that it’s the truth and that he was recruited because he was the only person Cross would never harm. Before she can kill him, Wesley escapes by breaking through the glass floor and falling into a river. Pekwarsky ultimately rescues him, and for the first time, Wesley sees clearly what the truth is.

Wanted Ending: Why Does Wesley Kill Sloan?

In the final sequence of the movie, Wesley kills Sloan as revenge for the death of his father, Cross. In the buildup to it, Sloan finds out that Wesley has resumed his regular job and arrives to finish him off. However, in a turn of events, it is revealed that the person sitting at a desk is merely a decoy, and the real Wesley has tricked Sloan to stand at the exact spot from which he can be killed. The protagonist does so by firing a bullet from miles away, which eventually finds its way to Sloan. The manner in which this assassination is carried out is important, as it represents the crux of Wesley’s motivations. Prior to this moment, Wesley learns that his father, touted to be one of the most legendary assassins, is actually the person he spends the entire movie trying to kill, eventually succeeding: Cross. It turns out that Sloan had tricked the protagonist for his own gains, prompting the young prodigy to take revenge.

Wesley’s actions are also a means of regaining agency, as described in his final monologue. Initially, he struggles to find meaning in his skills as an assassin, given that he has been exploited to kill his own father. However, he soon realizes that he should redirect his hatred towards Sloan, the man who has been pulling the strings all along. With this, the protagonist proceeds to finish what his father started: an attack against Sloan and everything he stands for. Earlier in the story, Cross takes out one of the assassins by similarly placing him on top of an “X” mark, before aiming with his rifle from miles away. As such, Sloan’s death marks the completion of a cycle, while also showing that Wesley has finally grown to fill his father’s shoes. With this, Sloan’s abuse of the fabric and the assassin’s code also comes to an end.

The complete context for Sloan’s turn to evil comes in the backstory revealed by Pekwarsky. He reveals that Sloan’s name has already appeared on the fabric which announces the Fraternity’s targets. However, Sloan chose to hide this and instead has been engineering artificial targets for the assassins to kill and reaps personal profits. This practice breaks all the code that all members of the Fraternity are supposed to abide by. This includes Cross, who is the first to figure out the truth. Enraged, he chooses to break free of the Fraternity and aims to kill Sloan. However, the antagonist instead warps the narrative, presenting Cross as a rogue agent who must be taken down. Thus, Cross’s role in the story is recontextualized, with his son carrying on the torch.

Why Does Fox Take Her Own Life?

When Wesley decides to take revenge on Sloan, he storms the Fraternity’s secret base, but is eventually surrounded on all sides by assassins. Realizing that he cannot fight his way out of this, he chooses to speak the truth, blowing the lid off the antagonist’s nefarious practices. This comes as a shock to everyone, particularly Fox, who has emerged to be one of Sloan’s most dedicated agents. Realizing that he is backed into a corner, the leader of the Fraternity decides to come clean. He announces that he is not the only one whose name is on the cloth; in actuality, it is every single member of the organization. He further explains that he hid this truth for the benefit of them all, but Fox has heard enough. As a foremost believer in the Loom’s tenets, she decides to end her life.

However, Fox doesn’t stop there; her final move is also her greatest showcase: a bullet that curves through the entire circular room, taking out every single assassin in its path. Her decision is prompted by many reasons, with two of them being the most prominent. First, in abidance with the rules of the Loom, it is her duty to eliminate everyone whose name appears, as they are marked for causing chaos in the future. The second reason is merely a substantiation of the first one, as when Sloan gives everyone a choice to ignore the Loom and join him in ruling the world, everyone except Fox agrees. The power to kill and use the techniques they do also comes with a great responsibility, and exploiting it can spell humanity’s doom. Thus, the rest of the Fraternity becomes her final assignment, one she carries out without fail.

Another interpretation that can be attached to her actions is derived from a detail she shares with Wesley earlier in the story, wherein she mentions that an assassin who failed to finish his job was murdered, along with his near and dear ones. Given Sloan’s handling of Cross, it is possible that the leader himself was responsible for killing that unnamed assassin, as punishment for not following his rules. Furthermore, Fox’s recounting also includes a young girl who is threatened by the killers, although her fate is never shown. As such, it is possible that Fox is recalling her own past, and that the young girl is merely her child self. Nonetheless, these actions point out how the Fraternity has abandoned its principles and begun to decay, which justifies their ultimate downfall.

What is Next For Wesley?

With the Fraternity gone, Wesley finds himself back where he was at the start of the story. He checks his bank balance to find that he is broke again, and with no means to put his skills to use, they returns to experiencing anxiety attacks. However, by choosing to pick himself back up and kill Sloan, the root of his problems, Wesley shows that there is still more to his life. His journey, then, becomes one of taking back control and rejecting all the negative influences of his life. This is symbolized by his bullet piercing through his boss’s doughnut and his former best friend’s soda. Therefore, Wesley is likely to start the next chapter of his life with a renewed, confident sense of self, free from social burdens and insincere dynamics with other people.

Furthermore, given that he is still one of the rare few who can tap into supernatural abilities, Wesley’s role as a guardian is still far from over. As the mystic language in the fabric is still alive, he has the potential to become its new protector, following the rules and deciphering the names it brings forth. With Pekwarsky still active in the story, it is likely that the two team up, with the latter crafting bullets which the former can use to assassinate the evil present in the world. This not only frees Wesley from the mundane, exploitative lifestyle he dreads, but also gives him a new sense of purpose. Wesley’s final piece of narration in the show, with him asking the audience what they have been up to lately, is a call to action, directly urging them to similarly find a noble pursuit in life.

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