With 2025’s A Quiet Place: Part III returning to the Abbotts’ post-apocalyptic story, the sequel needs to make a rare move by resurrecting one of its significant dead characters. Although the A Quiet Place movies have a very limited number of characters, the franchise hasn’t been afraid to kill off major players. In the opening scene of A Quiet Place, the film revealed the death of the Abbotts’ four-year-old son Beau, then ended with the self-sacrifice of director John Krasinski’s main character Lee. A Quiet Place Part II’s deaths were largely contained to unknown or unseen figures, but there is one major character who died before their role in the story could be fulfilled.
Unlike other horror franchises, A Quiet Place sticks to its guns when it kills off a character. When someone looks like they died or is assumed dead, this is their fate. While Beau and Lee were returned in A Quiet Place 2 for the opening flashback sequence, there was no doubt that these characters had died. Maintaining a dead character’s fate is typically the best path for the horror film series to take, but A Quiet Place 3 will need to break this rule for an unexpected death at the end of A Quiet Place 2.
Just before Emmett (Cillian Murphy) and Regan (Millicent Simmonds) kill the monster on the island in A Quiet Place 2’s ending, the new unnamed character played by Djimon Hounsou is dragged out of the station by the alien. His death wasn’t confirmed on-screen, but A Quiet Place’s patterns suggest this is the case. However, A Quiet Place 3 would be stronger if it surprisingly revealed him to have survived, especially since the actor was severely underutilized in the plot with such a quick death. Credited as Man on Island, Hounsou’s character was significant in explaining the island colony’s survival and disconnect from the rest of the world, and was one of the only compelling characters not connected to the Abbotts’ former life.
The chemistry between Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou on A Quiet Place 2‘s island as they worked together to save the younger survivors also made them an incredible action-horror tag team, but the latter character’s death prevents this dynamic from being fulfilled on a higher-stakes scale. Hounsou is also a talented actor whose performances work to make films even better, so it seems a waste to leave his franchise legacy at his short screen time in A Quiet Place 2. Moving forward with A Quiet Place 3, Hounsou’s character surviving would be an important part in progressing the franchise’s cohesive narrative, as he was the only islander actually introduced.
If A Quiet Place 3 picks up without bringing anyone from the island along, this location and storyline will feel fairly arbitrary. Rather, the island plot would work much better if Hounsou’s unfinished character was able to see through the Abbotts’ mission to help the rest of the world in A Quiet Place 3. The radio signal was started by Hounsou’s character, and it’s only right that he’s there to help see it work on a larger scale. If Hounsou’s A Quiet Place 2 character is truly revealed to be dead, the sequel will have ended with only one character addition through Emmett, and thus limits the narrative’s future.
Even if Djimon Hounsou’s character doesn’t return for A Quiet Place 3’s present timeline, he’s important in explaining how these people could have survived for so long without any monster attacks. A Quiet Place 2 barely touched on these answers, and each detail was given by Hounsou. It’s been suggested that A Quiet Place 3 could repeat A Quiet Place 2’s opening flashback as told from Hounsou’s perspective of being loaded into the boats headed for the island, but his character would be much better used for the franchise’s future instead. For starters, he never got a name even though he played a major role in helping Regan and Emmett get to the radio station. It seems necessary that an islander joins A Quiet Place: Part III’s narrative, and the best option would be the character most underserved in A Quiet Place 2.
