A Quiet Place 2 clearly sets up for A Quiet Place 3, but for the sake of the best story, the threequel needs to use Cillian Murphy to repeat history. Co-written by, directed by, and starring The Office alum John Krasinski, A Quiet Place actually wasn’t his directorial debut, although it was certainly the film that made the masses aware he was also skilled behind the camera. A Quiet Place was a true sleeper hit in 2018, raking in profits for Paramount, and earning rave reviews.
A Quiet Place 2 was of course intended to hit theaters about two years after the original, in March 2020, but was one of the first movies to fall victim to the impending Coronavirus pandemic. As a result, fans had to wait an entire additional year to reunite with the surviving members of the Abbott family and find out how they managed to move on with their lives after the death of their patriarch Lee (Krasinski).
Krasinski returned as director and co-writer for the sequel, and the end result, while probably not surpassing the original, proved to be a worthwhile companion piece. He also came back to play Lee in an early flashback, but his part in A Quiet Place 2‘s story was effectively given over to Murphy’s Emmett character, a family friend who the Abbotts encounter after leaving their homestead. Emmett is rough around the edges but proved to be a great addition to the cast. Sadly, the best dramatic move would be for him to not make it out of A Quiet Place 3 alive.
There’s something to be said for the concept of bookends, two similar events that happen at both the opening and closing of a saga. While a proper A Quiet Place 3 won’t be the next movie in the franchise – A Quiet Place spinoff has already been greenlit for 2023 – it would be almost criminal if one doesn’t get made, hopefully with Krasinski back at the helm. Fans need to see what happened after Emmett and Regan played their anti-alien sound weapon over the radio, and the monsters attacked the island survivor colony, not to mention the duo’s hopeful reunion with the rest of the Abbotts.
At the same time, Lee Abbott’s heroic self-sacrifice in the first A Quiet Place was arguably the most effective dramatic element in the film, and Emmett now seemingly assuming some type of surrogate father and protector role to Regan means he needs to meet the same bittersweet fate. While Emmett is a good man, he’s also clearly quite damaged by the loss of his family, as evidenced by him keeping the dead body of his wife around. He’d no doubt like to reunite with them in whatever afterlife he might believe in, and it’s not at all hard to imagine him jumping on the proverbial grenade to save Regan and facilitate her making a bigger dent in the alien scourge. He seemed pretty hopeless prior to the Abbotts coming back into his life, and it’s likely he’d value their lives over his at this point. In sacrificing himself, preferably in a similar way to Lee, Cillian Murphy’s Emmett could bring the Abbott story full circle, provided A Quiet Place 3 is their last movie outing.
