Django Unchained is the only Quentin Tarantino movie that has an official sequel, and it teams Jamie Foxx’s titular gunslinger with none other than the classic pulp hero Zorro. The resulting comic series almost became a movie in its own right, but, according to Tarantino himself, both characters also exist in a shared universe with another classic hero: the Lone Ranger.
Coming from the creative team of Quentin Tarantino, Matt Wagner, Esteve Polls, Brennan Wagner, and Simon Bowland, Dynamite’s Django/Zorro comic-book sequel sees Django heading further into the American Southwest, where he encounters an aging Don Diego de la Vega. Django is hired on as the Don’s valet, at which point he discovers the man used to be the masked avenger of justice: Zorro. The two wind up teaming up to take on the “Archduke of Arizona,” a vicious landowner using the local migrant laborers as enslaved workers.
Quentin Tarantino’s Django Meets Zorro in Their First Crossover
The miniseries is a worthy sequel that lives up to the legacy of both characters, but, according to Tarantino’s introduction in the Django/Zorro paperback collection, there is room for Django to team up with another famed Western hero. “I love that Django lives in the same universe that Zorro lives in,” Tarantino writes. “And since in another book Zorro meets the Lone Ranger, that means that Django lives in that universe, as well.” The crossover Tarantino speaks of is Dynamite’s The Lone Ranger: The Death of Zorro by Ande Parks and Esteve Polls. Even though that series saw Diego de la Vega meet his final fate, Tarantino can’t resist the possibility of his bounty hunter meeting the most famed masked lawman of all time —as well as his Native American partner. It certainly begs the question: “What would happen if Django met Tonto?”
All three characters existing in the same shared universe creates a number of fascinating story possibilities, partially because of Zorro and the Lone Ranger’s legacies in popular culture. Created by Johnston McCulley in 1919, Zorro is one of the earliest masked heroes on record, setting up many of the tropes that would later become commonplace in superhero fiction. The Lone Ranger made his debut later in 1933 on the Detroit radio station WXYZ, quickly becoming one of the most popular programs on the air waves. Many have posited the theory that the Lone Ranger was based on the real-life lawman Bass Reeves, a former enslaved man who went West and became a deputy U.S. Marshal — which is not dissimilar from Django’s origins, making a crossover between the two Western lawmen an even more enticing prospect.
Zorro And The Lone Ranger Already Exist In the Same Universe
Although the proposed Django Unchained and Zorro crossover movie is reportedly not moving forward, fans still have the original comic series to read. With any luck, we’ll get another crossover sequel sometime in the future, teaming Tarantino’s bounty hunter with the greatest lawman of them all, the Lone Ranger.
Check out Django/Zorro, available now from Dynamite!
