09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Netflix faces backlash as The Old Guard 2 sidelines iconic gay romance, leaving fans frustrated: 'The sequel was terrible'
It's been five years since The Old Guard dropped on Netflix during the early days of the pandemic. The original 2020 film introduced a world of immortal mercenaries, heavy lore, and intense action sequences, but what truly stood out was the love story between Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), two warriors-turned-soulmates who fell in love after killing each other during the First Crusade. Their romance, unapologetically gay, resonated strongly with viewers in a genre that rarely gives queer couples space, let alone immortality.
With The Old Guard 2 now out, fans of the so-called 'Immortal Husbands' were eager to see how their story continued. But the sequel has sparked disappointment, not because Joe and Nicky's love disappeared altogether, but because it was quietly pushed to the background.
Netflix faces backlash for sidelining a fan-favourite queer couple
From the trailer to the actual runtime, Joe and Nicky's presence in The Old Guard 2 feels noticeably diminished. In the first film, they were front and centre emotionally, if not narratively. This time, they vanish for long stretches, only to reappear briefly, and by then, the film has already moved on. It's not that they've been de-aged or broken up; they're still together, still clearly in love. But the warmth and attention they were once given feels reduced, especially compared to the way Netflix promoted them as a central draw.
This shift hasn't gone unnoticed, especially in an entertainment landscape where queer visibility is increasingly under pressure. For a franchise that once proudly featured a tender kiss between two men as a defiant middle finger to homophobia, their reduced presence feels like a step backward.
Fans have plenty to say and they're not holding back
A thread on the popular subreddit r/popculturechat was flooded with opinions after a user shared a Daily Beast report highlighting the disappearance of the queer romance from the Netflix movie.
'They replaced a fantastic director with a director who has never made a good film, and then of course she handed in a terrible film,' one user wrote. Another chimed in, 'It wasn't that the couple wasn't gay anymore—it's that the whole movie didn't know what to do with them.'
Another fan added, 'A bit more gay content wouldn't have saved it. The poor fight choreography, fake-looking sets, bad dialogue, and nonsensical story with no payoff killed it.' One more echoed a similar sentiment: 'It's not like they were having sex in the first one. But this felt like half a (bad) story. Nicky still had his gay soulmate moment; it just wasn't given the same weight.'
Others were simply sad. 'I thought the first movie was fun and watchable, with interesting world-building, and I loved Joe and Nicky. The sequel was TERRIBLE. A literal hot mess. No wonder it has sat on a shelf since 2022.'
More about The Old Guard 2
The Old Guard 2 picks up where the first left off, with Charlize Theron's Andy once again at the centre. Premiered on Netflix on July 2, the sequel expands the world but spreads itself thin in the process. There are new characters, new threats, and a setup for yet another sequel, but the emotional grounding of the first film is noticeably absent. It feels more like a stepping stone than a standalone story, and in trying to set up the next big thing, it forgets what made the first film work: the human relationships behind the action.
Fans have echoed similar thoughts, with many calling the sequel 'lukewarm,' 'visually inconsistent,' and 'overstuffed without payoff.' Even with a three-year gap between filming and release, the final product feels unfinished, and for fans who waited half a decade, it was definitely a disappointment.
