Spoilers ahead for Mortal Kombat II. If you haven't seen it look away!
Some of the best video game movies have arrived over the past few years, including Simon McQuoid's Mortal Kombat (which is streaming with a HBO Max subscription). The sequel Mortal Kombat II is in theaters now, and a ton of beloved characters were killed off throughout its 116-minute runtime. And writer Jeremy Slater recently explained why Lewis Tan's Cole Young was murdered so early into the movie.
The first Mortal Kombat movie was very much about Cole, an original character who didn't come from the video games. But despite being the protagonist of that title, he got very limited screen time before being killed by Shao Khan in the sequel. In an interview with Variety, Slater explained how his early death came about, revealing:
It’s something I pitched in the round table when they brought in a bunch of writers because at the time I wasn’t writing it. It was someone else’s problem. It’s very easy when you’re just sitting there throwing out ideas to be like, 'I would kill that guy.' It is tough, because I really like Lewis Tan as an actor. He’s a phenomenal human being and a world class martial artist. The reality is that his inclusion was something that was sort of studio-mandated on the first movie. They wanted that POV character.
It looks like Slater himself was the person who pitched Cole dying in Mortal Kombat II, depite being the first movie's main character. But the sequel pivoted its focus to Karl Urban's Johnny Cage and Adeline Rudolph's Kitana, and Lewis Tan's character was the first hero to be killed off during the titular tournament.
Mortal Kombat II's reviews praised the movie's action, and how closely it felt to the video games. Later in the same interview, Jeremy Slater went on to explain why he felt passionate about Cole being killed off in the new action movie, saying:
But for the fans, they look at Cole Young and they’re like, 'This guy doesn’t belong.' It’s like an Avengers movie where you’ve got Iron Man and Captain America, and then you have Bob over here and people are like, 'He’s not an Avenger.' The fans have been waiting 30 years to spend time with these characters, and when it’s not one of those characters eating up the screen time, they get resentful.
He's not wrong. The inclusion of Lewis Tan's character in the first movie was confusing to the hardcore fans, giving just how many Mortal Kombat characters there were to chose from when adapting the games for the big screen. And it sounds like Slater and company heard those concerns, and killed off Cole so that there was more screen time to devote to established fighters.
Of course, there were some moviegoers who enjoyed Cole, and were bummed he got killed off so unceremoniously in the sequel. But Jeremy Slater offered some comments that might help folks feel better, saying:
The one thing I will say is death is never permanent in the 'Mortal Kombat' universe. So just because I don’t think you’re ever going to see Cole Young again, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to see Lewis Tan again in some regards. Even for the deaths that were really hard to pull the trigger on, we do have long-term plans for some of those characters. Some of those deaths are necessities, because they are potentially setting up future story threads.
Honestly, I do feel better now. While Cole might be gone, that doesn't mean that Lewis Tan will be through with the Mortal Kombat franchise. We saw as Joe Taslim Bi-Han went from Sub-Zero to Noob Saibot in the first sequel, so perhaps Tan will get to portray another character in a possible threequel. Some fans are already throwing out options online, including Kenshi. The actor is great, so I'd love to see him back in a future sequel.
Mortal Kombat II is in theaters now as part of the 2026 movie release list. It's currently unclear if Warner Bros. is moving forward with more movies, but Jeremy Slater has ideas for four more titles.
