How Will Smith will return in I Am Legend 2 despite dying

How is I Am Legend 2 set to bring Will Smith’s character back? It’s a valid question considering he died in the first movie, so here’s how it will be done. 

The zombie genre is far from dead (pun fully intended), with the likes of All Of Us Are Dead, The Last of Us, and Zombieverse bringing fresh angles on the beloved horror sub-genre and proving the undead work well in the TV format. What’s more, The Walking Dead franchise continues to expand, with Dead City dropping earlier this year and a Daryl Dixon series in the pipeline. 

But back in the 00s, zombies would typically frequent the big screen, with Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, and REC terrifying audiences throughout the decade. A notable entry was Francis Lawrence’s 2007 flick I Am Legend, the third feature film inspired by Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name, following on from 1964’s The Last Man on Earth and 1971’s The Omega Man.

Lawrence’s version pitched Will Smith’s Robert Neville against cannibalistic mutants known as Darkseekers. More than 15 years since the movie dropped, I Am Legend 2 is in the works, with Smith set to reprise his role – but considering he sacrificed himself at the end, how will he return? Let’s get into it. 

I Am Legend 2: How will Will Smith return despite Robert Neville’s death?

Will Smith’s Dr Robert Neville will be able to return in I Am Legend 2, not through flashbacks, but by continuing the story from the original movie’s alternate ending and Matheson’s book. 

To refresh your memory, I Am Legend originally took some liberties with its source material, ending with Neville sacrificing himself to save two other survivors, Anna and her son Ethan, by using a grenade to kill the Darkseekers who infiltrated his lab. 

This allows Anna and Ethan to escape with the cure that Neville had developed, leaving the film with a glimmer of hope for humanity’s future but no possibility of Neville’s return for a sequel.

However, a two-disc special edition DVD, which was released in 2008, featured an alternate ending which was more accurate to the novel. In this version, during the lab attack, Neville realizes that the Darkseekers have emotions and social structures after an alpha male makes a butterfly shape on the glass, referencing the butterfly tattoo on his zombie mate. 

In a moment of revelation, Neville returns the female Darkseeker and is spared by the alpha male. This ending is more in line with the original book, where Neville comes to understand that he is the true monster among these new beings, who fear him as the figure who hunts them during the day and experiments on their kind. 

The following morning, he heads out with Anna and Ethan to seek a survivors’ colony. The alternate ending leaves Neville alive, coexisting somewhat uneasily with the Darkseekers, adding depth to the narrative by blurring the lines between heroes and monsters. 

Back in February, I Am Legend 2 producer Akiva Goldsman spoke with Deadline and confirmed the sequel is set to follow this ending more closely, and lean into the novel’s narrative. 

“This will start a few decades later than the first,” he said. “I’m obsessed with The Last of Us, where we see the world just post-apocalypse but also after a 20-30-year lapse. You see how the earth reclaims the world, and there’s something beautiful in the question of, as man steps away from being the primary tenant, what happens?”

Goldsman continued: “That will be especially visual in New York. I don’t know if they’ll climb up to the empire state building, but the possibilities are endless. We trace back to the original Matheson book, and the alternate ending as opposed to the released ending in the original film. 

“What Matheson was talking about was that man’s time on the planet as the dominant species had come to an end. That’s a really interesting thing we’re going to get to explore. There will be a little more fidelity to the original text.”

To read more about I Am Legend 2, head here, and you can check out some of our other horror coverage below: 

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