[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Army of the Dead.]

Army of the Dead doesn’t end well for most of the characters. Scott (Dave Bautista) and Kate (Ella Purnell) do manage to make it out of Las Vegas alive, evading the nuke blast, but then Kate discovers that her father’s been bitten and he’s turning. Despite the heartbreak, she does what she has to do to keep the outbreak contained, killing Scott before he fully becomes a zombie.

Then we jump to Omari Hardwick’s Vanderohe. Turns out, by shutting him in the vault, Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) saves his life. Vanderohe’s protected from the nuke strike and emerges from the vault with whatever cash he can carry. It seems as though he did it; he lived and he's taking off with quite the haul! However, while aboard a private plane bound for Mexico City, Vanderohe’s not feeling too hot. He heads into the restroom and that’s where he notices he’s been bitten.

army-of-the-dead-nora-arnezeder-dave-bautista
Image via Netflix

And that’s where Army of the Dead leaves us, wondering what Vanderohe will do next. Will he take his own life for the sake of containing the outbreak or will the fear of doing so or even the excitement over his new fortune hold him back? With Army of the Dead now available to stream on Netflix, I got the opportunity to chat with Hardwick himself and opted to use the last few minutes of our interview to dig into the answer to that question. Hardwick began by highlighting Vanderohe’s priorities when joining the heist crew:

“I feel that what was stated at the end of that conversation [with] Scott Ward, played by Dave, when I’m having that conversation with [him] and Ana [de la Reguera]’s character about, ‘Okay, yeah I guess I’ll be back in,’ it’s not about the money for Vanderohe. It never was. It literally was about him being able to have a cathartic moment, right? And next to these people who he knows.”

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Ana de la Reguera, Dave Bautista and Omari Hardwick in Army of the Dead
Image via Netflix

Pulling off this impossible heist with his team was of the utmost importance to Vanderohe at the start, but it’s also something that wound up getting a significant value boost when Dieter joined the group.

“And then of course, here comes Dieter being thrown into the bag of soldiers, mates, if you will. And so once Dieter becomes a fellow soldier, a mate, trying to figure out how to aid, and again grabbing the prize, the money, I think where I’m at in the end of the film is, I’m so happy that we accomplished what we did as a group, as a we, as a big team, little ‘I.’ And I did find the moment where all of the philosophical throwouts that Vanderohe in dialogue written by Zack and our other writer, he throws it out and all of that’s there, but does it really stick? He throws it out to Dieter’s ear, Raúl [Castillo]’s character’s ear, Guzman. Does it really stick?”

Omari Hardwick and Matthias Schweighofer in Army of the Dead
Image via Netflix

Hardwick continued by explaining precisely where his head was at when playing Vanderohe’s final scene in the film:

“But by the end of the movie, I think where I was at mentally was, ‘Wow, this is funny, the parody.’ Of course you see him laughing, because looking at the mirror at himself it’s beautiful that it was set up for me to have to really dissect myself. ‘Mirror mirror on the wall, who is really the most confused of them all?’ At this point, it’s this guy who thought perhaps he had some things figured out. As much as he knew going in, he still has some things left to figure out. He’s looking at the end at himself like, ‘Wow, okay, so any of the philosophies that I threw out, do they now work? Do they save me or are they just that?’ And so I think we leave my face in the form of a question mark, and I think that’s where I tried to play it, this space of being interrogative and not a period. I didn’t want to be declarative, I wanted to be a question mark at the end. If my face could be compared to anything of exclamation, it was that of a question mark.”

Omari Hardwick in Army of the Dead
Image via Netflix

So there it is! That’s how Hardwick intended for Vanderohe’s final moment in Army of the Dead to play and, personally, I think he accomplished just that. Perhaps we’ll find out precisely what Vanderohe opted to do down the line as this franchise continues to grow. But in the meantime, be sure to check out the rest of our Army of the Dead content including our 30-minute Collider Connected conversation with Bautista.

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