Warning: SPOILERS for The Accountant 2.
Although The Accountant 2 improves on the original in a number of ways, it also unexpectedly dispatches a major character at the very beginning of the film for fairly important reasons. Several plot points established at the start of the runtime don’t begin to click into place with each other until relatively close to The Accountant 2’s ending. But everything that happens in the movie, from the opening moments to the end, plays a part in establishing character arcs that will likely affect the tone and story of The Accountant 3.
That said, one of the things that makes the movie so much better than its predecessor is that the stakes are a lot higher this time around, which means that not everyone in The Accountant 2’s cast can make it out alive. While this makes a certain intuitive kind of sense, it’s nonetheless jarring when a primary character from The Accountant dies within the first few minutes of the sequel. It’s a tragic moment, and a bit of a disappointment for fans of the character’s actor, but it also brilliantly sets up the rest of the movie.
J.K. Simmons’ Raymond King Dies In The Accountant 2’s Opening
He Only Even Gets A Few Lines Of Dialogue
A lot of people were excited about Jon Berthal’s role in The Accountant 2, but he’s actually the last main character to return from the original. The movie opens with former FinCEN Director Raymond King sitting in the far corner of a bingo bar, nursing a beer alone. When he’s approached by a quiet blonde assassin named Anaïs, it turns out that Raymond has, for some reason, hired an assassin to find a missing Central American family. She doesn’t seem to understand why she’s been selected for this particular job, but she has noticed that armed men are watching them.
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King draws attention away from Anaïs, hiding in a bathroom stall and writing a message on his arm before fighting back. He kills one of his attackers and stabs the other in the groin, buying Anaïs time to make her escape. But when he finally gets free from the bar himself, King is shot down by a hitman named Cobb who had been waiting in case the pair made it out of the building. Little does Cobb know the sort of characters King’s assassination will put on his trail.
Why Cobb Kills Raymond King In The Accountant 2
His Employer Has Dark Secrets To Protect
While the sequel doesn’t contain anything resembling Anna Kendrick’s role in The Accountant, Anaïs makes for an fascinating new female character. And while Cobb fails to kill her just before successfully shooting Raymond, the fact that Cobb’s boss Burke ordered hits on both of them is one of the first clues to the overarching storyline. On the surface, however, Burke’s primary motivation for ordering their hits is that he doesn’t want them finding the Sanchez family. Cobb’s very next hit is to kill the man who hired King so that he can’t hire any more private investigators.
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But this is a bit of misdirection on the movie’s part. During The Accountant 2’s development hell, it appears the script was polished rather exquisitely, and the reveal that Burke and Anaïs have met more than once before directly relates to a major secret King knows about the Sanchez family. Had Ray been given more time to speak with Anaïs, she almost certainly would have come to remember the things she’d curiously forgotten about Burke. Instead, Ray’s death sets up the audience to explore that mystery from the beginning.
Raymond King’s Death Is Central To The Accountant 2’s Story
He Was The First To Put All The Puzzle Pieces Together
It’s theoretically plausible that Ray would still need help from Chris to take down Burke, so J.K. Simmons’ fans might question the point of killing off his character. But in ScreenRant’s interview with The Accountant 2 director Gavin O’Connor, he explains that King’s death is what motivates Medina and Chris to forge an alliance with one another. Medina seemed opposed to the idea in the first movie, but the loss of a man they both respected changes things. It adds an emotional core to the story.
…watching Chris put the puzzle together himself is a major part of the first movie’s formula, without which The Accountant 2 might feel like a less viable addition to the franchise.
From a more practical standpoint, King’s death also facilitates more than half the movie’s runtime. Had he called Christian on his own, he could have easily laid out everything he knew. However, watching Chris put the puzzle together himself is a major part of the first movie’s formula, without which The Accountant 2 might feel like a less viable addition to the franchise. Having him work with Medina also establishes character arcs that will surely carry into the next sequel. The death of Raymond King is an absolute tragedy, but it ultimately works wonders for the sequel’s storytelling.
