The sky is blue, water is wet, and characters in Mortal Kombat die… a lot. We’re not talking only about Fatality sequences meant to add insult to injury once a player beats a best friend, but also in higher-stakes canonical scenes that ceremoniously send beloved characters to the NetherRealm (see the intro sequence for Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance for an example).
Despite these conclusive kill offs, characters tend to find their way back to the realm of the living by one means or another, and such appears to be the case in the transition from the live action 2021 Mortal Kombat film to its sequel as the actor who played the most entertaining character in the 2021 film has teased his return an interview with The Direct.
Of all the familiar (and the one new) faces in the first Mortal Kombat film, Josh Lawson’s Kano stood out as the most spirited and charismatic by a wide margin. The actor’s widely-improvised one-liners made him stand out as the one to watch anytime he appeared on screen, which was relatively often in the first two-thirds of the film.
Somewhat unfortunately, Kano meets his end at the hands of Sonya Blade, specifically through a gnarly garden gnome to the eyeball incident. Despite how final this scene looked, Lawson is slated to return as Kano in the follow up. We don’t know yet if this will be through some kind of sorcery, divine intervention, alternate dimension tampering (please, no) or otherwise, but the important thing is Lawson’s Kano will have a presence.
“I can say that in the second ‘Mortal Kombat,’ Kano has a new chapter in his life, that [chapter] being death,” Lawson told The Direct.
“And you know, death alters you. So yeah, prepare yourselves for a Kano 2.0. As we all know, if anyone’s a fan of games, Kano’s alliances can change at the drop of a hat, and that’s certainly true in the second one… [It’s going to] keep you on your toes guessing [about] who Kano’s kind of siding with,” he finished.
In addition to the head of the Black Dragon, a slew of other fan favorite characters are confirmed for the 2025 film. Some of these include Karl Urban as Johnny Cage, Damon Herriman as Quan Chi, Tati Gabrielle as Jade, Adeline Rudolph as Kitana, and plenty more.
Mortal Kombat 2 is scheduled to hit theaters on October 24, 2025.