In a world without the pandemic, we'd all have seen John Wick 4 by now - initially scheduled for a May 2021 premiere, the restrictions imposed to battle COVID-19 forced a delay on filming and release. Now coming May 2022, the movie is still a few months away with story details kept under wraps, but Keanu Reeves who is reprising his role dropped a bit of a teaser recently.

John Wick Chapter 3 - Parabellum leaves Wick in a bit of a bind. Betrayed and bruised, he's got every High Table assassin in the world after him following Winston's double cross, and suffered some severe injuries. Last viewers see him, he's in New York, teaming up with Lawrence Fishburne's Bowery King character.

However, based on something Reeves stated in an interview with Esquire, Chapter 4 isn't going to be directly picking up that exact thread. It seems like there's been at least a short time skip, though the only events left unseen could possibly just be recuperation and travel.

There’s a sequence—hopefully, knock on wood... in John Wick 4, the opening sequence. John Wick is back in the desert on a horse. I’m going to hopefully be able to fast-gallop and run.

Wick is in no shape to gallop, nor anywhere near a desert at the end of Parabellum. The last time our sharply dressed assassin was anywhere near a desert, he was trying to reach a particularly secretive and important character in the world of assassins, so chances are that is his goal once again.

An odd thing to say, however, is that bit about "hopefully, knock on wood". This is likely in reference to many Hollywood productions getting some occasionally major scripting changes in the editing room, where the order in which scenes follow one another get shuffled - sometimes to the movie's detriment. Reeves may not know for what scene the horse sequence was shot, or might suspect that editors will alter the arrangement.

While his quote was in the future tense at the time, filming on John Wick 4 has since wrapped and the globe-trotting revenge fueled assassin adventure is all set to meet its May premiere. Clearly there is a lot of faith in the film over at the studio based on the success of the previous three, as John Wick 5 and a spin-off called The Ballerina are already in pre-production.

Stay tuned for an exact premiere date for John Wick 4 once it's announced.