Cole Young was a brand new character introduced with the 2021 Mortal Kombat film who proved controversial among fans of the gory fighting game franchise. Controversial might even be an understatement; some fans absolutely hate Cole Young. Why? Well, he’s not from the games, he sort of stole Liu Kang's thunder by taking the main character slot, and he doesn’t do much more in the film than soak up exposition and kill one of Mortal Kombat’s most iconic bosses.
Well, Cole Young, played by Lewis Tan, returns for Mortal Kombat 2. But it looks like he might not last long — at least, based on the new trailer released this week.
In a brief moment in the trailer we see Young go up against big bad boss Shao Kahn. Not only that, but the shot we see of the fight rekindles memories of Mortal Kombat itself, with a side-on view on what very much looks like the Dead Pool stage.
For the uninitiated, Dead Pool is a stage in which captives are bound with chains, raised, then lowered into acid. You can do this in the Mortal Kombat itself. Indeed, there’s a cutscene in the Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath expansion, that shows the effects of this acid in all its gruesome glory.
So, the theory is that the movie makers wouldn’t recreate the Dead Pool stage just for fun, rather, it will actually use it to full effect. And if Cole Young is going up against Shao Kahn this time, well, it feels like there’s just one outcome here.
“As if his near complete absence from the trailers didn't already give that away,” said one fan, predicting a slow and painful death in the Dead Pool for poor Cole Young. “What they should've done is actually had him in these and then kill him off as a surprise twist. Instead is so obvious that he's gonna die that when it happens there'll be zero tension.”
“Cole is by far the most hated thing about the first movie though,” suggested another. “They want to make it obvious he dies to get people to give this movie a chance.” “This is like Taskmaster in Thunderbolts all over again,” another added.
“My boy is going out in the most painful way, in a pool of acid but ICONIC,” another fan enthused. “Him dying to a stage fatality on Deadpool would be crazy af,” added another.
The question is, will Cole Young come back to life in a miraculous fashion, if he does indeed die to the Dead Pool? Let’s be honest here: Mortal Kombat has no rules. Characters die, come back, and die again. Could Cole bite the dust early on, then make a surprise, Earth-saving return as some sort of demigod later in the movie? Could he return as the new Scorpion? (Hiroyuki Sanada is 65 and probably has better things to do right now.)
Last month, Tan said “there's a plan for Cole,” teasing that “people are going to be pleasantly surprised in different ways. There's more to come. Where I get to do a fight scene is one of my favorite stages of all of Mortal Kmobat. It's super iconic, which is why they haven't shown much of it yet. But it's special."
That doesn’t sound like an unceremonious death for Cole Young, rather something where he not only survives, but continues to play a key role in whatever future Mortal Kombat movie comes next.
There’s a lot more to the new trailer, meanwhile. Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon shows up for a cameo (or should that be kameo?), and we see Quan Chi for the first time.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
