The actor sets the record straight on their ambiguous fate.
With Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga being a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, we know that Anya Taylor-Joy’s titular character would survive the ordeal, but the movie introduced a number of new figures that were integral to her character’s journey whose fates weren’t entirely sealed. Throughout the course of the movie, which spans more than a decade, countless bodies are left in Furiosa’s wake, as well as that of Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus, but director George Miller kept things ambiguous when it came to depicting one fan favorite’s possible demise. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in theaters now.
WARNING: Spoilers below for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Introduced in the film is Praetorian Jack, who is played by Tom Burke. Audiences witness that Jack is one of Immortan Joe’s most trusted drivers, regularly driving back and forth between The Citadel, the Bullet Farm, and Gastown. He takes a young Furiosa under his wing while she attempts to escape The Citadel, teaching her everything she knows about driving the War Rig, so when Dementus ultimately captures the both of them, they are severely punished.
While Furiosa is chained up by her injured arm for hours, Jack is instead chained up to the back of a bike and dragged around the desert while Dementus’s dogs chase after him. Furiosa manages to escape, though at the cost of her own arm, and Jack’s death is never explicitly confirmed. Despite the ambiguous yet implied death, Burke recently confirmed that Miller made it quite clear Jack was dead.
“I was clinging on for the idea that I might still be alive,” Burke joked with Entertainment Weekly. “I had to put my own dreams out of misery at one point, and I really had to say to George, ‘I am actually properly dead, aren’t I?’ And he’s like, ‘Uh, yeah.'”
There’s currently no confirmed plans for another entry in the Mad Max franchise, but with Hugh Keays-Byrne starring in the original Mad Max as Toecutter in 1979 only to return as Immortan Joe in Fury Road, Burke admitted he was “hoping” he could come back into the fold at some point.
The actor teased, “Listen, I’d love to come back and stick some mad headgear on or anything that would mean I could come back in any shape, yeah. And it’s the kind of world where you could.”
Set more than a decade before the events of Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga explores how Furiosa was kidnapped from her home in the Green Place of Many Mothers by the treacherous Warlord Dementus and his Biker Horde. As Dementus and Immortan Joe vie for control of the wasteland, Furiosa must survive every challenge in front of her as she seeks vengeance against her kidnappers on her way to return home.
Mad Max creator George Miller returns to direct Furiosa, which stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Nathan Jones, Angus Sampson, and Quaden Bayles. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga released in theaters on May 24th.
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