Summary

• Edgar Wright's Baby Driver sequel has the potential for a bold and radical storyline departure from its predecessor.
• The sequel could explore Baby's past, delving into his trauma and character depth while keeping the franchise alive.
• However, the safer choice for the sequel may follow a linear plot similar to the first film, impacting its potential growth.

A talented director with a fair number of acting credits behind his name, Edgar Wright has quietly built up a sterling reputation as a filmmaker who makes great movies. Although he currently only has eight features to his name as a director, they include highly popular films like Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, with Wright also having worked as a writer on films like The Adventures of TinTin and the MCU's Ant-Man. Among his successes as a director, one of his most notable films came in the form of 2017's Baby Driver, which has a sequel in the works, Baby Driver 2, though news on that project has been slim since its announcement.

A massive critical and commercial success, the first film had the rare distinction of being an action flick that garnered nominations for Oscars, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes. However, despite all its success, it's been seven years, and the sequel has yet to be released. The film's intriguing plot, characters, great performances, and high-octane car-chase thrills gave it a wealth of possibilities for how a sequel could play out. Among them is an opportunity for a radical storyline that could make for a perfect sequel if it was actually made. Sadly, the sequel will likely never go that way, though it's still fun to imagine it playing out.

Warning: Contains spoilers for Baby Driver

How Baby Driver Ended and Left Room for a Sequel

Baby Driver starred the talented and popular young actor Ansel Elgort, among a fantastic supporting cast that included Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, and Jamie Foxx. It dealt with a getaway driver who self-names himself "Baby." Forced to work for shady people to pay off a debt, he uses his formidable driving skills to help them escape heists and is relieved when his debt is finally repaid.

Meeting a girl he likes named Debora and wanting to settle down, Baby is pushed to the edge when he's forced back into a life of crime. Unable to live with the increasingly violent nature of the heists, he chooses to betray his handlers by refusing to drive away and sabotaging the plan. This leads to some tense exchanges where he decides to protect innocent people and Debora; it all ends with his tormentors dead and him facing prison time as an accomplice for their crimes.

In the end, Baby is seen having received a reduced sentence of five years, which he serves while Debora waits for him. Sending her letters in prison and dreaming of his release, Debora is there waiting for him after leaving prison, almost exactly how he'd fantasized about that moment. Although they leave together, it ends ambiguously, engendering a question of whether it ever really happened or was all in his imagination.

The Perfect Sequel to Baby Driver

Given how the film ended, there's some great scope to make its sequel a bold and radical film that chooses to ignore its happy ending. Sure, Baby made for a very likable protagonist in the first film, one that it's easy to feel sympathy for. His relationship with Debora and the always lovely Lily James, who played her, also make for angles that lend themselves well to a sweet and conventional ending where the good guy gets the girl, and they ride off together.

However, the thing is, the first film was far from being a sappy creature of convention in any other way. Noted for Wright's bold directing that blended thrill-riding action sequences with punchy performances, a great story, and a killer soundtrack that brought it all together and catalyzed its success, Baby Driver thrived on being different. Rather than conforming to a linear story that picks up where the old one left off or does a time jump to see how Baby and Debora's lives are going, the film could instead choose to make the ending of the first film all just a figment of his imagination.

Greater Scope to Explore Baby's Past

As cool and assured as Baby was in the first film, he was tormented by his past, the people he worked for, and the life he desperately wanted but could never achieve. By taking the figment approach, the sequel could always find him languishing in prison for a while. His time spent there would make for ample scope for a darker take that delves back into his past and builds on the character's backstory, slowly unwrapping the mystique used by the first film.

With the characters and their stars becoming even more popular after the film, the possibility of a franchise is very much in the offing if a sequel played its cards right. Digging deeper into Baby's past, his problems with Tinnitus, and his trauma can all add more depth to the character and build him into one with a more substantive persona than just a guy who uses music to calm him while he expertly drives getaway cars.

All this could even play out while he's targeted by affiliates of his old handlers while still in prison. By the time he gets out, he could already be at the mercy of others and forced to resort to being a driver again or simply fight to protect himself and Debora on the outside. After all, one of the catchphrases from the first film's trailer backed this kind of story—one that's seemingly an endless maze of despair for him.

Every road out takes him right back in.

Why the Baby Driver Sequel We Want Will Never Happen

Given the success of the first film and the blueprint it provided, the safer and more commercially bankable option will likely be to follow the plot of the first film linearly. While details of the plot are still sketchy at this point, it's virtually a given that a sequel would provide a slick soundtrack, great cars, and tons of fancy footwork on the pedals so that it can throw in plenty of action-packed car chases.

This formula mostly worked for the first film, making it unlikely that it would be departed from too much unless they choose to make him use his skills entirely for good in the movie. Either way, if the film failed to expand on the character and his somewhat murky past, it would probably still be great, but it will miss a chance to grow and likely fall victim to diminishing returns for being nothing more than an updated copy of the same thing.

The Direction a Baby Driver Sequel Could Take

Instead of the sequel we'd love, the real one would probably see Baby living happily with Debora. That's when his idyllic life could be interrupted by the inertia of his past, as people connected to the first film's antagonists, whom he never knew, pop up to come after him and Debora. It sounds solid enough, but it is also too generic and overdone. Here's to hoping it isn't and manages to step up the first film and set up a franchise for Baby Driver.

Since details are few and far between, for now, fans seem to be having a lot of fun predicting how it could go down. Here's one take on it from a Redditor who imagined how the film could be done as a prequel.

Of course, there's been little news since the initial announcements of a Baby Driver sequel, and for now, no one knows if it will ever come to fruition. With allegations surrounding Kevin Spacey and even Ansel Elgort himself, it may be difficult to get the film up and running, even if a script is complete. While there are plenty of directions Baby Driver 2 could go, fans will have to wait and see if the film ever makes it to the big screen. Baby Driver is currently streaming on Netflix.