Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
This time they destroyed his house...
- When John finally retrieves his beloved car and goes back home, he opens the glove compartment and finds a picture and a Happy Birthday Card Helen left for him. As he reminisces about them, we get a heartbreaking reminder John is still in mourning for his beloved wife.
- Not only that but it's implied that the car was a birthday gift from his wife and that the card was the reason why John wanted his car back so badly.
- And in the end it's one of the last memories of his wife that he has but unlike her bracelet (which he has with him) he doesn't have his car due to Aurelio taking it to his shop to be repaired. And not only that but according to Aurelio himself, it'll take months if not years to fix. Lastly, considering Aurelio is one of the people to receive the message notifying John's bounty at the end of the film, he may never get his car back unless he kills Aurelio and everyone else at the shop.
- The scene where John pulls out his backup kit from a safety deposit box as his main kit is now unavailable as it's buried in rubble where his house used to be. He's stoic as he pulls out his iconic hitman's suit piece by piece... and then, suddenly, he screams in rage and frustration when he finds out he only has one gun left. He really doesn't want to go back to this life, but Santino's boxed him in with no choice.
- In the first movie, John lost Daisy but the broad theme of the movie was still that Helen's seed of hope and human empathy could survive within John despite that tragedy, which is why he ends the movie by adopting a new dog. The sequel, however, proceeds to painfully rip every memory of Helen from John's soul: He loses their house, every picture he had of her and the one video he had of her. By the end of the film her bracelet is the last thing John has. Noticeably as John becomes more embroiled in this world of crime and more distant from Helen's memory, he becomes a great deal less human. By the end of the film it's clear this cosmic hatred for John's happiness has broken him and he has given all up all pretense of retiring or living a happy life: John Wick has fully embraced the bloodshed is all he has left. While Santino is an arrogant and treacherous snake with no morals, it's hard to deny he has a point during his Hannibal Lecture:Santino: No wife. No life. No home. Vengeance... it's all you have.
- Mitigated somewhat in that point or no point, one must also remember that Santino brought this upon himself when he could've simply got someone else to do the job in the first place.
- Also comes into play when Gianna slits her wrists in front of John rather than let him kill her, calmly asking him if Helen would love the man he's become. For that, John has no answer, just a look of guilt and anguish that says everything.
- Cassian's reaction to seeing Gianna's dead body. The look on his face...
- John's fate at the end of the film is both terrifying and utterly sad. Almost every assassin is interested in taking out his life due to the bounty on his head, while John has been barred from the resources of the assassin world. All that's left of him are his dog and his suit, and we get to see John's face being genuinely paranoid even at the park's bystanders.
- Much like in the first film, John's subtle but pained reaction whenever someone in the underworld addresses him as "Mister Wick". He went to extreme lengths to leave the world of killing and the Continental behind, all to be with the woman he loved, and whenever someone addresses him as such, all it does is remind him that it was all for nothing. That was most likely what those facilitators, associates and contacts called him back when he was Baba Yaga, and as much as he insists he "isn't that guy anymore", whenever he hears those words, it's like he never left.
- The fact that John never names the black dog shows that he's still affected by the loss of Daisy, and doesn't want to get attached to the new dog by naming him. That, or he's perfectly aware that he's gone into a death-spiral and is leaving it up to whomever might take in the new dog, in the wake of John's own increasingly-foregone demise, to name the pit bull.
- The look on Winston's face when John shoots Santino on Continental grounds. Despite how strict he is on the rules, Winston was really hoping that John wouldn't be subject to the punishments dished out, and the sad resignation that he now has to hunt down one of the better men he knows is clear in his voice.Winston: What have you done?
- And then John's responce, which shows a level of resignation:John: Finished it.
- And then John's responce, which shows a level of resignation:
- When the Sommerlier tells John to "enjoy the party," John for a split second looks like he's in actual physical pain. He really doesn't want to kill Gianna, and slip further into being "Mister Wick" again, but a marker's a marker.
