YMMV / Now You See Me 2

• Heartwarming Moments: Thaddeus revealing to Dylan that he was his father's silent partner all along and had watched out for him for years. This and Thaddeus proudly passing the mantle of The Eye on to the Horsemen as well.
• He Really Can Act: Daniel Radcliffe pulls off a Love to Hate Psychopathic Manchild villain surprisingly well.
• Love to Hate: Walter Mabry is such a Smug Snake that he's got an Awesome Ego. Critics noted that Daniel Radcliffe was clearly having a ball.
• Narm: The sequence of the Horsemen slipping the chip between them by sticking it on a playing card to avoid it being found as they're searched. They act so obviously suspicious, and the flips and throws they use to move it around are so blatant (including several throws that are in plain sight but none of the guards happen to be looking their way), that it becomes more difficult to believe its working the longer the scene goes. This is not counting the fact that a security camera could have been overlooking the entire checkpoint, which could have easily made their plan dead on arrival. And on top of all of that, they keep passing the card to the person about to be searched, rather than someone who has already been cleared. Later becomes a case of Fridge Brilliance, as that facility and the people in it are implied to be part of The Eye.
• Narm Charm: On the other hand, this scene has many fans for its excellent cinematography and the fact that the Horsemen work together so flawlessly, and even if it's obvious that the card is defying physics itself to go from person to person, there's no denying that it looks amazing. One way or the other, it's undeniably the Signature Scene of the film.
• Salvaged Story: The first film's twist that Dylan was not only The Mole for the heroes, but the real mastermind of their heists, and the whole plot was his revenge plan against Thaddeus, a character who never came across as villainous before. This made the Horsemen and Dylan look like Designated Heroes to many viewers. This film deconstructs Dylan's revenge scheme and has him show regret for his actions, reveals that Thaddeus was Good All Along and acting as a Stealth Mentor to Dylan and the Horsemen for both films, and shows that Arthur Tressler, the first film's more Obviously Evil character, was the true Big Bad of both films.
• Signature Scene: The scene in the facility where the Horsemen pass the card around. Love it or hate it, it's the most popular scene in the film and it's likely the one scene that even people who haven't seen the rest of the movie have seen.
• Special Effect Failure: A minor example, but due to poor editing, when Lula enunciates "I. Don't. Speak. The. Language" during the card-passing scene, the camera moves until her actress is in frame... and you can clearly see she's not talking.
• Strangled by the Red String: Lula and Jack hooking up at the end. While they flirt a couple of times in the first act, the attraction is mostly ignored until the climax.
• Strawman Has a Point: Agent Cowan of the FBI is rude and confrontational to Dylan, but that is only because he (entirely correctly) suspects Dylan of working with the Horsemen. His role is technically antagonistic in that he is trying to arrest the protagonists and the tone of the film suggests the audience should dislike him, but other than being a bit of a jerk (again to Dylan who Cowan knows is misleading them), his only "crime" is apparently being the only person in the FBI intelligent enough to see through Dylan's Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Tear Jerker: Even though it was a trick, the Horsemen saying their final goodbyes as they are being thrown off of Tressler's private jet is surprisingly poignant. Merritt's "last words" especially deserve mention.
  Merritt: I just want to say I came into the world with the wrong family, but I'm leaving with the right one! I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some fans felt it would've been interesting to have Lula interacting with her predecessor Henley, had the latter returned for the sequel in a smaller role.
• The Un-Twist:
  • After the movie goes out of its way to show Dylan escaping from the very safe that supposedly killed his father the film ends with Thaddeus revealing... how sad he is that Shrike died.
  • For some audiences, Walter Mabry's relationship with Arthur Tressler as Michael Caine revealed in an interview in 2014 that Daniel Radcliffe would be playing his son in the sequel. Although Caine's last-line revelation that Tressler has no idea if Mabry is actually his offspring or not subverts this.

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