In just a few weeks, A Quiet Place Part II hits theaters (and, hey, if you want to catch up with a double feature the night before it officially drops, you can get tickets for that here).

A few things have changed for the Abbott family in the sequel, which picks up shortly after the events of the first movie. The second-youngest child, Beau (Cade Woodward), is gone, as is father and husband, Lee (John Krasinski), who sacrificed himself at the end of the first movie to save his family. Now, Evelyn (Emily Blunt) must take her surviving children, Marcus (Noah Jupe), Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and her newborn baby and venture out, leaving their homestead for the dangers of the outside world.

But the biggest question mark from the trailers has been the introduction of the new character of Emmett, played by Cillian Murphy. When the trailer first hit social media, the internet was extremely into Cillian Murphy with a beard, akin to its reaction to the shot of a bearded Steve Rogers emerging from the shadows in the first trailer for Avengers: Infinity War. But once the thirst wave was momentarily out of the internet’s system, talk soon turned to what role he (as well as Djimon Hounsou’s character) would fill in the sequel. While he appears to be an ally on the surface, plenty of fans pointed out the trailers have been ambiguous, with a few clues hinting at the fact that all may not be as it initially seems. Is Emmett a good guy? Or is he the biggest threat of them all? Let’s explore, shall we?

Context Clues From The Trailer

For starters, the dirty, scruffy Emmett seems to have a lot of knowledge about the outside world and what he knows of it clearly isn’t good. He has traps laid out all over the abandoned barn he’s squatting in. When Evelyn accidentally triggers a tripwire, she springs the noise alarm, prompting her and the kids to run. Emmett grabs her and claps a hand over her mouth, silencing her and saving her family – but why are the traps there in the first place? They’re not there for the creatures – a few glass bottles clanking together isn’t enough to scare them off or damage them. The traps are clearly for other humans to set off and be attacked by the creatures. At best, it’s to keep other people from encroaching on his territory and taking his supplies, at worst, it’s because there are particular humans out there with a specific motivation for killing him.

A line that Emmett says in the trailer is telling. When Evelyn tries to plead with him that there are people out there who are worth saving, he responds, “You don’t know, do you? I do. The people that are left? They’re not the kind of people worth saving.” Whatever went down between Emmett and the rest of humanity, it was bad enough to turn him away from it – and when a longterm relationship goes sour, it usually takes both parties to destroy it. That’s sheer speculation, but it should be noted that in that group of people left is Emmett himself. He’s part of that outside world beyond the relatively safe confines of Abbott homestead. He may well be talking about himself whether he realizes it or not.

We Shouldn’t Discount Murphy’s Filmography

Here’s where I get a little more speculative in nature. It’s worth looking at Cillian Murphy’s career as a whole. Granted, every movie is different, but actors get cast in certain roles for a reason. It would be wrong to say Murphy is an actor who gets typecast; his roles are too varied for that. But it would certainly be reasonable to say the roles he’s best known for have been villains or antiheroes and there’s a certain connotation that goes along with that, a certain expectation from audiences.

Even his most famous roles where he’s been the protagonist, 28 Days Later and Peaky Blinders, there is a calculating ruthlessness to his characters. If you wanted to sum up the characters of Murphy’s filmography, you might use the word “survivor.” Dr. Jonathan Crane survives Arkham Asylum; Tommy Shelby scraps and scrapes to lead the Peaky Blinders however he can; Jim endures a post-apocalyptic world fighting zombies and malevolent humans; Robert Fischer has trained his mind to survive any attacks from extractors; Capa wills himself to stay alive long enough to complete his mission and detonate the starbomb. Time and again, we’ve seen characters Murphy plays adopt a survivalist mentality, and that has meant characters of his have often made brutal, sometimes even cruel decisions in the name of survival.

What Does This Mean For The Sequel?

Here’s where I pull it all together. There are two ways I can see this going, judging from the trailers and what we know of narrative storytelling. I’ll likely be wrong on all counts, but, hey – sometimes it’s just fun to speculate for speculation’s sake.

The first path: a redemption arc. Maybe Emmett is indeed a guy with a dark and shady past, not at all the good dude that Lee Abbott was. But perhaps he meets Evelyn and her family, and, with the kids – and especially the baby – he sees keeping them alive as an opportunity to wipe his slate clean and redeem himself. Maybe. Hopefully. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? There’s just one problem: That would mean he essentially steps into the role that Lee vacated in the first movie, making it two movies in a row in which a good guy is there for Evelyn to rely on. It doesn’t exactly advance the narrative.

Or, there’s another path Emmett’s character could take: a good guy – but only up to a point. Emmett is clearly, like so many of Murphy’s characters, a survivor. He’s got a real Doomsday prepper kind of vibe to him. My guess is that he betrays Evelyn and her kids at some point in the movie, whether in a calculated plan or in a sudden life-and-death moment where he chooses to save himself rather than her family of strangers.

In any case, Murphy is one of the most interesting actors of our time and he makes any project he’s involved in that much better. It will be wildly entertaining to see how it all plays out in the sequel.

A Quiet Place Part II is in theaters on Friday, March 20th. Get tickets here.