The Four Horsemen of “Now You See Me 2,” or more accurately, the three returning Horsemen plus one hastily inserted replacement, return conspicuously without Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher). In her place, the film introduces Lula May (Lizzy Caplan), a substitute not born of story necessity but of logistics, slotting her in simply because Fisher’s pregnancy conflicted with the production schedule. But of course, why let a little thing like that get in the way of cashing in? And honestly, as creatively bankrupt as the name “The Four Horsemen” already was, “Now You See Me 2” manages to be even less imaginative.
It is genuinely baffling how Jon M. Chu fumbles something this spectacularly when Louis Leterrier, in the first film, was already juggling a diet-Christopher Nolan concept with cheap sleight-of-hand mystery boxes, and still made it entertaining. “Now You See Me” was never considered prestige cinema, but it was effective. It understood its own game: keep the audience guessing, maintain a brisk pace, and just long enough to deliver a flashy, satisfying finale.
And now we end up with “Now You See Me 2.” Forget mystery, tension, and narrative coherence. Everything is served on a platter, pre-chewed. The audience already knows the four horsemen, already knows the motivation behind their acts, and, most crucially, already knows that Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is the puppetmaster who brought them together to frame Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman).
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So logically, what the sequel needed was a larger story, a more compelling threat, and a natural expansion of the world teased in the first film. The concept of “The Eye” could have carried an entire series if they wanted to deepen its philosophy, rules, and history. Instead, what we get is just absolutely nothing. No world-building, no expansion, not even a logical continuation. It makes you wonder why this movie even exists, apart from filling the pockets of everyone involved.
The most baffling decision, one that single-handedly breaks the predecessor, is the reinforcement that Thaddeus was never responsible for Dylan’s father, Lionel Shrike’s death. This one retcon alone undoes the emotional core of the first film. The first movie works only if Dylan’s motivations remain rooted in grief, resentment, and a flawed desire for revenge. But by choosing to clear Thaddeus’ name in the sequel, Chu dismantles the thematic backbone of the original. Why exactly should the audience care anymore? Why should Dylan’s arc matter when everything that drove him was essentially a misunderstanding? And why insult the intelligence of the audience by undoing the very conflict that gave the first movie its identity?
In “Now You See Me,” the big questions kept us watching: Who is behind these elaborate acts? Why are the horsemen being chosen? What exactly is The Eye? What drives Dylan Rhodes? Where does Thaddeus stand morally? All those uncertainties, all those dangling threads, that is what made people talk about the movie even after it ended. “Now You See Me 2” erases all of that by minute one. From the very beginning, the stakes are nonexistent. There is nothing left to uncover anymore in this world.
So what does Chu do instead? He introduces Walter Mabry, played by Daniel Radcliffe, a “rich, chaotic man-child out for revenge,” whose entire personality begins and ends there. He is revealed to be Arthur Tressler’s (Michael Caine) illegitimate son, and his grand demand is for the Horsemen to steal a chip. A magical chip, or a MacGuffin chip with vaguely defined powers, supposedly important enough to fuel the entire movie. Now, the Horsemen set out to steal it, and that’s essentially the plot, just a long setup for the film’s big selling point: the famous heist sequence, the card-flipping, chip-passing routine that still circulates on YouTube as if it were the pinnacle of illusion cinema. But even that visually slick set piece falls flat, because there’s no actual narrative tension behind it. The movie keeps trying to dazzle your eyes, but never once bothers to engage your mind.
If the movie had no tension, it could have at least made itself wildly fun. But somehow it fails even at that. Instead of being clever, the film sends the horsemen to “Macau” and expects you to accept this sudden geographic leap as meaningful. The entire Macau segment feels like watching a rejected James Bond location scout reel. And then, just to make things worse, we meet Chase McKinney, the twin brother of Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), who is somehow even more insufferable than Merritt.
The jokes, if you can even call them that, include lines like, “We are womb brothers.” Nothing about this subplot is funny. Nothing about it adds to the story. And for some reason, the movie insists this could not have happened in America, even though the setup didn’t need international detours at all. It feels like a studio note: “Make it look global. Throw in a twin. Add bad jokes.”
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The underlying reason for all this nonsense is simple: there was never a continuous narrative plan from “Now You See Me” to “Now You See Me 2.” The sequel behaves like someone skimmed the Wikipedia summary of the first film and then decided to improvise the rest. The decision to portray Thaddeus as a secret mentor to Dylan, one who apparently had been training him all along, kills the motivations of every major character. It turns the predecessor’s emotional beats into throwaway scenes. It strips Dylan of complexity and turns Thaddeus into some cryptic fortune cookie dispenser with no rhyme or reason. Instead of expanding the mythology of The Eye, the film reduces it to a vague plot convenience for the third act.
And then there’s the new addition, Lula May. She joins the team purely as comic relief and as someone who can flirt with Jack Wilder (Dave Franco). Every other line she delivers is a meta-joke, an overcaffeinated quip, or an unnecessarily thirsty remark. She isn’t treated like a natural part of the group but as a “replacement Horseman,” filling a vacancy rather than adding anything meaningful to the illusion-driven world the film is built on. Fisher couldn’t return, so the filmmakers simply plugged in a new female character because, well, they needed at least one woman on the team, that’s the bare-minimum requirement, apparently.
“Now You See Me 2” barely leaves anything memorable behind. Morgan Freeman’s charming “Wizard of Oz” reference stands out, Jesse Eisenberg gets in a few of his trademark sarcastic lines, and some of the practical magic tricks still carry that glossy, manufactured Hollywood appeal. But charm alone isn’t enough to hold a movie together. The thing that made “Now You See Me” engaging was the intrigue surrounding the tricks. Moreover, a sense that something clever was happening beneath the surface. The sequel forgets this entirely. Magic isn’t impressive when the audience can see exactly where the mirrors are, and this film practically points at them. It’s a sequel that doesn’t understand what made its predecessor enjoyable, hence resulting in a hollow spectacle, which is flashy on the outside, empty where it actually matters.
