An I Am Legend ended in Neville's death, Will Smith will return for I Am Legend 2 with some optimism that Robert Neville is alive, given that his body was never shown. However, despite this optimism, a return for Will Smith as Robert Neville may not mean good news for the character.
I Am Legend, based on the 1954 Richard Matheson novel of the same title, follows Neville and his dog, Samantha, as the lone known survivors of a catastrophic event where an attempt to cure cancer inadvertently infects 99% of humanity, turning most of them into bloodthirsty mutants called Darkseekers. Neville wanders the desolated streets of Manhattan, talking to mannequins to alleviate his loneliness and experimenting on rats to try and find a cure. Neville eventually captures a female Darkseeker, and discovers two survivors named Anna (Alice Braga) and Ethan. In I Am Legend's tense finale, Neville does find a cure and then sacrifices himself to save it by throwing himself at an oncoming Darkseeker as he holds a grenade, killing them both. Anna and Ethan escape, with Neville's heroic actions solidifying him as a legend among a survivors' colony discovered at Bethel.
I Am Legend's hopeful conclusion is not the same ending as Matheson's novel, which instead ends Neville's story in a darker way, with some speculating that this missing ending from the book could feature in I Am Legend 2. There is some buzz surrounding the sequel, with Will Smith set to return, as well as I Am Legend screenwriter Akiva Goldsman and Michael B. Jordon also signed on in an undisclosed role. However, with I Am Legend concluding with Robert Neville's death and Anna finding her way to survival, it is hard to imagine what is left to happen in the story, especially if Neville stays dead. It seems likely that Neville will survive, even if I Am Legend 2 has to retcon I Am Legend's final scene. In fact, the success of the movie is counting on it.
I Am Legend 2 Needs To Have Will Smith's Robert Neville Alive.
I Am Legend owes a large part of its success to Will Smith's performance as Robert Neville. Although I Am Legend is a tense action horror full of vampire-mutants, it also is a story about loneliness. Smith acts alone with only Sam the dog, Fred the Mannequin and the occasional Darkseeker as company throughout most of the movie's runtime. He perfectly captures Neville's feelings of loss, regret, and loneliness, as well as his determination to make things right as he desperately searches for a cure. Will Smith's performance is especially realistic, with Robert Neville's journey from despair to hope anchoring everything the story. Although Robert Neville's legend could continue to inspire the survivors' colony at Bethel, it's his actual story and Smith's performance that make I Am Legend so captivating.
Arguably, I Am Legend 2 doesn't have to work too hard to create an alternate reality where Neville somehow survives, because I Am Legend already did this with its alternate ending. In this ending, Neville also discovers that the Darkseekers are not the mindless monsters he believes them to be. Instead, as the Darkseeker's raid his house, the Darkseeker leader draws a butterfly, reminding Neville of his own story of loss and matching a butterfly tattoo on the captured Darkseeker's arm. Through this symbolic encounter, Neville faces up to the reality of how many of these beings he has killed. Robert Neville stops fighting and leaves for Vermont with Anna and Ethan. I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence scrapped this ending due to poor test screenings, but it does follow the themes of the book much closer, as well as paving a way for Robert Neville to survive. In this case, I Am Legend 2's sin of leaving Robert Neville dead would be greater than the one of retconning I Am Legend's original ending to keep him alive.
Theory: Will Smith Returns As A Darkseeker Prisoner
I Am Legend's alternate ending may allow Robert Neville to survive, but it doesn't set him up for further conflict between him and the Darkseekers, which surely is also needed for I Am Legend 2 to be successful. However, one theory, which could work either in using I Am Legend's alternate ending or in inventing some way for him to have survived the explosive original ending, puts Neville directly in harms way while also developing I Am Legend's Darkseekers further. In this ending, Neville would not only survive the events of I Am Legend but would become a prisoner of the Darkseekers.
Will Smith's Neville could survive the explosion somehow, with the visual absence of his dead body at the end of I Am Legend making room for this possibility. Should this happen, it would also make sense for many of the Darkseekers present at the end of I Am Legend to also survive. Supposing this happens, the Darkseekers may choose to take Neville captive, just as he captured one of them, rather than exacting immediate bloody revenge. Perhaps through Neville's imprisonment the Darkseekers will seek to punish him for everything he's done to them, perhaps giving Neville the chance to feel the same empathy for them and come face to face with his own violence against them, as the alternate ending of I Am Legend already tried to explore. Although this premise could ultimately be a very grim way for Will Smith to return, it would further develop the Darkseekers meaningfully and create further ethical conflict.
Smith as a Darkseeker Prisoner In I Am Legend 2 Restores A Book Missing Scene
In Richard Matheson's novel, Robert Neville follows a similar journey to the one Will Smith's Neville does in I Am Legend, with the book's Robert Neville also finding a female "survivor" named Ruth. At this point the stories drastically divert paths as Ruth, unlike Anna, is actually one of the Darkseekers (which are just vampires, in the novel), who confronts him over the deaths many of her friends, including her husband. In fact, Robert Neville is eventually imprisoned by the vampires and Ruth reveals that they have developed a new society with her as a senior leader. This society is far more sentient and intelligent than Neville had realized. In this ending, Robert Neville still dies by taking a suicide pill given to him by Ruth. As he dies in Matheson's ending, Neville contemplates on the fact that just as vampires are a terrifying legend to humans, now he will be the same sort of legend for this new vampire society, who they fear and hate because he killed so many of them.
I Am Legend 2's Darkseeker prisoner theory creates the perfect opportunity to explore this darker meaning of the title I Am Legend as constructed by Matheson. Neville's imprisonment in the book ultimately leads to uncovering Matheson's key themes exploring how much we share in common with our enemy and how our own myths and legends are often constructed. The original I Am Legend movie makes the decision to end on a hopeful note for humanity, but there is plenty of evidence through the existence of the alternate ending that s Lawrence and Avika Goldsman were interested in staying loyal to Matheson's more somber ideas.
With Neville having already died a hero, perhaps deconstructing his heroism through exploring the humanity still left in the new Darkseeker society is just the surprising direction I Am Legend 2 needs. Through this theory, the story will still center around Will Smith's Robert Neville, which is vital to the project, while still taking him into uncharted territory. Although there are other pathways for Robert Neville's return, the Darkseeker prisoner theory allows for I Am Legend 2 to stay true to its original source material whilst also staying rooted in the horror genre the book was written in. Either way, Will Smith's return could prove to be even more grim and lonely for Robert Neville than his journey in the original I Am Legend.
