Mortal Kombat II is in theaters now, and I’m gonna be real, I kinda forgot a lot of the finer details about its 2021 reboot predecessor. That’s probably on me for not doing a rewatch beforehand, but also the film’s release was delayed by a whole six months, giving my brain several additional months to overwrite my memories of watching the first movie in quarantine with something else. However, Mortal Kombat II did manage to remind me that one character was kind of a big deal in the first movie, which made it all the more surprising that the sequel makes them a non-factor.
I’m talking about Cole Young, the original character created for the first film who served as its protagonist, a former MMA fighter who finds himself dragged into all the chaos of the Mortal Kombat tournament and learns he’s a descendant of Scorpion, arguably the most iconic character in the franchise. Cole was, we’ll say “divisive” when the first movie came out, and as the center point around which the entire film orbited, fans hoping to just see their Mortal Kombat faves on the big screen had to accept that Cole was always going to be drawing focus.
In Mortal Kombat II, seemingly in response to fan criticisms of the OC crashing the party, Cole isn’t merely relegated to a side character, he’s taken off the board early and violently. As the titular tournament begins, Cole’s first (and only) fight is against villain Shao Kahn, who the movie has already gone out of its way to establish as a formidable foe with previous violent showdowns. Now, to really establish him as a threat, Shao Kahn defeats Cole, slamming his mighty hammer down on his head and dropping his body in acid.
The fatality is fitting for a Mortal Kombat hero’s death, but then Cole’s kind of forgotten about for the rest of the film. When word of his loss reaches his teammates, they barely react before essentially forgetting about him for the rest of the movie. Though I appreciate Mortal Kombat II’s campy, ultraviolent antics as a way to take a character out, part of me does wonder if this is part of a larger plan or if it’s a desperate plea for approval from detractors who questioned why the character was in these movies to begin with. Love it or hate it, the 2021 movie was Cole’s story, and if this isn’t setting up something big for him in a future film, it reeks of cheap placation.
Ultimately, I’m here for the sick fight scenes, so I’m not particularly riled up about it. The real Mortal Kombat fans, however, seem a bit divided. Though you’ll definitely find folks celebrating his microscopic screentime in the sequel, others felt this decision was a shortcut to winning the good will of Mortal Kombat diehards, rather than improving the character.
“I get that he was a character that not everyone liked in the first movie and he was one of the only throwaway heroes for the sake of the plot and making Shao Khan look like the big bad villain,” redditor TripleWhiskeyShot wrote. “But this is a SEQUEL MOVIE… TO HIS STORY!!!!
I WAS HALF EXPECTING A DAMN MID CREDITS SCENE OF COLE’S FAMILY WONDERING WHERE HE WAS AND BEING SAD TO DRIVE THE POINT HOME THAT HIS CHARACTER MEANT NOTHING. BUT HEY WE GET JOHNNY CAGE TALKING TO ORC CHILDREN ABOUT HOW HE SAVED THE WORLD. AND DOESN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT THOSE THAT DIED ALONG THE WAY.”
Some of the mixed feelings come from feeling for Cole’s actor, Lewis Tan, who is both a fan of the series and also probably signed on to the film series under the pretense of being a main character.
i kinda feel bad for lewis tan tho… i wish he played an actual character so bad instead of being stuck with an oc everybody hates 😭 https://t.co/4XM1j5xiEU
— lunja 🕊️ (@peacescycle) May 7, 2026
Whatever Tan is feeling privately, he’s putting on a brave face publicly, including making appearances at screenings. In a March interview with Brandon Davis, Tan said that there were “plans” for Cole, and that fans would be “pleasantly surprised” by the direction the character would take. It’s unclear, though, if this was a nod to his death and the character’s lack of popularity, or if the Mortal Kombat movies may do more with him in the future.
Mortal Kombat II ends with the surviving cast capturing Quan Chi to help revive their fallen friends, so Cole may very well return in the planned third film, perhaps as the new Scorpion? Hiroyuki Sanada returns in the sequel as the original Scorpion, but in a supporting role, and he and Cole never even interact in the film. So maybe now that they’re both dead, there’s room for the movies to bridge that gap in the afterlife.
