Ballerina is the first real movie spinoff in the John Wick universe, and on paper, it had all the makings of something special. Set between Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, the story follows Eve (Ana de Armas), a young assassin raised in the Ruska Roma syndicate as she hunts the people responsible for murdering her father.

It drops us right back into that familiar neon-lit world of blood oaths, ornate underworld politics and stupendously choreographed violence. It’s a slick-looking film with serious talent behind it, and when it works, it works.

Let’s be clear: the action is phenomenal.

Spoilers ahead!

OK, so there’s a flamethrower sequence where Eve barbecues about 45 henchmen like she’s grilling them for a Fourth of July massacre. It’s brutal, surprising and absolutely badass. Then there’s the ice skate fight, yes, a literal deathmatch on a random patch of indoor ice using the blade of a skate as a weapon and it rips.

The choreography, the pacing, the kill creativity are chef’s kiss, friends. This is the stuff John Wick fans show up for, and Ballerina delivers it in spades.

And de Armas is fully believable as an assassin. You can see the physical commitment in every hit and exhausted breath. If Wick is pain, she clearly did her time. You believe that she trained for this and probably needed dozens of ice baths after each shooting day. You believe she can kill, but what’s missing is what happens between the killings.

There’s a club scene early on in the film that teases something different. Decked out in a fur jacket and a strapless black sequined dress, Eve is visibly nervous as she prepares to take down her first target with a gun full of rubber bullets. It’s her first real mission, and you can sense that bodily harm is coming her way.

She’s an assassin with training wheels, still learning how to be ruthless. And for a moment, Ballerina feels like it might be about something more than revenge.

But then the movie veers hard back onto the Wick track.

Instead of exploring Eve’s unique path, it hands her a recycled plot, a basic “find the man who killed my father” setup, complete with a tacked-on child to protect and a random sister reveal that goes nowhere. After the first 15 minutes, we begin to lose any emotional or character-driven threads. The women who trained with her? Gone. Her “secret sister” gets like four minutes of screen time and Eve loses definition. She has no standout style, signature look or real voice.

And that’s a huge missed opportunity.

This is a story about a woman operating in a hyper-masculine world, a professional killer in a field that’s almost exclusively portrayed by men in fiction.” Fight like a girl” should’ve been more than just a whisper of a theme. The Wickverse doesn’t need a gender-swapped clone. It needs someone who uses her strengths differently, maybe someone who weaponizes femininity, psychology and presence. Eve could’ve been that, but instead, she’s flattened into another stoic, wounded soul on autopilot.

There’s nothing wrong with subtlety or restraint, but there’s a difference between minimalism and blandness. Wick was quiet, but everything about him—from his tailored suits to his brutal efficiency—made him iconic. Eve deserved the same. Let her have a signature look. A lil’ flair. Give her one line we want to quote later, in the vein of “I’m thinking I’m back.” Something to hang her identity on. Instead, the film plays it safe and ends up feeling like it’s afraid to let her shine.

And let me be clear, in my opinion, the movie is never bad. It’s competently made and visually slick and features a few memorable action sequences.

But it never quite justifies its own existence beyond “We need a spinoff.” It doesn’t push the Wickverse forward or carve out a space for women in this world. It just shows that they can shoot guns too, and I wanted more.

Ballerina could’ve been a reset button. It could’ve shown what it looks like when a woman breaks the mold in a world built to exclude her. It had moments of potential, flashes of something more stylish. But instead, it chose to stay in the shadow of John Wick, when it had every reason to step into its own spotlight.