Taylor Sheridan's Sicario 3 Needs To Bring Back One Character The Sequel Never Should Have Lost

Published Oct 3, 2026, 5:16 PM EDT Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 17 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic. The surprisingly long path to complete the Sicario trilogy is finally beginning to reach its conclusion. Almost a decade after Sicario: Day of the Soldado followed the masterpiece original in 2018, Sicario 3 - which at one point was said to be titled Sicario: Capos - is taking shape, with Taylor Sheridan confirmed to have written the script. Quite who will be directing the long-awaited threequel is up in the air for now, but Christopher McQuarrie was in line to replace Stefano Sollima at one point, and original Sicario director Denis Villeneuve has been floated. Whether either of them has the bandwidth to make the action thriller is also up for debate, but Sheridan’s involvement is at least a huge boost. And so too is any positive movement on the production, which was hit by industry strikes. Sheridan’s razor-sharp script was a major part of why Villeneuve’s Sicario was so great, and his return to this morally murky underworld means the threequel can deliver on his vision. Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro seem inevitable, given how Sicario: Day of the Soldado’s ending sets up the continued story, but the real question is whether the upcoming trilogy-ender will officially bring back the key character from the original who disappeared before the sequel. Despite how great the story was, Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer was a miss after her role in the first movie, and Sicario: Capos has the perfect opportunity to bring her back. Let’s just hope the stars align to help her complete the story she began in 2015. Why Emily Blunt Didn't Return For Sicario 2 When Day of the Soldado arrived 8 years ago, neither Blunt nor Sicario co-star Daniel Kaluuya was involved, raising some eyebrows as Kate Macer had been presented as the heart of the original movie. Macer’s removal was a deliberate choice, as Sheridan and director Sollima chose not to have her moral balance in order to tell a darker story. As Sollima told Business Insider in 2018, "Emily Blunt is an amazing actress, but her role was sort of a moral guidance for the audience. In Soldado, we don't have that." It’s hard to argue with the logic: the sequel is far less restrained, and considerably more brutal, and it is instead Josh Brolin’s CIA operative Matt Graver who goes through the moral conflict that Macer had 3 years earlier. The producers did, however, leave the door open for Blunt’s return in the third movie, even if the actor brushed off the question of discussions to return as mere rumors in an interview with Josh Horowitz. She also revealed her affection for the movie: "I don’t know if, during it, I saw the full scope of what [Denis Villeneuve] was doing. I think when I saw it, and was so gripped by the throat by it, I didn’t realize how much you would feel like her as an audience member. I didn’t realize she would bring you into it in the way that she does, and she is as in the dark as the audience are. It is an incoherent world where someone is in way over their head, and the panic that instills in audiences watching it was so cool, and how taut and muscular the whole thing felt when watching it. And how stunning it looked because of Roger Deakins, it was just beautiful to look at, just groundbreakingly so. So, I do see why that one resonates with people, but I felt that with Oppenheimer. I was absolutely staggered by it when I saw it, I felt like my bones were going to break, I had no idea it would move as propulsively and viscerally as it did, it was just stunning." The audience wants her back, too, and Sicario’s story can only truly come full circle if she does return. Sicario 3 Can Wrap Up Emily Blunt's Story Perfectly The ending of the second Sicario movie suggests Del Toro’s Alejandro has recruited an apprentice in Miguel, forging a new connection to dismantle the Reyes cartel from inside. His personal vendetta obviously remains a key story point, and now that Alejandro is off the leash, everything can get a lot dirtier and a lot more brutal. It feels inevitable that the CIA will have to reckon with the fallout of their own missions, and their association with Alejandro as the bodies pile up and he potentially threatens to collapse their clandestine criminal ecosystem. Having Macer’s return and Brolin’s own moral conflict play out on the other side of the coin to Alejandro’s bloody mission. They were both complicit, in very different ways, in setting the path he’s now on, and with Graver seemingly questioning his own methods, the surprise ideological partnership could be key to resolving the trilogy. Given the tone of the trilogy so far, it’s unlikely Sicario 3 would just be a whistleblower movie, but having Macer and Graver on Alejandro’s trail as they either seek to avoid their own reckoning by cleaning things up, or to bring him up and come clean themselves, feels like a great opportunity to balance dramatic intrigue with high-octane action. Macer can right the ship in terms of the moral heart of the trilogy, and she simply has to be brought back Sicario is a movie franchise created by Taylor Sheridan that follows former prosecutor-turned-assassin Alejandro Gillick as he and a team of FBI and CIA agents head to Mexico to put a stop to ruthless drug cartel leaders. The sequel continues Gillick's as he continues to conduct covert operations that often result in extreme conflict between the core characters in each film. Gillick's actual missions often contradict the "by-the-book" agents' assignments.