Audiences who watched the first ‘John Wick’ movie know and understand John Wick's affinity for his pet beagle, Daisy, but that affinity goes far deeper than even the movie suggests. It was established in the first movie that despite his stoic nature, the former hitman is able to find his softer side through his late wife's final gift to him before she died. Yet, the 2017-18 comic mini-series adds layers to the idea, suggesting that perhaps Wick always had a softer side for animals.
The team of Greg Pak, Matt Gaudio, and Giovanni Valletta delivered a five-issue John Wick mini-series prequel that highlights how the title character first got involved with The Continental. As often are typically his motivations in the movie trilogy, a younger John Wick is on a quest for vengeance against three men and a lady named Calamity who unleashed hell upon a village when he was a child, taking 53 innocent lives with them. It is through these central plots that not only does the mafia manipulate their way into Wick's life, but the comic also builds upon and re-contextualizes key ingredients to the ‘John Wick’ character.
Among those key ingredients is John Wick's connection to animals. As previously stated, the first movie suggests that John Wick's connection to his dog is something unique to the connection he had to his wife and, beforehand, the concept of bonding with any animal was foreign to him. As seen in the original movie, when Daisy first arrives on his doorstep, ‘John Wick’ is as confused and perplexed at the sight as anyone else in the same situation would be.
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