Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Flight Risk!The ending of Flight Risk is a rarity for Mark Wahlberg movies, as its one of the few films he’s been in where his character dies. The 2025 action thriller is a very different type of film and performance than audiences have grown accustomed to seeing with Wahlberg. He plays a criminal hitman working for the mob in the Mel Gibson-directed movie, marking one of the rare times in his career that he has played a true villain. Seeing this side of Wahlberg is refreshing after nearly three decades of him exclusively playing the hero.
Switching up the narrative role allows Flight Risk to subvert audience expectations with the A-list star at various turns. His wise-cracking comedy turns dark and often sexual, while the nature of his performance is more evil and creepy than light-hearted and inspirational. The differences between Mark Wahlberg’s villain role and a more traditional character can especially be seen in the conclusion. Flight Risk’s ending includes the death of Wahlberg’s Daryl Booth. A movie killing the main villain is nothing new, but it is a rare experience for the star actor.
Flight Risk Is Only The Sixth Movie Where Mark Wahlberg’s Character Dies
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While some actors like Sean Bean die in movies all the time, Mark Wahlberg is not all that familiar with this process. Flight Risk is only the sixth time that his character is not alive at the end of a movie in his entire career, which includes 56 feature film roles. 1996’s Fear was the first movie to end with killing Wahlberg’s character. His character dies permanently four more times over the nearly three decades that follow. Those films were The Perfect Storm, Mojave, Joe Bell, and Father Stu.
Mark Wahlberg’s character also died in Lone Survivor and Infinite, but they did not remain dead
Flight Risk now marks the sixth time Wahlberg’s character is dead when the movie is officially over. His villain characters die 100% of the time. These are the only two deaths that also happen on-screen. The other four happen off-screen. So even though audiences may be a bit more accustomed to Wahlberg’s character dying at some point in a film, especially more recently, seeing the death on-screen is not typical. Flight Risk leaves no doubt about Wahlberg’s character’s fate by showing him getting run over by a truck after falling out of an airplane.
Flight Risk’s Mark Wahlberg Death Is Oddly Similar To His 2021 Action Movie
Infinite Also Used An Airplane To Kill Mark Wahlberg
Despite only permanently dying in six movies, Flight Risk copies another Mark Wahlberg movie when it comes to his demise. That’s because this is not the first time one of Wahlberg’s characters died after falling out of an airplane. That is the same setup for his character’s death in the 2021 action movie Infinite. There, his character, Evan, falls out of a plane and kills the main villain in midair. Without a parachute or anything to help him, Evan dies on impact with the ocean. The loophole here is that Wahlberg’s character lives on as a reincarnated warrior.
The circumstances of Evans’ death in Infinite’s ending are very different from Flight Risk, but it is odd that this is the second time one of Wahlberg’s characters has died falling out of an airplane. Previously, he’d died after being thrown out of a window and stabbed in Fear, drowning in The Perfect Storm, a beating in Mojave, and a hit and run in Joe Bell. Add in dying from the disease in Father Stu, and Infinite and Flight Risk are the only commonalities in how one of Mark Wahlberg’s characters dies. Wahlberg’s future characters need to avoid airplanes apparently.
Why Mark Wahlberg’s Characters Rarely Die In His Movies
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Mark Wahlberg having two characters die by falling out airplanes is odd, but his low death count overall is not. The reason why he rarely dies in his movies is the direct result of the roles he plays. Wahlberg is almost always the hero or a good guy in his movies. And over the last few decades, that’s primarily come with him in the lead role. Most movies do not end with the lead character dying, so there’s little opportunity for that to happen based on the roles Wahlberg typically plays.
Furthermore, the fate of Wahlberg’s characters has been safe many times before thanks to the franchise potential of his movies. A lot of his projects are either part of existing franchises or hoping to be the start of a new, original series. Those plans would include Wahlberg reprising his role in any future installments. Killing his character would eliminate that franchise potential. Since Flight Risk is not meant to be a franchise and cast Wahlberg in the villain role, though, it could not pass up the rare opportunity to kill his character.