‘Artemis Fowl’ Ending Explained: Will There Be A Sequel?

Artemis Fowl, which is now streaming on Disney+ after 20 years of production limbo, seems to exist merely to set up a sequel. The Artemis Fowl ending certainly seems to suggest the film is the first in a multi-movie franchise, now that Artemis Fowl II has his band of criminal masterminds together at last. But will there actually be an Artemis Fowl sequel? That question is a little more complex.

The story of Artemis Fowl begins back in 2001, when author Eoin Colfer published his fantasy novel about a 12-year-old prodigy and criminal mastermind. Around the same time, the rights to an Artemis Fowl movie were bought by Miramax Films co-founder and now-sentenced felon Harvey Weinstein. After 19 years of back-and-forth, the movie was finally set to come out as a Disney film in theaters in May 2020. Then the coronavirus hit, and Disney, rather than delay the film yet again, opted to skip the theatrical release Artemis Fowl straight to Disney’s streaming platform, Disney+. I had to say it for all you die-hard Artemis Fowl fans still clinging on to hope, but that doesn’t bode well for an Artemis Fowl sequel, despite that ending. Let’s break it down.

What is the Artemis Fowl ending, explained?

After Artemis II (Ferdia Shaw) successfully saves his father, Artemis I (Colin Farrell), the magical MacGuffin known as “the Aculos” is safely locked away by Dame Judi Dench. Young Holly (Lara McDonnell) is promoted to lead a team of fairy cops to investigate the names on a list from her late father, Beechwood. According to Farrell, Beechwood was the one who brought him the Aculos in an attempt to keep “dark forces”—like the evil thing named Opal that captured Farrell— from getting their evil little hands on it. So, both Holly and Artemis’s dads were heroes, not criminals, and now it’s Holly’s job to hunt down the other dark forces who are also attempting to steal the Aculos. Good thing she has that list!

Even though we just established that the dads of the story are heroes and not criminals, the next scene finds Farrell and his son deciding to be criminals now. Why? Because the media is swarming their house and they don’t need the attention while they go hunt down Opal and those dark forces I was talking about. Criminals in the human world, heroes in the magical world. What exactly did they do that was so criminal in the human world? Uh… escape on a helicopter! They dodged the press! Lock ’em up!

They also break the dwarf and thief Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad) out of jail, so I guess that’s something. How did they find him? With the help of a tracking device that Mulch swallowed. The final shot finds Artemis, his dad, Holly, Mulch, and their friend Butler (Nonso Anozie) flying away on a helicopter, ready to go hunt down some bad guys.

Will there be an Artemis Fowl sequel? Is there another Artemis Fowl movie coming out?

I realize that the above ending sounds like the perfect set-up for an Artemis Fowl sequel, and I know the Artemis Fowl books series consists of eight novels. But, unfortunately, there probably won’t be a decade of sequels for this movie á la Harry Potter. While it’s clear Disney originally hoped to make a franchise out of Artemis Fowl when the film was set to open in theaters, many industry experts perceived the shift to Disney+ as the studio giving up on the film and any potential sequels.

Never say never—maybe I’m dead wrong—but given how much harder it would be to create the same amount of revenue as a theatrical release on streaming, and given that reviews of the film have been scathing, I think this might be the last on-screen adventure for Artemis. In this movie universe, anyhow. Perhaps if the reviews had been good and the fans loved it, it might have led to more straight-to-streaming sequels, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Even director Kenneth Branagh, though he would like to make a sequel, knows it would be difficult.

In an interview with Comicbook.com, he said, “The difficulty with these things, particularly when you have the massive shadow of the gargantuan success that Potter is, is that they can be intimidating, so I think anything that follows is tricky, but we’ve given it our best shot. The material’s there, the performers are great, and if the audience want it, we’ll be coming back at them.”

Will the audiences want it? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Watch Artemis Fowl on Disney+