Who The Continental’s Manager Was Before Winston In John Wick

The Continental: From the World of John Wick is a John Wick prequel series that follows Winston as he takes over The Continental Hotel in New York, but that raises the question of who the previous manager was. The Peacock three-episode event is the first of a series of John Wick spinoffs, with the Ana de Armas movie Ballerina being released in 2024, and the show continues to build the assassin universe of the movies. The Continental mostly focuses on Winston’s relationship with his brother, Frankie, who steals a coin press from a vault in The Continental, leading to a brutal manhunt.

While Winston is known as the proud manager of The Continental in the John Wick movies, he actually doesn’t seem that knowledgeable about the hotel when he’s introduced in the series. In The Continental episode 1, “Night 1: Brothers in Arms,” Winston is a con artist living in London and defrauding wealthy businessmen. However, following Winston’s estranged brother’s Continental heist, Winston is kidnapped and brought to New York to speak with the manager. The Continental is set 40 years before John Wick, and the hotel is a lot different in the 1970s, mostly because of the manager who is rather cavalier with its rules.

Related: Winston & Charon’s Origins Before The John Wick Movies Explained

Cormac Was The Continental’s Manager For 40 Years Before Winston

Mel Gibson co-stars in The Continental cast as Cormac, the manager of The Continental in the 1970s, before Winston took over the role. The character is a much different manager from Winston and conducts himself with far less class than his successor and with far more aggression. Cormac seemingly forgets the most important rule of The Continental — no “business” is allowed to be conducted on the hotel grounds — and then proceeds to mock the rule when he’s reminded of it. When one man refuses Cormac’s order to kill another person in his office, Cormac convinces the man he wants to kill himself.

Cormac reveals that he has been running the hotel for 30 years, which means that he has been the manager since the 1930s. While it isn’t clear how old Cormac is, Mel Gibson is 67 years old, and if Cormac is a similar age, he would have taken over the hotel at around the age of 27. In the time since Cormac became manager, he also helped raise Winston and Frankie, and though Winston moved to London, Frankie worked for Cormac. The Continental manager had a soft spot for Frankie and was lenient with him when he wouldn’t be so forgiving with his other employees. That was until Frankie stole the coin press.

John Wick Movies Make Winston Replacing Cormac In The Continental More Tragic

Along with revealing that he has been the hotel’s manager for 40 years, Cormac also explains that he doesn’t have any family and the only person close to him is Charon, who becomes Winston’s closest confidant too. This reveal makes Winston’s fate way more tragic. While Winston might seem proud to run the hotel in the John Wick movies, the reveal proves that anyone who becomes the hotel manager is destined to lose the people closest to them. This is already happening to Winston before he takes the manager’s seat, as Frankie sacrifices himself at the end of The Continental episode 1.

Frankie is the first of a long list of friends and family that Winston will lose soon enough. There’s a deeper history between Winston and Cormac yet to be revealed, and between that and Frankie’s death, Winston vows revenge on Cormac. However, regardless of their differences, Winston ultimately ends up becoming Cormac, albeit a version of Cormac who is more vulnerable and abides by the rules. Winston is 30 years old in The Continental: From the World of John Wick, and when he’s introduced in 2014’s John Wick, he has been managing the hotel for around 40 years. At that point, just like Cormac, Winston has absolutely nobody in his life except for Charon.