The Last Temptation of Becky, 2026.
Directed by Jenn Wexler.
Starring Lulu Wilson, Neil Patrick Harris, James Urbaniak, Kate Siegel, Desmond Eastwood, Brandon Flynn, Catherine Walker, Noah Leggott, Aoife Hughes, and Fiona Marr.
SYNOPSIS:
Now a CIA field agent, Becky goes undercover in Poland to infiltrate a family running an inn at The Wolf’s Lair, one of Hitler’s WWII bunkers. When she learns the father, Wilhelm Reuss, plans to spark the Fourth Reich, Becky must stop him.
At best, The Last Temptation of Becky delivers on the eponymous teenager slaying more Nazis, though it leaves some potential on the table. Now operating as a CIA agent (and once again played by Lulu Wilson, who has practically grown up playing this character over the past six years), that new dynamic doesn’t amount to much other than an opening field sequence showcasing that the mission doesn’t always go as planned, with Becky routinely improvising a nonexistent plan C.
For better or worse, director Jenn Wexler (co-writing alongside Matt Angel, who outlined the story with Suzanne Coote) is more concerned with what is now a familiar blueprint: expand the MacGuffin-based plotting by introducing a new Nazi villain played by yet another sitcom/comedic actor breaking heinously bad, this time with Neil Patrick Harris as General Wilhelm Reuss, whose grandfather played an important role in the Third Reich. Still looking for the mysterious key discussed in the past films, its whereabouts have surfaced, which takes Becky to a Polish inn that the proud Nazi family runs. Before violence hits the fan and the family understands who has arrived at their doors, Becky taunts them with some amusing wordplay: “Is that Reich?” before heading off to explore the surrounding forest and ruins, including a surviving World War II bunker.
While it is mildly disappointing that there is still little room offered for any interior character development for Becky (there are some cuts to psychological questioning and not much else other than the usual brief narration about not living a normal life), some of that is made up for by bringing children into the villainous equation, offering something of a role reversal from the first film. There are no kid gloves here, as the children become willing participants in the hunt for Becky, each getting individual one-on-one battle scenes, with at least one ending much more gruesomely than anticipated.
Unfortunately, much of this is also an exercise in waiting for that burst of bloodshed and seeing what exactly Wilhelm is trying to accomplish with this key (There is also a case to be made that Neil Patrick Harris doesn’t quite stand out as an enigmatic against-type presence as did Kevin James and Seann William Scott, which is more fault of the screenplay not giving him much to do more than anything). The answer, along with what immediately follows, is absurd and brutally enough to excuse the film’s shortcomings elsewhere. Lulu Wilson continues to deliver a hardened performance, capturing a shared feeling amongst the world right now in body language and something more direct, as in sporting a jacket with righteously unpleasant writing toward Nazis on the back.
The series has never quite made good on evolving Becky as a character, but reliably wins on crowd-pleasing Nazi-slaying, as it does once again with The Last Temptation of Becky.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
