Zack Snyder teases an Army of the Dead character might still be alive

Army of the Dead
(Image credit: Netflix)

Zack Snyder has hinted that a certain character might have survived the gory events of Army of the Dead. Major spoilers ahead!

While hardly anyone made it out of the movie alive, there's one character in particular who could have escaped the catastrophe. Dieter, played by Matthias Schweighöfer, was pulled away by Alpha zombie Zeus while closing the safe, and we don't see him again afterwards. But Snyder has teased that he might just have survived.

"We don't see him die, that's true. That's fair," he told TheFilmJunkee, adding: "You would say in a horror movie if we don't see you die, by the rules of horror..."

Though that's not exactly confirmation that Dieter lived, it at least offers a teeny bit of hope – the movie did show that Alpha zombie Zeus sometimes left people alive for a while after capturing them. 

Only two other characters had an offscreen death. Lilly (Nora Arnezeder) was impaled by Zeus, but the film cut away before we saw what happened to her. Considering Zeus was right there, and she'd just killed what was left of his queen, we can assume Lilly wasn't lucky enough to escape. Huma Qureshi's Geeta also wasn't killed onscreen, but as she doesn't surface from the helicopter wreckage after the crash, it's probably safe to say she didn't survive either.

Only Ella Purnell's Kate Ward made it out of Las Vegas relatively unscathed – though Omari Hardwick's Vanderohe survived the zombie carnage and a nuclear bomb by sheltering in the safe, the last moments of the film revealed a bite on his arm.

Whether Dieter did survive the undead hordes and the nuclear blast or was killed offscreen remains to be seen, maybe in a potential Army of the Dead 2. But, there is a prequel focusing on him arriving to Netflix this year, titled Army of Thieves – which Schweighöfer both stars in and directs.

Army of the Dead is currently streaming on Netflix. If you're all caught up on its two and a half hours of undead mayhem, check out the best Netflix movies to watch now, and see our ranking of the best Zack Snyder movies.  

Molly Edwards
Senior Entertainment Writer

I'm a Senior Entertainment Writer here at 12DOVE, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.