Posted by The Continental aired in the United States in September 2023, a prequel to the events we already know from the world of John Wick. We discover how the Continental Hotel looked in the 70s and the backstory of some of the main characters spinning around it. How Winston Scott gets to control the Continental, keeping Charon as his right hand, and the war that led to the new order. However, another exciting character caught the spotlight: the adjudicator, a woman wearing a mask that hides half her face. Viewers have been curious about her story: what do we know about her? Let’s discover the information available.
The Continental’s adjudicator: what’s with her mask & face?
The adjudicator is one of the most mysterious characters in The Continental, the prequel series from the world of John Wick: she’s played by Irish actress Katie McGrath, and a special porcelain mask hides half her face.
Fans developed great curiosity about the story behind the adjudicator, especially after that iconic scene in The Continental Episode 2, where she removes her mask in front of Cormac, triggering his disgust. We don’t see her face, so we don’t know what’s behind the mask, but that short sequence rapidly created a sort of myth around the adjudicator and her story. Peacock’s Twitter profile has shared the scene in a short anticipation of Part 2 of The Continental: you can watch it below. “Noted: never eat in front of The Adjudicator,” says the caption.
What’s the story behind the mask and the face of the adjudicator in The Continental? Unfortunately, nothing has been revealed so far, neither by the production, the director, nor the series itself. We know the adjudicator is a stable character in the John Wick universe: it serves as an intermediary between The Continental and The High Table, judging who controls the hotel. In John Wick 3, the adjudicator is the one who informs Winston Scott he will have to step down as general manager of The Continental after he helped John Wick. In the movie, the character was portrayed by American actor Asia Kate Dillon. You can see them in this clip.
After that scene in The Continental Part 2, many theories emerged in social networks. We now know the adjudicator hides a disgusting face behind the porcelain mask, and she doesn’t mind using her true face’s effect when needed, as she does while Cormac is eating. She hides a horrible smile (we see it in the ending scene of The Continental part 3), but we don’t know much about it, as the character’s backstory hasn’t been revealed yet. Someone brought up an interesting theory: since the series takes place in the 70s, and the adjudicator mentions “pillaging” and “eradication of the bloodline” as things that motivated history’s great survivors to act, someone guessed the adjudicator could have developed her scar in War World 2, maybe fighting the Nazis. It’s just a theory, of course; no other hints point in that direction, but it’s already an exciting perspective on the matter.
But one thing is sure: the adjudicator is one of the most fascinating and promising characters in The Continental and the universe of John Wick. Up to the point that the series’ director, Albert Hughes, confessed in this interview with NBC that he wishes he could shoot an episode, or an entire movie, about the role of the adjudicator. In his vision, the adjudicator “is a bloodline thing. Like the Royal family. You have to be birthed into it and trained into it; you’re not invited to be an Adjudicator.” According to this perspective, it becomes a role inherited from parents to children, generation after generation. The movie Albert Hughes wants to shoot would be set in the 30s, and the adjudicator in those years would be the grandmother of the one we see in The Continental. That would be another idea for a John Wick spinoff after The Continental and Ballerina, the movie with Ana de Armas set for release in 2024.
We will keep you updated about any new information coming out about the adjudicator, her face, her mask, and her story in the universe of John Wick and The Continental. For more curiosities about The Continental, you can discover the location of the actual hotel in this article.
