What Will ‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ Be About?

Allow me to put on my John-Krasinski-circa-March-2020 hat and offer you Some Good News. It was announced today that there is going to be a third Magic Mike movie, thank god. Channing Tatum shared an image of the script on Monday, revealing that the film will be called Magic Mike’s Last Dance. Last Dance is written by screenwriter Reid Carolin, who wrote both Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL, and directed by original Magic Mike director Stephen Soderbergh. Presumably this means we can expect a return of the first film’s visual motif, in which everything was yellow.

This is huge news for Mikesinistas like myself. We are a people who understand that these movies are a bright light in the gaping abyss of superheroes and rebooted ‘80s action heroes. Let she who has not teared up watching Big Dick Richie dance to Backstreet Boys in a gas station while rolling on molly cast the first stone.

I will consume a bottle of wine and see Magic Mike’s Last Dance at a midnight screening, and I’m sure I will have an experience that verges on the spiritual. But I do have a little voice in the back of my head that is crying out, “The entire plot of Magic Mike XXL was that they were bringing him out of retirement! That was his last dance! How can this also be his last dance?” I am trying to get her to be as quiet as possible, but she persists.

In an effort to silence that nagging question, here are some ideas as to what Magic Mike’s Last Dance might be about:

• Magic Mike is about the recession, and so, in a similar political move, perhaps Magic Mike’s Last Dance will take on the pandemic. The dancers are down and out due to COVID-19, unable to perform for packed audiences of shrieking women. In an effort to help out his struggling brothers, Mike starts organizing Zoom shows in which Ken, Tito, Tarzan, and Big Dick Richie perform as essential workers. The show is a huge hit, but what happens when online celebrity goes to the guys’ heads?
• Supply chain issues disrupt Mike’s custom furniture business. With no cash coming in, Mike calls up the boys with a money-making idea: They’ll go on a tour just to the homes of older rich women, facilitated by Andi MacDowell’s rolodex. Antics ensue as they perform for nursing homes, divorce parties, and wine-fueled book clubs. But when Tarzan finds himself liable for breaking a woman’s hip, the crew needs to rally around him and come up with the money for her surgery so she doesn’t take him to court.
• For some reason these movies have never taken us to Vegas. Take us to Vegas! Word of the guys’ stripping prowess has reached the City of Sin, and a female real estate entrepreneur (Susan Sarandon) is seeing dollar signs. She asks them to come do a try-out run for a residency, and everything goes according to plan… until a roving gang of Chippendales takes out Ken’s kneecaps in a Nancy Kerrigan-esque attack. Now the Florida boys not only need to figure out how to put on their show, but also how to get back at the old-school dancers trying to keep them down.
• While performing at a private party in a spooky Georgia mansion (read: former plantation), one of the attendees gets murdered. The film turns into a sexy whodunit – who better to lead interrogations than our topless, muscle-bound heroes? The guys all kiss. It is the final frontier of this franchise. I don’t care what kind of plot machinations lead us to it, but these men need to kiss each other.

Whatever the team behind Magic Mike wants to do, I’ll be there. I just hope that Magic Mike’s Last Dance brings us what we’ve come to expect from these movies: thrilling dance sequences, shirtless hunks, and a stunning performance from a supporting character (see: Matthew McConaughey, Jada Pinkett-Smith) that gets whispered about as an Oscar contender. Thank you, Channing.