The Becky franchise does not work without Lulu Wilson, and not just because she plays the title character. A lot of actresses could pull off the concept of “angry teen versus Nazis,” but in the six years since Wilson debuted as this particular angry teen, she has made the dynamic her own. She can simultaneously be a heartsick, rage-filled young woman in search of direction and a Bugs Bunny figure tormenting a rotating roster of skinheads, racists, and Third Reich revivalists. Without her, it’s hard to imagine a world in which we’d be watching an entire trilogy of these movies. This means that the biggest problem with The Last Temptation Of Becky, in a very broad sense, is that it takes Wilson for granted.
Of course Wilson is going to show up, be reliably charismatic, and flex her mean streak as much as possible while still delivering solid dark comedy. The filmmakers know that, and the audience knows that, and that makes the third, seemingly final film in this series into something that coasts on Wilson’s charm far too often, losing the visceral punch of its predecessors along the way.
A couple years after the events of The Wrath Of Becky, Becky Hooper (Wilson) is working for the CIA to take down bad guys around the world, and having a rough go of it. No matter the training, or the planning, Becky always seems to take the messiest route to getting the job done, collateral damage and all, and it’s starting to make her superiors nervous. Hoping to prove that Becky’s got what it takes to stay with the agency, her handler Agent Montana (Kate Siegel) reveals that the literal key to Becky’s past has come back to haunt her. It seems that the mysterious key which served as the MacGuffin in the original Becky has fallen into the hands of Wilhelm Reuss (Neil Patrick Harris), an American expat trying to revive the Third Reich at a former Nazi hideaway in Eastern Europe.
To close the loop on her past, and wipe out a Nazi cell at the same time, Becky has to take a solo mission into the belly of the beast. These aren’t skinheads staging a burglary or white supremacists in over their heads. This is the real deal—uniforms, swastikas, and all—and it’s Becky’s toughest fight yet.
It’s a good place to start, and the opening act is geared toward giving us exactly what we’ve come to expect from these movies, with a spy-film twist. Becky gets her mission, her requisite tie to her past to make it personal (the mystery key is the thing her father died for in the original film), and even a few gadgets. Armed with all of this, she sets off walking the film’s clear line between ultraviolent comedy and rage-filled tragedy. To its credit, the script by Jenn Wexler (who also directs) and Matt Angel genuinely wants to probe this dichotomy, to explore not just what keeps Becky going, but how she feels about the ever-expanding realization that her quest for revenge is only perpetuating a rage she’d rather escape. It gives Wilson some emotional heft to play with, and she throws that weight around with predictable force.
With these elements in place, the rest of the film sets out to knock down all the dominoes it just carefully placed, which is where The Last Temptation Of Becky gets into trouble, though not so much that it derails the movie. There’s a sense that the film is simply running down a checklist of moments it needs to have, rather than stringing them all together into a harmonious narrative. Once the action starts, you can see very quickly and very easily where things are going, with Becky’s spy gadgets laid out as clues to the action. This, and the visible straining against its budget to put on big set pieces, diminishes some of the gut-wrenching brutality that make the Becky movies work in the first place. And CGI blood has never looked good. It will never look good.
The constant in all this, keeping the film even-keeled, is Wilson. Even in its clumsiest moments the film has her, crackling with potential energy like a perpetually coiled spring. Harris, leaping into the deep end as a cartoonishly traditional movie Nazi, not only understands the assignment, but manages to confound camp expectations by delivering the film’s greatest and only real shock. He’s a wonderful foil for Wilson, while Siegel and the always welcome James Urbaniak buoy the movie further. The Last Temptation Of Becky is far bumpier than its predecessors, but thanks to its cast, it’s never boring.
The greatest source of tension and discord in The Last Temptation Of Becky, though, the biggest problem that gnaws at it, has to do with how far this premise can really stretch. You never really need an excuse to slaughter Nazis in a feature film, whether you’re Indiana Jones or Quentin Tarantino, so that part’s never really a problem. The problem is that this is the third straight film about a young woman slaughtering Nazis because she’s angry, and that’s kinda all there is to it. Becky doesn’t really get an arc, despite Wilson’s emotional commitment to the role and the script’s attempts to sketch one out through a monologue here and there. There’s no growth, no introspection, and the moments when her furious facade slips only arrive because the script requires it, not because she’s really learning anything. We don’t need a movie about Becky Hooper going soft in the face of her fascist foes, but it would be nice, particularly here at the end, to find Becky capable of growing beyond her rage. We never get that overdue depth, which makes this the weakest installment in the Becky trilogy.
Director: Jenn Wexler
Writer: Jenn Wexler, Matt Angel
Starring: Lulu Wilson, Neil Patrick Harris, Kate Siegel, Brandon Flynn, Catherine Walker, James Urbaniak
Release Date: November 4, 2026
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