Alita 2: Blood & Steel (2025)
Genre: Sci-Fi | Action | Cyberpunk | Drama
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Produced by: James Cameron
Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Ed Skrein, Keean Johnson, and new cast additions Florence Pugh & Hiroyuki Sanada
Alita 2: Blood & Steel picks up directly after the ending of Alita: Battle Angel, where Alita gazes toward the floating city of Zalem, her sword raised to the skies, and her heart burning with vengeance.
After losing Hugo and uncovering the lies buried beneath Iron City, Alita (Rosa Salazar) now stands as the reigning Motorball champion. She has earned a ticket to Zalem—the last sanctuary of the elite—but she doesn’t seek luxury. She seeks Nova.
But as she soon discovers, reaching Zalem is not as simple as winning a game.
Zalem isn't just a city. It’s a fortress.
When Alita arrives, she learns it’s run by a council of techno-aristocrats, with Nova (Edward Norton) still pulling strings from behind the curtain—his consciousness fragmented across the city’s AI systems. Zalem is a utopia built on extraction, where memories, identities, and even emotions are currency.
Here, Alita uncovers that she is not the only URM (United Republic of Mars) survivor. A mysterious warrior named Kara Valen (Florence Pugh), also of Martian descent, has been kept as a prisoner and experiment within Zalem for decades.
Kara is powerful, broken, and consumed with rage. Alita decides to break her out—and together, they form a shaky alliance.
Meanwhile, Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) and a recovering warrior Zapan (Ed Skrein) uncover something in the ruins of the Scrapyard—a piece of Martian code that may allow them to sever Nova’s control over Zalem's central core.
But to deliver it, they must go underground—literally—into the long-buried Martian ruins beneath Iron City, now guarded by mechanical wraiths left from the Great War.
Back in Zalem, Alita confronts painful truths: her past as a weapon was more brutal than even she remembers. She wasn’t just a soldier—she was once the leader of the Martian rebel cell that started the war with Earth.
And Nova knows it.
He begins to manipulate her guilt, offering her a new identity and place of power if she joins his side and helps purge the remnants of rebellion still hidden within the city.
Alita refuses Nova's offer—and Zalem declares her a terrorist. Kara, now growing unstable, begins attacking civilians, claiming justice for years of imprisonment. The people of Zalem, long passive and shielded from suffering, turn on both women.
Alita must now stop Kara’s bloodlust before she becomes what Nova claimed Alita already is: a weapon of chaos.
In a high-speed midair duel across Zalem’s floating towers, Alita and Kara clash—blade against blade, memory against memory.
In the end, Alita defeats Kara, but not without injury. She chooses to spare her, breaking the cycle of violence that defined both their lives.
With Zalem in chaos, Nova reveals himself—not as a man, but as a network, spread across thousands of data clusters in the sky and ground. The only way to destroy him is to crash Zalem itself.
In a heart-pounding climax, Alita connects her core to the Martian virus code delivered by Ido and Zapan. But the process will kill her. She accepts.
Just as she prepares for the final act, Kara steps in—redeeming herself by making the sacrifice instead.
Zalem collapses in a slow, beautiful fall, raining memory cores and golden circuitry down onto Iron City. Nova’s reign ends.
Months later, Iron City begins to heal. Technology from Zalem is now shared with the people. Ido leads efforts to rebuild.
Alita, now a myth to some, lives in secret—no longer just a warrior, but a guardian of the future.
As she walks through the crowd, hooded and silent, a child hands her a drawing: it’s a picture of her with wings made of steel.
She smiles.
