Luther fans finally saw Idris Elba’s character return in the Luther: Fallen Sun movie on Netflix, but a small continuity change was made to the title character’s storyline.

Starring Elba, Cynthia Erivo, Andy Serkis, and Dermot Crowley, the Luther: Fallen Sun movie follows DCI John Luther (Elba) after his release from prison as he hunts down a serial killer in London.

At the end of the Luther TV show, Luther was arrested for various crimes but primarily for being framed for the death of Mr. Palmer, an assassin he had shot but not killed. In the film, however, we are led to believe he was incarcerated because villain David Robey (Serkis) has released incriminating evidence surrounding Luther’s illegal misdeeds.

Neil Cross, the creator of the series and the writer of the movie, revealed the reason for the change in the Netflix film. He said the following, per Radio Times:

“In the world, in fact, he does go to prison for Palmer. He goes to prison for a whole bunch of stuff that he’s done. But Robey is still the mechanism behind which a lot of this stuff gets released.

There’s a great gag that we gave to Patrick Malahide about ‘having a photograph in the Cloud, whatever that is’.

But the needle that we had to thread, and it’s a very unique needle, is that we had two audiences to address. Audience number one is the fans who are familiar with Luther and what he’s done and why.

But there’s a second audience, which is people coming into the world entirely ignorant. And we had to construct the story such that it was equally satisfying for both audiences.”

Fans could see more of Luther in the future. Elba revealed the following in a recent appearance:

“We do have the ambition to take it into a franchise because now that you’ve got a film landscape, you’ve got bigger budgets, but also you’ve just got more stories we can tell.”

What do you think? Were you excited to see the return of Luther? Do you want Netflix to make more films in the future?