For those of you that saw Kill Bill Volume 1, you'll have a better understanding of what's going on.  You might want to see that before you read this, lest something about Volume 1 be given away (the Masked Reviewer has seen Kill Bill Volume 1). 

First of all, the Bride (Uma Thurman) will get her revenge.  Eventually.  Probably not until near the end of the movie.  "Oh sure," you may say, "brilliant prediction."  Just you wait. 

Next prediction: Lucy Liu's character (O-Ren Ishi) isn't dead.  You may recall at the end of Kill Bill, she was scalped, her brain was hanging out, but she'll be okay.  After all, Uma Thurman's character was beaten up and shot in  the head and she was fine.  Plop that skull hunk back on Lucy's brain, throw in a couple of stainless steel staples, and she'll be right as rain.  Besides, she fell down in the snow, and that'll keep her brain fresh until help arrives.  It seems like the battle with Lucy and Uma wasn't all it could've been, so a rematch would be worthwhile.

Who else is an interesting match-up for Uma?  Viveca Fox was dispatched quickly.  Michael Madsen is a guy, and he's already speculated that they're going to pay for what they've done, so he can't be much of a match for Uma.  Daryl Hannah's character only has one eye, and she seems to be the sneak-around-and-poison kind of bad guy, so she might come close to killing Uma with poison or backstabbing, but she'll fail.  The climactic battle with have to be with Bill, and Uma will certainly get hurt badly in that match up.  In fact, she may even die, and kill Bill with her last desperation breath, as is the custom in revenge movies.  It's been suggested that Uma's baby is alive, so we can pretty much expect that she'll either give up on the revenge in order to save her baby, or sacrifice her own life to save her baby. 

The real question is: is the Groom the father of the baby...or...is it Bill?  The Masked Reviewer's money is on the father being Bill.  It's probably likely that after Uma was "killed", Bill took the baby and raised it as his own, so the child will have feelings for Bill, making it harder for Uma to get her revenge.

It seems likely that Sonny Chiba's character, Master Sword Maker Hattori Hanzo, will be killed by one of Bill's minions after he refuses to give them a sword, or maybe he'll be killed when he refuses to talk about Uma.  We grew to like him in the first film, which pretty much screws him for the second film.

It would be great to see the little girl that played Viveca Fox's daughter come after Uma in the second film and try to kill her, forcing Uma to kill a 6-year-old girl. That is to say, great in a tragic way.

This is just a hunch, but one can't help but to think there'll be a little bit of sexual tension in the second part.  Perhaps Uma will go "undercover" in disguise to seduce information out of someone.  It seems like something she should do.  Or, maybe she'll meet up with the Groom again.  It seems unlikely that the Groom is still alive, but if he is, you can bet that he was in on the execution set-up.  The Masked Reviewer is going out on a limb here, but this is the theory: Bill hired the Groom to pretend to be in love with Uma.  Bill found a way to knock Uma up without Uma knowing so that Bill could have an offspring with good assassin genes.  Or, maybe Bill knocked up Uma and then Uma left the group because she didn't want to kill anymore.  The Groom sold Uma out, one way or another, and Bill and company showed up to kill her for betraying him. 

In the end, Uma will get her revenge, but only at the ultimate cost.  Yeah, Uma's dead at the end of Volume 2.  You know it.  She must be.  How could she not be?  When does the protagonist live in a Tarantino film, huh? 

PREDICTION RECORDED: October 5, 2003