Warning: major spoilers for the ending of Red Notice ahead.

Almost no one in Red Notice is who they appear to be. That’s kind of a given when you’re dealing with internationally-pursued thieves and con artists who will say and do anything to get what they want -- in this case, Cleopatra’s three lost golden eggs. Still, if you gave out a little scream of surprise at the revelation that so-called FBI profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) is actually one half of the criminal entity known as The Bishop (alongside Gal Gadot), well, you’re not alone. Just check out the face of his partner Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds).

“What’s been so rewarding and fun is that anytime I would pitch the story to anybody, they wouldn’t see that coming,” writer and director Rawson Marshall Thurber told us.

The audience first meets Hartley as he’s entering Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo alongside INTERPOL’s Inspector Das (Ritu Arya). He claims to be a criminal profiler working for the FBI who has received a tip from art thief The Bishop (Gal Gadot) that a priceless artifact is about to be stolen by rival thief Nolan Booth. Hartley’s information turns out to be correct, and Booth makes off with one of Cleopatra’s lost eggs. Hartley and Das catch up with him, and he’s sent to a Siberian labor camp, but the action really kicks off once Das arrests Hartley, after she digs into his past and finds no trace of any FBI service. At this point, we’re all supposed to believe that The Bishop has somehow hacked into his records and wiped them, framing him for a crime he didn’t commit. Hartley ends up as Booth’s cell partner, and the two make a pact: They’ll partner up to steal the eggs from under The Bishop’s nose, and take her down in the process.

But if you rewatch the movie from the beginning after the big reveal, you’ll find many, many clues that point to the fact that The Bishop was working with Hartley all along. “We try to play it cards up the whole way through,” Thurber said. “If you go back, maybe we’re [even] being too obvious on the second watch.”

Thurber came up with the twist early on in the writing process, but he truly became convinced after Johnson agreed to play Hartley. “Dwayne has made a career of playing the good guy, of playing Johnny Law, and I thought there’s no chance the audience would think he’d play anything else,” Thurber said.

After leaving Booth tied to a tree outside a South American mine, Hartley and The Bishop, who it turns out are also lovers, head off to Egypt to deliver the eggs to an Egyptian billionaire, who wants to present them to his daughter (conveniently also named Cleopatra) on her wedding day. With their $300 million payoff safely deposited, the two watch from a balcony as Inspector Das crashes the party, arresting all those involved, including guest performer Ed Sheeran, and slip out in the chaos. It looks like they’ve gotten away with the perfect crime.

Fast-forward six months, Hartley and the Bishop are living it up off the coast of Sardinia when an old friend pays them a visit. Enter Booth, who, after yet another escape from custody, has double-crossed them, tipping off Das to the secret Cayman bank account where their fortune was stashed. With their assets frozen, Hartley and The Bishop are forced to take Booth up on his offer for a new heist: “Double the payout, triple the challenge, and here’s the best part: it’s a three thief job.”

The trio end the movie standing in front of The Louvre museum in Paris. What are they stealing next? Thurber doesn’t explicitly tell you, but he does give us a major clue. “There’s one particular painting at the Louvre that’s pretty well known,” Thurber said. “I’d like to see how you steal that.”