Before we knew him as Ludwig Dieter in Army of the Dead, the safecracker had another life… and another (much more difficult to pronounce) name.
Played by Matthias Schweighöfer, Dieter is the charming yet awkward guy who has no experience in killing zombies before he is recruited by Scott and Maria to crack an impossible safe in AotD.
Even though Dieter made his place in everyone’s hearts, there’s more to him than just his awkwardness. Army of Thieves explores just that.
The prequel film dropped on Netflix two days ago and set up his backstory, giving his character more of an emotional depth.
Before using the alias of Ludwig Dieter, his birth-given name was Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhnert.
Although an enthusiast safecracker since a young age, Sebastian has a pretty simple life. He works as a bank teller before an international jewelry thief Gwendoline approaches him for a heist.
Sebastian is unsure about it at first but decides he wants in as he’s tired of living a boring life and is also tempted by the opportunity to crack a Hans Wagner safe.
During a conversation with Gwendoline, he tells her that he always felt isolated as a child and made up his own heroic alter ego, whom he had named Ludwig Dieter.
Gwendoline takes a liking to this name and ends up creating Sebastian’s passport using the name ‘Ludwig Dieter.’
When he ends up in America, Dieter names his shop after Gwendoline and is waiting for a chance to crack Wagner’s Götterdämmerung safe.
This gives Dieter’s character a whole new aspect as, before AotD, he had already cracked three of Wagner’s safes, so he knew a fair bit about them.
Now that we’re on the subject of Dieter’s identity, here’s a theory that suggests Dieter is someone else entirely. Twitter user @Uber_Kryptonian suggests that Dieter IS Wagner trapped in a time loop.
Check out the thread below to read more about the theory.
If Snyder really is exploring time loops, this assumption wouldn’t be too far off. Guess we’ll have to wait till AotD sequel, Planet of the Dead, comes out to find out how plausible this theory is.
Army of Thieves is now available for streaming on Netflix.
About Army of Thieves
Army of Thieves is an upcoming Netflix movie which serves as a prequel to Zack Snyder’s 2021 popular zombie apocalypse movie, Army of the Dead.
Matthias Schweighöfer acts as the lead character, Dieter, and is also the director of the movie. Zack Snyder is a part of the movie as its writer and executive producer.
The movie expands Snyder’s zombie franchise, and stars Nathalie Emmanuel, Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin, Guz Khan, Jonathan Cohen and Noémie Nakai.
Set during the near start of the apocalypse, the movie is revealed to have lesser zombies and more of heist. It focuses on Ludwig Dieter’s backstory as a famous safe-cracker and his team, which embarks on a heist at the initial stages of the zombie attack.
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