Getting those lives back will send Puss in Boots on his grandest quest yet. Academy Award® nominee Antonio Banderas returns as the voice of the notorious PiB as he embarks on an epic journey into the Black Forest to find the mythical Wishing Star and restore his lost lives.

The story skews much darker in “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” than it ever did in the scrappy, pop-culture-referencing “Shrek” films the title character sprang from, yet the visuals look like Puss took a Day-Glo Cheetos shower and then shot himself into the Spider-Verse.

Unlike the previous Puss in Boots movie, which served as a prequel to Puss as we meet him in Shrek 2, The Last Wish takes place after all of Puss' Shrek-related escapades, when he's on the last of his nine lives.

Looking like a fable itself, the animation emphasizes the story's core message; with Puss down to the last of his nine lives, he must learn to live in the present without fear. While this theme may seem surprisingly heavy, it never bogs down the film's short runtime.

Breaking news: According to Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, the director and co-director of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Shrek is alive within the story's timeline.

As it turns out, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is actually set approximately 10 years after the events of Shrek Forever After.

Death himself Whenever anyone talks about The Last Wish, there's a good chance that the first thing they'll bring up is the film's main antagonist: the mysterious wolf voiced by Wagner Moura, who is eventually revealed to be none other than Death himself.

Therefore, Shrek is ageless because his existence is eternal.

Rumpel reveals to Shrek that he took the day he was born, meaning Shrek never existed in this altered timeline. Consequently, Harold and Lillian were forced to sign the kingdom over to Rumpel, causing them to disappear. When the day ends, Shrek will cease to exist.

Chronologically, The Last Wish is the most recent in the Shrek canon, following the events of Shrek Forever After, which reset Shrek's attitudes toward a mundane life and marriage similar to It's a Wonderful Life. The theme in both movies is letting go of being a legend.

Death is based on the folkloric character of the Grim Reaper. Since the Grim Reaper/Death is normally portrayed as humanoid, it's possible that Death can shape-shift and specifically chose to take the form of a wolf, since the individual he is targeting, Puss in Boots, is a cat.

In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, a variation of The Big Bad Wolf appears as the personification of death, who wishes to kill Puss in Boots and remove his last life, as he believes he has wasted the others.