Photo: Paramount Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending of Gladiator II. Does it qualify as a spoiler to report that Gladiator II ends with the flash and clang of steel? Of course not. Director Ridley Scott , like any emperor worth his weight in golden breastplates, knows that the crowd wants blood. And at the end of the belated sequel to his own Y2K sword-and-sandals phenomenon, he obliges with a climactic mano a mano between good and bad, respectively represented by Lucius (Paul Mescal), the