Twenty years after the death of gladiator Maximus, his son Lucius is captured in Carthage when it falls to the Romans. Trained as a gladiator...

Twenty years after the death of gladiator Maximus, his son Lucius is captured in Carthage when it falls to the Romans. Trained as a gladiator and brought back to fight in the Colosseum as an anonymous barbarian, Lucius quickly gains notoriety and becomes the center of a power struggle for the very fate of Rome.