Headscratchers / Kingsman: The Secret Service

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The Dog

• Why is not shooting the dog considered disappointing? I mean, the dog was essentially raised as your comrade and companion. Isn't not shooting the dog evidence you won't betray your comrades?
  • It's a test of showing how far are you willing to go to complete the mission given to you. In this case, the 'mission' is to shoot your dog, a loving companion that's been at your side for a very long time. In the field, there will be a time when one must decide whether to complete the objective or saving your friend. Since obviously the only real choice would be the former, one needs to have a hardened mind to make such decision in a short notice as expected from a Kingsman (or any special force for that matter. Truth in Television.). To put it simply, it's not a matter of betraying your friend, it's about completing your mission no matter the cost, even if your best friends are among those very cost.
  • Is just seems odd that an organization like the Kingsmen, who clearly see themselves as the good guys and as gentlemen, would have a final test that is borrowed from the Nazi and boils down to "Am I willing to do something horrid simply because I am ordered to?"
  • Also, I think Arthur deliberately set the scene it so that Eggsy would be more likely to fail. The setup between his and Roxy's scenarios seemed to be very different in tone and setting.
  • While the Kingsmen do consider themselves good guys, they are still a spy organization, and sometimes Good Is Not Nice. Killing the dog is a test to show their loyalty to the organization, similar to how the previous test was to see whether they would rat out the organization.
  • Even were the gun loaded, there was a loophole that occurred to this troper while watching the film. "Shoot" the dog, the man said; not "KILL" the dog. Why not aim for a grazing wound to the rump that will heal in a week? So, do I pass the final test?
  • Because he couldn't even bring himself to hurt the dog. Remember earlier in the film when he crashes into another car to avoid hitting a fox?
  • Another interpretation: Remember how, in previous tests, the Kingsmen almost went out of their way to prove their respect for life? Merlin personally demonstrates that Eggsy's parachute was functional all along, and Galahad lets Eggsy watch Charlie failing his test, ensuring that Eggsy knows that even failures with dangerous information and a proven willingness to blab about it get saved from death. Anyone as intelligent as the Kingsmen candidates are implied to have to be (Galahad specifically mentions Eggsy's high IQ) wouldn't have found it too difficult to work out how that one apparent drowning could have been faked, and the agency did place a lot of emphasis on the importance of teamwork and looking out for each other. Maybe the solution isn't to be willing to shoot the dog, per se. Maybe the solution is to figure out that the gun is probably loaded with blanks. In other words, the solution is to be willing to trust the agency, without them needing to explain every little detail to you.
  • I still don't buy the answers given here. After the first test when one teammate "died" they were told they all failed because they failed at teamwork. When they were given the puppies they were told that the purpose of raising the puppies was to teach them teamwork. This then ends up culminating in a test where they're told that in order to be personally selected as a Kingsman they have to shoot their teammate? Given what they've been taught the correct answer at this stage should be to refuse to help only themselves by shooting their teammate puppy. Even if you say they're supposed to figure out that the gun wouldn't have live ammunition in it... what about the people who don't figure it out? I mean, more specifically, the people who don't figure it out but happily shoot the puppy anyway. The test selects for people who reason out that the gun is loaded with blanks as well as the people who are willing to shoot a teammate to further their own goals, and leaves behind the people that aren't willing to even risk a teammate just to get ahead. It just doesn't mesh well with their earlier lessons.
  • Think back to GoldenEye. James Bond and another 00 agent are on a mission, and the other agent is captured. Jimmy B is given the ultimatum to stop what he's doing and come out, or they'll kill his fellow agent and friend. Jimmy instead resets the bomb timers and effects his miraculous escape, leaving his fellow agent and friend behind, but completing the mission. That's what the Kingsmen expect you to do: if the choice is between completing the mission or saving your friend and partner with whom you've been through thick and thin, you complete the mission.
  • For me, I don't think they're supposed to figure out that the gun doesn't have real bullets. It's just a quick do-or-die scenario simulation that the Kingsmen gave to test whether the candidates are ready to make decisions that affects the lives of their teammates. Harry even explains later that 'Limits must be tested'. The test about trust and loyalty was already given in the previous one, where Eggsy, Roxy and Charlie got tied up onto a train track and a Kingsman-in-disguise threatens them to spill out information or die. Eggsy and Roxy passed because they remained defiant to the end, preferring to die than to betray their teammates, so they all passed the 'trust test' with flying colors. And in the end, for the one that passed the final test, it's a win-win situation for everyone. Look at Roxy's face after she got promoted to be the new Lancelot, she's all too cheery for someone who just got forced to shoot her own dog. Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realizes that she might saw with her own eyes that the the bullets were blank when her dog didn't die after she shot it, removing the trauma from her. And for the teamwork thing...maybe the Kingsmen aren't really that serious about it, given that most of the time each Kingsman operates alone...
  • My issue is that the movie had been heavily selling the idea that the Kingsma(e)n were cold agents who accepted death as a matter of course, from the first Lancelot caring more about the scotch than the people he just wasted, to Galahad's demeanor during the bar fight. It would make more sense to me for the flooded room to actually have killed a real candidate, for the gun to actually be loaded, and for there to be a disabled parachute. The entire movie up until that point was selling the idea that these were people who did dirty things to get a job done, then yanked that rug out entirely.
  • Killing enemy combatants does not mean they're willing to kill innocent teenagers who've done nothing to them. They're completely different situations. Galahad, you'll notice, deliberately does non-lethal attacks, even switching his umbrella gun to such, during the bar fight. The movie is consistent in that they don't kill needlessly — because they are gentlemen, remember.
  • Though that then goes back to the original conflict. Eggsy voices out that he interprets the situation as shooting a dog just to get a job and in that regard he's right. All the previous tests were played up like they were real life or death situations to get actual on-the-job reactions from the candidates, but the dog test is very clearly "Shoot an innocent because I said so". It's also unlikely that the intent was to figure out it was a trick because both his tester focuses only on the fact he had "no balls" and he's only even told there were blanks long after he was dismissed rather than on the spot like with the train test.
  • I fail to see how raising puppies is about teamwork. It seems to be more about your willingness to sacrifice someone you have bonded with, which is someone you would need to do in case your teammate goes rogue. The train test was about loyalty to the organisation. The parachute and the water chamber tests were about teamwork and thinking under pressure. Aside from Rufus, they all had succeeded the second test. The first test was a failure because they all had tried to save themselves instead of moving as a group, thus not seeing Amelia apparently having troubles and drowning, and no one moved to help Eggsy break the two-sided mirror.
  • Why is it that whenever one of the scenarios comes up in a movie or a book or something, NONE on these trained "professionals" ever thinks to check the weapon before pulling (or not) the trigger? I would think the only passing action would be to pop the magazine and check the chamber, just like any basic shooting class will teach you to do when handed a firearm.
  • Eggsy also pointed the gun at Arthur and made it seem like he was going to shoot him instead. Might have made a lot of a difference if he tried to shoot Arthur. Arthur was not pissed until he did that.
  • The real problem with the dog test is this - it's not, in fact, a life or death situation, and the person being tested knows it. This isn't about willingness to sacrifice comrades under necessary circumstances. If it was, then there would have been a scenario in which the recruit was put into a position where they had to decide between their dog or their mission. Like the train tracks fake-out. This was about obedience, plain and simple, and it's a terrible test because if they shoot the dog, then you are left with agents who are willing to sacrifice innocents to further their personal interests. Or agents who are blindly obedient to Kingsman. The first one will net you selfish people who will likely not do give their all to save others, and the second will net you the kind of yes-men who will drop the ball when it comes to independent thinking and strategy. They had a few options where it could have still worked. One would have been if it was not a common test, but rather one which Arthur had devised specifically to sabotage Eggsy. That goes out with Mr. Pickles. Another would have been if not killing the dog was success, because in that case, you've proven that you're not selfish. You won't sacrifice an innocent just to further your career. But not killing the dog is failure. The final option would be if Kingsman had, in fact, been a terrible organization that prized ruthlessness and obedience above all else - but the subsequent 'no one was actually hurt' scene establishes that they aren't. So, yeah. The test as it was handled, as the organization is depicted, and as the outcome was shown to be, doesn't work.
    • Even taking out the motivation of "not harming innocents" the Kingsman organisation ostensibly has this test still does not make sense. To wit: in a situation where you are confronted with the possibility of betrayal by an intimate comrade, the possibility of betrayal must in fact exist, and a dog cannot betray a mission or a comrade. A fairer test would be if a fellow inductee appeared to betray the Kingsman group. Then they could evaluate the inductees' choices with a fuller context of what is going into the decision. But to reiterate the point above: the test, as it is laid out (the killing of an innocent creature that could not possibly have compromised the organisation, its agents, or objectives,) is ridiculous and does not make any sense because of the type of individuals who would pass the test. No organisation made up of people who would shoot the dog would last very long due to the weaknesses inherent in such a personality type. Either they'd be ripped apart by selfishness or too many yes men would weaken the group to the point of ineffectiveness. TL;DR — the dog couldn't have possibly done anything and the people who are willing to shoot the dog are moral defectives. No sane organisation would select for those specific traits if they had self- preservation in mind.
  • I take a more straightforward interpretation: All the theories given here have some weight and the test is, indeed, a problematic one. Meaning that it makes sense for it to be the one test Eggsy takes from Arthur; as Arthur proved shortly afterwards, Kingsman is not made of incorruptible pure pureness and some of it is rotten and needs to change. Like Harry said at the beginning, new blood is needed; and that also means that some of Kingsman's traditions need to change or be dropped. This test is one of them.
  • There is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Lt. Cmdr. Troi is trying to pass the "bridge test". She keeps failing it until she gets a hint from her lover, Enterprise's XO. He tells her, that his first duty is to the ship. Not his friends. There are over one thousand people living on this city in space, which in case of danger means: the most capable person has to get rid of said danger, even if they die doing this.
    Which means, Troi needs to be able to send someone - even one of her best friends - to their certain death, if that means the ship can be saved. Same goes for Eggsy to become a Kingsmen agent.
    • There's a huge difference between sending somebody to die to protect even more people and killing somebody just to benefit yourself. If the Kingsman test is supposed to be similar to Troi's, it is doing a really bad job of it. It ends up selecting for the selfish rather than the selfless.
  • Maybe we've all got the wrong idea here. Maybe it's what it is, a test. If the recruit seems to relish in the idea of shooting their dog, by doing it too quickly, smiling while they do it, or anything that shows that they are ENJOYING the idea of shooting their dog, they fail. Because sometimes they will have to work as a team, and they don't want someone who'll just kill their team-mates by simply shooting them because it's the easiest option or because they like killing. Then again, if they don't do it, it shows an unwillingness to trust their leader, and a resistance to following orders, which could jeopardize entire missions. Sometimes they will have to trust their leader and do as they are told, even if they are not given all the information, and they will have to do so quickly rather than figuring it all out themselves. If they show a little hesitance, but pull the trigger at the dog, then that's what the Kingsman organization is looking for. Someone who will follow orders, although they don't necessarily want to kill anyone. Somehow who will trust the leader and their orders to be the right thing to do. So maybe it's not QUITE the idea of them shooting their dog, it's seeing how they react to the circumstance. It wouldn't be unthought-of of. In the first test, most of the recruits went for the toilets to get at the air in the U-bend. Which would give them air, yes, but it wouldn't solve the problem of the room being flooded. Eggsy, after trying the door, went to the two-way mirror and smashed it, freeing them all, which solved the problem, because they could get out of the flooded room. He was even told that he did good to recognize that the mirror was a two-way one. He likely did the best, because rather than stalling rather than dealing with the problem at hand, he figured out a way out. Who knows how long they would have spent sucking air out of a toilet's U-bend otherwise.

  • Here's another way of looking at it, they knew Eggsy wouldn't shoot the dog, so he in effect "failed", but shooting the dog was actually only part of the test. The real test was partly to see how he responds to failure, and whether or not he's able to recover from it or not. A way of seeing just how much he really wants to be a Kingsman.
    • Yeah. Most of these rationalizations don't hold water - the aesop of the film is that ends do not justify means, so it cannot be true that eggsy failed by not shooting the dog (else the kingsmen would be evil by the standards of the film). Therefore eggsy failed some other way. So try this: eggsy failed by not shooting ARTHUR in order to fulfill his original orders and protect his dog from Arthur. Presumably Roxy attempted to shoot her handler (we don't know who she was aiming at, we only heard the shot) and thus passed the test.

Ice Age Cycle

• Did Valentine ever hear of the theory of the whole Ice Age cycle thing? I mean, my highschool said that global warming is the first stage in a new Ice Age, by causing enough evaporation to make clouds that block out the sun, which in turn, cools down the planet. The only problem with global warming is that it's going too fast.
  • Well, he is a Misanthrope Supreme.
  • Most likely, no. It requires a tad of specific knowledge, which means it's not that known (let's be honest, how many do remember the science they learn in school?), also he is explicitly an over-the-top Bond villain, and as such having a plan that seems to have a logic of his own, but actually has no sense when you think a bit about it is just Fridge Brilliance for that role.
  • Forgive me for asking this because I'm not a science expert, but wouldn't clouds blocking out the sun and triggering a new Ice Age effectively killed humans slowly in a way? Valentine even says that at some point, the planet will develop its countermeasure to stabilize itself back to normal, even if it means rendering all lives on it to be perished.
  • Absolutely, but Valentine's plan had nothing to do with that. He just wanted to curb the human population, since our industry and infrastructure to support seven billion people is the chief contributing factor to global warming, and thus let the Earth slide back into equilibrium gently, instead of catastrophically (for us.)
  • The answer here is that he agrees with the overwhelming majority of scientists, that the cycle theory is just one of the straws denialists clutch at.
  • Basically what you seem to be getting wrong (or what your school seems to have taught you wrong) is the difference between long term and short term. Sure, long term we might be headed for the next ice age; ultra long term we're headed for the sun turning into a red giant. But were talking dozens or hundreds of millennia here. Global warming through human activity is a thing of decades or centuries. Global Carbon Dioxide levels used to be at 220 ppm (give or take). They're at 380 ppm and rapidly rising. That will have an effect. We just don't know how big that effect will be.
  • if the negative feedback loop you're hypothesizing existed there wouldn't be any ice ages. Unfortunately global temps have increased and cloud cover hasn't, so there is no such negative feedback loop.

Maintaining Planes with low staff

• I fail to understand how on Earth does Kingsman keep up with all of those planes and technology in their base with little to no other people handling the maintenance, data communications, the espionage, and all, even that intricate underground passage stuff. I mean, why is it that there are no other people (agents) other than our featured characters there. I mean, look, there are sure many extras hired there with the battle royale throughout the globe. Even that fundamentalist church has more people inside of it than those inside that base of the heroes. If Kingsman is that wealthy, that would mean a lot of vehicles, tech, and best of all, employees that roam around the base. Are the other Agents on a mission? Are they not alarmed about this? Who gets to manage their bases if there are literally just 3 remaining good guys as featured in the film? Could we just ignore them who were with Arthur in the table? In simplified terms, where are the other agents?
  • Maybe there ARE other agents there. When we first see the hangar, if you look closely you can see some people in the hangar doing their works. It's just that those people are not in the focus other than the main characters. Think of James Bond movies, MI6 has dozens of agents and people working inside it, right? But only M, Q, Moneypenny and a few others got prominent screentimes. Just because they're not there doesn't mean they don't exist. Remember Amelia? The girl that drowns in the first test? She's an agent in the Kingsmen's Berlin branch, and the HALO-jump test, two pilots are seen flying the plane to drop the candidates off, so obviously there are other agents. It's just that in the climax, the reason all three good guys go on alone is because they couldn't trust anyone, but if they manage to get the plane out of the hangar at all, it can only mean there is someone inside to open the hangar door. Also, the area that Merlin works might be off-limits to the official Kingsman field agents (aka those who has Arthurian codenames) so it makes sense that other employees aren't show up there.
  • Ok, yes I do but then the entire base, strictly that big house that housed the Kingsman group should have some other people other than the featured heroes walking around without being suspicious by public eyes (assuming that there are people around). At least four to six would be suffice since it isn't that of a stretch. I don't mind their tailoring house in the middle of the city as it should be as covert as possible anyway.
  • The same as above can also be applied to the Kingsman mansion: just because they aren't there doesn't mean they don't exist. It is a big house, after all, so maybe the other staffs are busy working somewhere else. The story just focuses on the Kingsman candidates and their tests. Judging by the standard of the Kingsman training, Merlin would've probably taken charge of the training all by himself without anyone else around, and assigned other staffs elsewhere away from the place where the candidates trained so they have to rely on themselves. Also, with the Kingsmen being a top secret intelligence agency, the less people know about their main HQ, the better. Take a look at Valentine's house, for example. The only people we saw on screen are Valentine himself, Gazelle, and his female assistant. Gazelle also did a lot of chores herself, serving foods and the like, even though it's established that Valentine has a lot of employees under him. The Kingsman Mansion is probably the same. Maybe it's just restricted to the highest level agents and candidates. And about public eye? No one really cares that the whole Wayne Manor consisted of only Bruce Wayne and Alfred. For all everyone knows, it's just a very big mansion on the London outskirts which is probably some special youth school with teens doing group exercise with their dogs every morning. As long as they keep the lethal training out of public sight, the Kingsman are doing just fine maintaining their secrecy.

Arresting Valentine

• Alright, so this films climax left me with a lot of questions. So right after Galahad is killed, Arthur tells Eggsy to relax, because they recorded Valentine's confession and were going to turn it over to the world leaders. I knew right there with that line that something was really wrong. First, there was the line from Galahad at the beginning about how the Kingsmen were created as an independent espionage agency that was above the politics of government. Second, they just spent a good part of the film establishing that Valentine was going to pretty much all of the world leaders and persuading them to go along with his plan, or holding them hostage until they would agree to it. So the world leaders that are still walking free already know the evil plan. What good is it going to do informing them of something that they already know, and agreed to be a part of? Worst of all, the Kingsmen all know this too. So what were the other ten agents doing during Eggsy's big climactic showdown in the mountain lair? Unless they were all, like Merlin suggested, on Arthur's side, in which case they are finished as an organization. Or at the very least, Eggsy, Roxy, and Merlin are no longer a part of it. So who is paying for that nice house at the end? I'm so confused right now.
  • Arthur was most likely lying about alerting the world leaders. He was a member of the fold, and he knew that anyone he might want to go to with the information also already knew. He was trying to throw Eggsy off. Merlin said all the other agents COULD be compromised, not that they were for sure. And even if they were, Merlin and the others still have access to all the gadgets and money. There's also more to the Kingsmen than those handful of operatives. They have the people who build all the machines, and the IT department, the people who forge fake identities, the medical staff... There's more than enough pieces left over for them to put back together.
  • It seems unlikely that any other Kingsmen are compromised, given the short amount of time between Valentine learning of the Kingsman organization and the climax. There are three open spots, but there are already two proven candidates. Even if some backers died in Valentine's scheme, most of the money and resources are probably still intact, so Kingsman can easily rebuild.

The Mole

• When exactly did Arthur become The Mole for Valentine? The main page implies or states in one entry that he was this all along, but had this been the case, Valentine would have already known about the Kingsmen and a great deal of the plot (his fishing for intel, his nano-bugging of Harry) would be pointless. I get the impression that Valentine traced Harry after their dinner, went to Savile Row, met Arthur for the first time, and convinced him to join his cause; then got fitted for a suit. Does this seem like the right sequence?
  • Yes, that sequence of events makes much more sense. Arthur likely would have at least attempted to throw both Lancelot and Harry off Valentine's trail if he'd known about the plan before Valentine's fitting. Plus, either Merlin or Harry probably would have recognized the implant scar on Arthur's neck after they reviewed Harry's footage of Professor Arnold's death. Since they don't raise the alarm, it's probably safe to assume that Arthur only became The Mole when Valentine visited the Kingsman shop in person. Otherwise, we'd also have to accept that either Arthur was wearing makeup over the scar for the entirety of the movie and sacrificed two of his agents for a wild goose chase, or at least two international super-spies (and one in training) somehow overlooked a detail that Eggsy noticed within seconds of meeting Arthur in the finale.
  • This is correct. Valentine didn't even know who the Kingsmen were, and spent a lot of time trying to find out, so obviously he didn't know Arthur at that point. He bugged Galahad, followed him to the tailors, and from there he met Arthur and turned him.

Harry's security

• How did Eggsy get into Harry's computer to see the stream of the church massacre? Is it a Fridge Brilliance throwback to earlier in the film, where Merlin and Arthur discuss how Harry's actual too secure, and how he needs to change that? If not, it seems odd that someone who was noted to be pretty good with their security doesn't put a password on their laptop, even if it's their home computer.
  • Harry shuts the laptop, but doesn't shut it down when he leaves and tells Eggsy to stay put. All Eggsy had to do was raise the screen and not let it go to sleep to be able to follow what was happening.
  • I actually thought Harry purposely left it on purposefully to have him watching the stream, they were just having a discussion about his failure, is likely that Harry wanted to show him what a real Kingsman was.

Both pass

• This is more of a 'what-if' than a question that requires an actual answer, but: what would have happened if both Roxy and Eggsy had passed the final test? Or if neither of them did? Would Arthur just have to pick one of the two candidates? If so, he'd definitely pick Roxy (seeing as he doesn't seem to care that much for Eggsy), and if that's the case, was failure the only option for Eggsy from the start? And what happens if neither of them can Shoot the Dog? It seems like a lot of effort to go through the whole selection process again.
  • If both passed, maybe a mission like the one we see at the beginning for the Lancelot slot would be in order.
  • This is actually a bit of Fridge Brilliance when you think about how the test was presented to each candidate. Arthur took Eggsy into a sitting room, started a casual conversation with him, and built up a rapport with him, luring him into a false sense of security. He then presented the pistol, and casually ordered Eggsy to shoot the dog. In contrast, Roxy was called into the room with Merlin, and ordered to shoot her dog. Nothing else was shown to be exchanged between Merlin and Roxy. Arthur stacked the deck against Eggsy by making his test a more emotional scenario by playing against his love for animals. However, this bit Arthur in the ass later when Eggsy plays against Arthur's more gentlemanly side by tricking him into looking away so Eggsy can switch the cups.
  • It's entirely possible that most of the tests we saw were for this exact purpose. IE: if during the first test (the room filling with water), all but two of the candidates had drowned, then maybe test #2 would be picking a puppy, and test #3 would be shooting said puppy. If both passed that test, they'd come up with something else, like the skydiving one. It's plausible that most of the tests the candidates went through, while developing and honing their skills, were also primarily meant to shrug off as much dead weight as they could. It's worth noting that no less than three members fail the skydiving test, after all, and once that's done with, the next test is the one that also ditches Charlie.

Mooks instead of AA

• Might be a minor Bond Villain Stupidity on Valentine's part or just the mooks' incompetence, but the scene in the climax where Eggsy went into the base again to stop Valentine, Merlin spotted a large group of mooks running toward the plane he is in, with an understandable Oh, Crap! look on his face, before seeing the very same mooks completely ignoring the plane and instead run into the base to pursue Eggsy, leaving a smaller group of mooks operating an anti-air missile turret with super-slow set up time to deal with Merlin a while later. This leaves Merlin and Eggsy with enough time to figure out that they could override the chips in the mooks' heads and save the day in the end. If the large group of mooks cared to take down Merlin's plane first (Merlin's the only one in the plane, there's no way he could've taken down all mooks present on his own, and it's not like taking down such a small plane would require an anti-air missile in the first place. A RPG would've suffice.), it will leave Eggsy with no support and no way to hack through Valentine's system, completely erasing any chance of victory for the Kingsmen, so why the heck didn't the mooks do that???
  • one, it's kind of dark inside the cockpit, so maybe they didn't actually see him. Second, they are dealing with people who have bulletproof umbrellas, it's pretty easy to assume they also have RPG-proof planes. They deliberately went for the big guns and didn't waste time on the target they couldn't hurt.
  • Considering the plane is Eggsy's only escape route should anything goes wrong, the plane should be a priority target for the mooks, with or without pilot. The large group of mooks that went after Eggsy into the base are only there to prevent him from escaping. The remaining guards inside the base are more than enough to trap him in the cell block, so there aren't any reason for the mooks outside to go into the base. Also, if the mooks thought there is no one else inside the plane, then why bother to destroy it with the anti-air missile at all? Even if there IS someone hidden inside, they could just stick some well-placed C4s on it instead of the complicated anti-air setup. (I assumed they have C4s with them because a Genre Savvy guy like Valentine should be prepared for anything and equipped his mooks appropriately. And even if the Kingsman plane is RPG-proofed, enough well-placed explosives will eventually blow it up.)
  • Considering that Eggsy is mopping the floor with every mook he comes across, ordering most of them to converge on him makes a fair amount of sense. And don't forget the reason why Eggsy is rampaging through the base in the first place: He's trying to stop Valentine's plan from coming to fruition. They're not trying to keep him from escaping, they're trying to make sure that he doesn't get to Valentine. Stopping Eggsy from getting to Valentine is the highest priority, destroying his escape is a secondary concern. As for the C4 idea, they may not actually have C4, or at least not have it on them at that moment. And for all they know, the outer hull of the plane could have tons of countermeasures to deal with anyone who touches the fusalage. Besides, considering the amount of C4 you'd likely need on the plane (especially if you want to ensure that anyone inside would be killed), an AA missile would probably be more efficient.
  • The Mooks' priorities make sense to me. 1.) Eggsy is taking down pretty much every guard on his way back to Valentine, so the most important task is to stop him from reaching their boss before Eggsy kills him. Blowing up the plane doesn't mean anything if Valentine's dead. 2.) If Eggsy turns back around and manages to get past the small army that followed him in, they need to get rid of the plane. So they destroy with the nearest, fastest, and most effective weaponry. The AA missiles are right down the runway, and fit all of those requirements. Also, if I recall correctly, neither the mooks nor Valentine know that Merlin's in the system until he activates the implants. It made sense (at the time) to go for what they thought was the more immediate threat first. They also go after the plane shortly after sending that huge group after Eggsy, which means they weren't ignoring the plane, exactly: they were just dealing with what seemed to be the bigger issue first.
  • Okay, I think I got it now. I was just confused to why the mooks didn't just destroy the plane the first time because the camera works in the movie itself suggested they were going to attack the plane. Merlin looks out the windshield and the camera zooms out to show a large group of mooks running toward the plane, suggesting they are going to attack (Merlin's panicked face helped, too), so when the later scene shows the mooks diverting and going into the base instead, it was kind of a letdown.
  • Another thing to consider - the mooks are carrying 9mm MP5K submachineguns and 5.56mm SCAR-L rifles. World War 2 dogfights demonstrated that .50 caliber heavy machine gun rounds, which are an order of magnitude larger than 9mm and 5.56mm rounds, were not sufficient to bring down aircraft ^note which is why by the end of the war almost everyone was moving to 20mm autocannon, and modern aircraft cannon rounds carry a mix of armor piercing, high explosive, or semi armor piercing high explosive sells. So rather than fire ineffectually at an aircraft, they call in the big guns. It's worth noting that during Operation Nifty Package, the Navy SEALs assigned to disable Manuel Noriega's airplane blew it up with a rocket launcher.
  • The only way the mooks could have taken out the plan would be to board it, through the small gangway where they can only come one at a time, and they have no idea who might be in the plane or how heavily armed they are. We know Merlin couldn't have fought them all off, but they didn't. And even if they had a reasonable belief that they could take out whoever was in the plane in a Zerg Rush, that would still be a lot of dead mooks. Instead, they fetch the anti-aircraft missiles, and get ready to destroy the plane and everyone on it with no risk to them (since they also had no way of knowing Merlin was in their computer, hacking their implants.)

Switching

• How is Arthur the head of a spy agency and fails to notice the cups being switched right next to him, even if he's briefly turned away? It was justified by Eggsy's low-class upbringing working to his advantage, but by that logic Galahad wouldn't have noticed him trying to steal something from the armory, which he did. Old age? A lack of mentor intuition that Harry has? He could just be underestimating Eggsy but he didn't seem surprised when the latter figured out he was under Valentine's control almost immediately after sitting down.
  • Harry got Eggsy out of jail for stealing a guy's car. Eggsy freely admits to Harry, if jokingly, that the only time he knocks is if he's casing a joint to rob. Not only does Harry know well of Eggsy's light fingers at the point where he steals the hand grenade, but Harry's also Genre Savvy enough to figure that he'd take something after that slight misdirection. In contrast, Arthur had barely interacted with Eggsy, and isn't Genre Savvy at all. This is a guy who actually tries a Join or Die on the protagonist, after all. Furthermore, Arthur didn't know that Harry had showed Eggsy the poison pen, so he would have no reason, initially, to think Eggsy would want to switch the glasses. Eggsy admitting to recognizing the pen should have been a huge red flag, but at that point Arthur had already ingested the poison, and seemed too focused on killing Eggsy to retrace the steps of the conversation with that new information in mind. No matter what he thought of Eggsy's deduction/spy skills, Arthur still thought himself superior. In the end, that overconfidence blinds him at the worst (or best, for Eggsy) possible time.
  • It's simpler than that. You simply can't be "on" indefinitely. Arthur was in a position of power, and was still Eggsy's "ally." He didn't know that Eggsy saw the scar, and therefore had no reason to suspect that Eggsy was already moving against him. Eggsy's question was well delivered, and appropriate for the situation. In short, his guard was down.
  • Eggsy says a lot of things that are impressively convincing, too. "You click that pen, I die." Dryly commenting "I thought it tasted a bit shit." Claiming that he'd rather join Harry in the afterlife than be complicit in Valentine's plot. All painting a picture of angry but toothless defiance rather than actively daring Arthur to do it.
  • It was just to show how Arthur is head of Kingsman but not really that good of an agent, it's even more obvious in the comic, where Eggsy doesn't do it on purpose, but because he was trained to switch glasses as a matter of course, something Arthur should've known.

Security of henchmen

• Valentine's plan is rather brilliant... up until Merlin hacks the security overrides and blows up every single chipped person, including his own henchmen. Sure, Valentine didn't put a chip in his own head, but why did he keep the security overrides up until after the plan was initiated? Shouldn't, after a certain point, especially six hours before the plan is to go off, it be impossible for anyone to stop him that isn't a clandestine intelligence agency that answers to no government? Why keep the secret security overrides active, and, even more importantly, not keep those tied to his biometrics as well? Keeping the people you want alive alive should be just as important as broadcasting the signal to kill the people you don't want alive, right?
  • He thought he already won, perhaps. For all he know, he successfully killed Harry, who was also probably the best Kingsman agent left and the most dangerous threat, and turned Arthur to his own cause. He thought there's no one left to threaten him and his VIP friends so he let his guard down. He didn't even know Eggsy is a candidate to be a Kingsman until Charlie exposed him when he infiltrated his base. It was not until then that Valentine recognized Eggsy, and by then it's a Xanatos Speed Chess between Valentine and Eggsy. And Valentine might possibly forget to turn off the security override for his VIPs and just focusing on completing his master plan to wipe out other humans.
  • There's also the fact that the explosive is hard-wired to the actual chip, which Merlin points out to Eggsy when they examine it on the plane. Even if Valentine had disabled the main security program (purely a software solution), Merlin's hacking could have just re-activated it, and then set it off.
  • Why disable the security? He has the power to kill anyone at will, something that could be very interesting once all the people without chips are dead or in his jail. He effectively makes himself the most powerful dictator. Do anything to upset him? Die!
  • The chips need to be active, now more than ever, to protect them from the Hate Virus. Also, why bother taking the time to deactivate/deprogram the kill-switch now, when there's so much other stuff that needs to be done and - as far as he knows - there's no reason to?
  • The biometrics part seems to be Hand Waved: when he makes the Hate Plague switch, it causes a lot of pain. For the test run at the hate church, he says a regular switch will do just fine, rather than go through that again. Apparently he felt that upgrading the pre-existing implant chip controls to biometric also wasn't worth it.
  • The kill switches become more important after the apocalypse, not less. After all the greatest threat to any emperor is his praetorian guard.

Armor

• The Kingsman Secret Service can make stylish, comfortable, tailored suits that can stop knives, bullets, and Gazelle's foot-blades (which can effortlessly slice through metal) but can't come up with combat gear that protects against grenade shrapnel?
  • It depends on the exact nature of the shrapnel. Different grades of body armor protect against different grades of threat. The way a stab vest is designed means it can't stop bullets, and vice versa for a bulletproof vest, even though both are made from Kevlar. Military-grade body armor can stop bullets, knives and shrapnel, but that's because military body armor includes hard ceramic insert plates which police vests lack. And if it's the lighter hand grenade you're referring to, it's possibly more of a thermobaric effect weapon, which body armor doesn't really do much to protect against.
  • Also, shrapnel isn't the only harmful part of a grenade. The sheer pressure of the explosion is enough to kill at close range — that would've killed Eggsy's father even if his vest had stopped all the shrapnel harmlessly.
  • Furthermore, body armor only protects the torso - the shrapnel could have killed everyone by wounds to the limbs or their unprotected heads.
  • The pressure death makes a good deal of sense. His body looked pretty intact (though ratings affect serious gore) with little blood. I reckon the armor actually was tough enough to absorb the shrapnel, but the actual explosion did him in.

Fake Background and dinner

• During the scene where Harry, using a fake background, joins Valentine in the dinner, it's pretty much a given that Valentine knows who Harry really is when he asks 'Do you like spy movies?', and the following discussions turns quite serious for both sides in contrast of the earlier casual McDonald's and wine chat. The question is, Harry doesn't really seem so concern about the fact that his cover's already blown, and proceeds to finish the dinner and go back to his HQ like nothing happened. Really? He should've asked Merlin to check whether Valentine secretly placed any tracing device or the like on him (which he really did). Even later when Harry discovers that Valentine, along with Gazelle, show up right at the Kingsman front door at the suit shop. and another serious discussion take place. It's pretty much clear that he's compromised, and yet he plays along and travels to the hate church to track Valentine, fully knowing that it's got to be a trap. And it gets him killed. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero?
  • Because Harry already knew that Valentine was going to play on his nerves. Hence his looks of discomfort when Gazelle raises her blades up at him and the hesitation before thanking him for a "happy meal". In addition, he was getting the whole encounter on video, so Merlin could review it and take into account what measures would be necessary to get to the bottom of Valentine's plan.
  • Maybe. This movie is kind of a homage to James Bond, anyway, so No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine is in works, but that still doesn't change the fact that Harry doesn't suspect Valentine might has some trick up his sleeves once his cover his blown. The tracing thing that Valentine put in Harry's drink brings him to the Kingsman and he manages to convince Arthur to his cause because of it. If Harry has Merlin checks him up first, maybe the tracing substance would be found and foils Valentine's plan. And the mission to the church, I'll admit it leads to arguably the most awesome action scene of the film, but what was Harry thinking sitting in the middle of that church anyway? His distinctive Kingsman suit and glasses is a major giveaway for Valentine, so when he gets up to leave when he realizes he's about to fall into a trap, it's Valentine's cue to trigger the his weapon.
  • My guess is that Harry figured he could get through anything Valentine sprung at him. The church - and the possibility of discovering the exact nature of Valentine's weapon - was just too good a lead to pass up. If he hadn't been so unnerved at having killed so many people, Harry might still have survived the trap and ended the threat right then and there.
  • Nobody seems especially good about checking themselves for tracking devices in this film. Harry outright suggests a hatter's to Valentine, and Valentine goes over and buys a hat from them, without seeming to even consider the idea that it might be bugged by the top secret agent who suggested he buy it! My assumption, ultimately, was that Valentine's own ego and self-styled Bond villain persona prevented him from suspecting the bug, as due to the nature of his conversation with Harry (the gentlemen hero and the villain discuss things of taste and class while subtly acknowledging each other for what they are), he figured Harry was just giving him a legitimate tip on a hat. Then, given that the Kingsman are familiar with that type of bug, I figured Harry probably gave himself a pat down after leaving Valentine's place, but didn't consider that Valentine might have an internal tracker on him because the Kingsman don't seem to have that kind of technology. They do have the delayed poison pen, but nothing like a tracking device that you can ingest, so Valentine just has tech that's a bit more cutting edge and the Kingsman didn't expect it.
  • Strange, I thought it was the opposite that happened. Valentine, being as cunning a villain as he is, already knew Harry is a spy from since the dinner, and plans to lure him to the church where he tests his weaponized SIM cards, so he plays along and grabs the bugged hat and mockingly speaks out loud on the plane that blatantly shows he's going to do something at the hate church in USA so Harry can follow him there (He told Gazelle that he keeps every detail of his plan inside his journal, saying no one can hack papers, so obviously he knew someone is listening). He knows that a gentleman spy like Harry would treat obvious traps as challenges, and take advantage of it. Harry, being a James Bond expy, inevitably goes bluntly to the church which proves to be his undoing. In fact, if most Kingsmen in the movie hadn't been so overconfident and operated with more...discretion, the movie wouldn't have gone pass the first act. (The first Lancelot pulled a one man rescue of Arnold and got himself killed because he was too busy acting so cool in front of Professor Arnold and let his guard down, Eggsy's dad died because Harry didn't notice the bomb (he even commented that how the hell did he miss it), Harry didn't suspect that Valentine might has some trick up his sleeves once he knows that he's compromised, etc.)
  • Interesting. I never got the impression that Valentine knew he was bugged the whole time, but that does make a lot of sense. I figured the whole incident was a lapse in his genre-savviness due to giving in to the Bond fantasy, but if he planned on being bugged then that puts him back to consistency. It also explains why Harry didn't bother to disguise himself at all when he visited the church, which I thought was nearly inexcusable on his part but put down to Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny. He wasn't trying to be inconspicuous, he was waving a red flag in front of Valentine's face, saying come and get me, because we both know why I'm here. He figured he could survive anything Valentine threw at him, and if not, was willing to lay down his life if it would give the Kingsmen intel enough to save the world. And he was right, more or less – he did survive what happened in the church, and he did get enough information to help the Kingsmen out. Valentine even underestimated him to some extent, as he assumed the church would kill Harry outright, so he went ahead and activated his evil plan, instead of just dumping Sarin into the church or something and then trying his experiment somewhere else. But he at least had a backup plan. I still stand by my original statement though, that Harry would have been clever enough to check himself for bugs and trackers after he left the dinner, especially considering that he did miss that grenade seventeen years ago and how strongly that affected him. He wouldn't be stupid enough to miss something else like that, but he simply didn't have knowledge of Valentine's superior tech, and even if he did consider that Valentine might have some other trick up his sleeve, he wouldn't have had any idea what that trick was or what to do about it, so he probably decided to operate as normal and see what other activity on Valentine's part he could draw out.
  • Maybe. Murphy's Law is in full effect for both Harry and Valentine. Anything that can go wrong did go wrong for them. Valentine's just luckier he has a better back up plan. (Not that it saved him in the end anyway...) The only thing that still bugged me, though, is that we never really see the Kingsmen operate in the field as a full team apart from in the opening and in the ending. (And even in the ending, it's mostly centered on Eggsy) I mean, the Kingsmen put a lot of emphasis on teamwork during the candidates training, yet most of the time we see only one Kingsman (Harry, the first Lancelot) operating alone in the field at a time. Full details are down below in the Teamwork folder. I really want to discuss about this...
    • Agreed. Both men got careless. Harry didn't know that Valentine suspected him to be more than an environmentally-conscious billionaire. He certainly didn't expect to drink a nano-tracker. As for Valentine, he's aware that Harry is part of some sort of intelligence agency, but even when they meet at the tailor's he probably isn't aware of just how much the Kingsmen know. Consensus is that he'd met with Arthur before getting fitted for his suit, however his conversation most likely centred around his plan, rather than everything the Kingsmen knew. So while he knows Harry knows who he is, he doesn't believe that Harry knows, so he feels happy taking the hatmaker recommendation at face value. His conversations don't appear to be conducted with consideration for a nearby bug. Also, the church doesn't appear to be a trap - Valentine is clearly surprised when he spots Harry. Harry likely leaves the church after spotting the cameras because he's realised that whatever Valentine's plan is, he'll be observing remotely rather than showing up in person.

Trademark favorite food

• Why did Valentine seem so fond of McDonald's food? To be honest I would imagine he would really dislike the chain for their reputation of accelerating deforestation for cattle farms in South America.
  • Watsonian explanation: I think the key word there is "seems." Valentine knows Harry is a secret agent, and is constantly trying to throw him off. The whole dinner scene has been planned by Valentine to try to get Harry to give himself away, but Harry steadfastly sticks to his cover, and doesn't even bat an eye at the options during dinner (and even suggests an alternative fast food/wine paring).
  • Doylist explanation: I'm not sure a lot of people are aware of the reputation you mention (remember, Viewers Are Morons). Thus, a character would have to mention it, which would make McDonalds pull their support for the product placement, and they would have to come up with some other fast food chain.
  • Maybe he just really likes McDonalds food. It's possible to dislike a business but still use their products. Samuel L. Jackson is a tool, but that won't stop me from seeing his movies because he's a great actor.
  • Because McDonalds paid a fair sum for Product Placement in the movie and simply showing a store for a millisecond in the background won't suffice.
  • Remember, Valentine hates the sight of blood. If he wants to eat meat, he probably has to go for meat that's as far removed from the animal it came from as possible. And it's hard to get more artificial than McDonalds.
    • The red liquid present in rare meat is actually not blood, even if the meat is not slaughtered kosher. The fear of blood not being rational, that might however not matter to someone who can't stand the look of blood.

Valentine and politics

• Valentine says that he found trying to combat climate change through politics futile because elected officials were always more concerned about the next election than what would be the state of the world decades in the future. But in the actual movie, he has little problem getting loads and loads of high-level politicians including heads of state and prime ministers to agree with his plan to combat global warming through genocide. So, uh, what?
  • Other methods to fix the climate change problems can take a very long time, and might actually do more harm than good because of all the other unpredictable factors (protests, finances, politics, etc.) that (most) politicians don't want to care. The genocide method that Valentine proposed is a quicker and much more effective way to combat the problem itself. (Just let humans kill each other and destroy much of the civilization while they just sit and wait) I'll just assume that those politicians just want the problem gone as fast as possible, as well as getting rid of those pesky civilians who always protest just about everything in their political careers. And remember what happened to those politicians and royals who don't agree with Valentine's plan. He kept them locked up in his base in order to force them to help rebuild the world later, all against their will. Frankly speaking, it's either because the politicians had no choice, or they just had enough of the world and want to play God and reset everything.
  • If we take the Swedish princess as an example then your idea about having no choice seems to be the right one. It seems the choice is either go along with genocide or be a part of the genocided. It's almost surprising any of the leaders said no.
  • Once Valentine's SIM cards have done their thing, most of the world's population, including most of the rivals of Valentine's 'friends' will be gone. Those in Valentine's bunker will be the only ones left to pick up the pieces. They'll be saviours with no fear of losing their power.
  • Their only fear is what their implants will do if they double-cross Valentine. No wonder he trusts them.
  • probably best to take it as an aesop about how consequentialist logic ("kill people to save the world") tends to really be pretext for pettier motives - in this case, Valentine's desire to play bond villain. After all with all those resources and politicians there would have been easier ways to kick off the apocalypse.

Teamwork

• This might be a silly question to ask, but the Kingsmen really do put emphasis on teamwork during the candidates' tests, right? That would make a lot of sense if not for the fact that only one candidate will be chosen to be an official spy (and he/she has to work with other senior agents they're not familiar with except for the one agent that bought them in for training in the first place) and the rest are either dead (Okay, not really) or disqualified, and the full-time Kingsmen are only seen to be operating alone in the field anyway (with only a Mission Control courtesy of Merlin at best). The only times where the Kingsmen are seen to be operating as a team is in the opening (where two of them are still candidates competing for a position in the Kingsmen, and Lancelot got lucky because Eggsy's dad sacrificed himself) and in the finale, where Merlin, Eggsy and Roxy all have different roles in stopping Valentine's plan, and yet the person who did mostly all the work is only Eggsy. It is kinda justified that Roxy was too far to help and Merlin had to do his job as the mission control, but what irks me is the reason they couldn't bring any other Kingsmen along because they couldn't know who they can trust. Then what was the point of the 'teamwork' stuff during training anyway if they can't fully work as a team??? I was kinda half-expecting of seeing all those other 'failed' candidates (Minus Charlie, of course) showed up to help the team in the finale, demonstrating efficient teamwork with Eggsy despite their difference of low-high classes or something like that. That'll make for a much more awesome finale.
  • They did in the comic. Eggsy realises that he doesn't know who he can trust, so he goes right for the people lowest on the totem pole (i.e., the other candidates for the job) and they work together to beat the bad guy.
  • Not a silly question at all, but I think the film gives us some hints as to why we don't see the Kingsmen behaving much like a team in the film. Choosing only the one candidate is a Kingsmen tradition, and their being steeped in tradition is a major plot point – one of the Kingsmen flaws that Harry is trying to push against. Although I don't think it's too much of a concern that the candidate would not have worked with the senior agents – it's not like they won't have time to do so after joining the team. In fact, since the cock up seventeen years ago, maybe the Kingsmen decided it was a bad idea to bring the candidates on legit missions like that until they had passed every test and become a full agent. Lancelot is shown working alone near the beginning, but he seemed to be on a surveillance mission more than anything, which the Kingsmen probably wouldn't consider especially dangerous. It's only when he notices Professor Arnold's kidnapping that he decides to go in alone for the rescue, and I got the impression that when Harry reported it to Arthur that he (Harry) disapproved slightly of the approach. Then when Harry goes to the church, he goes alone, but as Harry was the only Kingsman Valentine had had contact with before, it's possible he didn't want to risk Valentine identifying other agents (remember, Valentine had visited the tailor shop, but as far as Harry knew, he'd only actually seen Harry and Eggsy), and if he knew it was a trap, he might not have wanted to scare Valentine off with multiple Kingsmen and instead make him feel secure enough to reveal something with only one. If there had been eight of them there, Valentine might have just pulled out and rescheduled, without giving the Kingsmen any hint as to where next time. A bit foolhardy, certainly, but another Kingsmen flaw does seem to be a bit of overconfidence (though not without reason) and even Harry is not immune. Also by that point, Arthur was in Valentine's pocket, so the mission was intended to kill Harry. As for the climax, I have no quibble with the idea that it would have been cool to see all of the former candidates teaming up, but I don't think the climax of the film was poor or badly explained. From a Doylist perspective, Eggsy was set up as the main protagonist of the film, so giving him the meat of the action was the film's way of Eggsy proving himself worthy of the Kingsmen (to Merlin) and just getting to be awesome. From a Wastonian viewpoint, I also don't think that the decision not to involve the rest of the Kingsmen was necessarily out of hand. Arthur was in on Valentine's plan, and he was willing to murder both Harry and Eggsy over it. I'd imagine that that betrayal shook Merlin to the core, and not only do they not know who else might have been compromised, but taking the time to try to figure it out would have been too much of a risk. Every single person they're concerned might be traitorous is an unstoppable badass with essentially the same resources the good guys have. Trying to ascertain whether or not they could be trusted would be playing with fire if one of more of them did turn out to be evil, and Eggsy took a risk even in going to Merlin. As to why they didn't get the other ex-candidates involved, I'd say that was also time and too much of a risk – after all, Charlie turned out to be at Valentine's secret base, and the others were all from upper crust families, which, judging by the film, where those most at risk to be on Valentine's side. Also, none of the other candidates had completed the full training, and if he'd had any other option, Merlin probably wouldn't have risked putting his two greenest agents into the field like that with so little support. I also only remember "teamwork" being mentioned twice during the course of their training – the "seduction" mission started out actually pitting the candidates against each other – and it might have also been that they wanted the candidates to know how to work as a team as well as alone, and particularly emphasised it because they were training in a group and wanted the candidates to know that they could trust and rely on the other Kingsmen when they joined, so that they would be able to work with them fairly well from the get-go and not get themselves killed with a Leeroy Jenkins because they assumed that they were now ultimate badasses and could defeat anybody who came near them. Yes, the senior agents have this kind of confidence, but that's because they're senior agents with years and years of experience, which the new candidate won't have. And as noted in the dog folder on this page, the idea of getting them to trust others might also tie-in with one possible interpretation of the "shoot the dog" decree – if they instill in their candidates the idea that they can trust those they work with, the candidate should trust the agency and do it. Especially since all of the other times they thought the agency was dooming them it wasn't, so it's the idea that "things aren't always as they seem" and ultimately the agency will always have their back. Which makes it especially twisted that one of their leaders defected... Anyway, that's what I've got.
  • Yeah, I guess it's probably like what you said. It's just that I don't really know why the Kingsmen would want only one candidate per training, anyway. Granted, anyone that even managed to pass all the tests is automatically a qualified Badass and has no problem working alone, but they could've just easily put the other failed candidates in other positions and not just kick them off the program immediately. That way, it'll be a more efficient way to expand the organization and give a sense of belonging to its members (working with friends or people you're familiar with tends to work better as a team). One of the reasons the final battle at the climax worked despite the Kingsmen being heavily outnumbered and outgunned is because its three members all know each other well, leading to them doing everything efficiently, despite not all of them gets to join in the action itself. If there's a sequel, I'd love to see the Kingsmen finally operate as a team and not just focused on the main character. Maybe not only introducing the field agents themselves, but other employees in other roles like a tech genius similar to Merlin, an Ace Pilot or a minor officer like Amelia, and how they contributed to the organization.
  • Well, as I said, the choosing of one candidate is a Kingsman tradition, and they've got a bit of a flaw there. Honestly, before Eggsy failed his final test and Harry was murdered, leaving the position of Galahad neatly available for Eggsy, I assumed that both Roxy and Eggsy were going to pass every test, and that Galahad was going to lobby to allow both of them to join. Arthur would say no, Eggsy would prove himself worthy and get to join as an agent with a new title, etc. That didn't happen, of course, but it would be interesting to see if they mix it up in the sequel by following Harry's more progressive ideals and adapting the agency to the changing times by getting more field agents from different backgrounds and such. Although admittedly, the crazy rigorous testing our heroes went through were specifically for the job of field agent, not anything else. While it's not like the Kingsmen should necessarily turn down all of the field agent candidates, this is the toughest job in the entire organization. Field agents are definitely intended to be the elite, and there are probably few people badass enough to pass all the tests. We didn't see all of the candidates' training, naturally, but it's reasonable that for such a high, dangerous position, the Kingsmen were going to make damn sure that their agents are ready for anything. Even Charlie, who almost made it to the final round, turned out to have a serious flaw. It might be rather unusual to end up with two people who both truly qualify for the job, given how hard it is. Also, we don't know what happened with the other candidates after they left. Maybe the Kingsmen sent them home for failing the field agent bit, but then contacted them later about other jobs they might qualify for. But you're right, the three working together at the end knowing each other did undoubtedly help them, and maybe the organisation will learn from that. Although again, I would expect the Kingsmen to usually send a fresh new agent on slightly less dangerous missions in the beginning to get them well used to working with their teammates before throwing them into the really crazy shit like assaulting a supervillain's base! It's just that at the end of the movie, they didn't have any other options.
  • Agreed, and seeing that Arthur is already dead, I wondered who's going to take up the position as well. Since Eggsy inherited the Galahad position from Harry and Roxy is already Lancelot, they're going to need a new member to become Arthur if none of the other original Kingsmen or Merlin takes up the position. And seeing that Arthur is the position for the freakin' leader of the Kingsmen itself, they're going to need only the best of the best, so maybe the extreme training condition for a solo winner is justified. Still, I stand by my statement that if there is a sequel, we'll get to see more of the organization aside from the field agents themselves. An organization as big as this and still maintained its secrecy's gonna need more than a dozen people to manage itself.
  • True, but those people are implied, and this movie at least wasn't about them – it was about the field agents and Merlin. Having too many characters is going to muddy the waters of a narrative, so when we watch something like James Bond or The Man from U.N.C.L.E., we only get some hints as to the organisation as a whole before we follow the main character(s) out the door and spend most of our time with them. The sequel may expand upon the organisation as a whole, but it's probably not going to dig too deep. Personally though, I would imagine that if Harry does come back, because there is a rumour about Colin Firth returning for a sequel (although I don't know in what capacity), that he would become the new Arthur, since he seemed to be a very trusted, senior agent and Eggsy has already taken over for him as Galahad. Of course, they're probably going to choose somebody else before that. I really doubt they'd bring in a newbie for that, though – I imagine they'd promote one of the senior agents and then train somebody to take his place.
  • Yeah, I don't think they'll just choose a newbie to become Arthur. Maybe Percival will take up the role? He's the only other original Kingsmen we saw in a flesh other than Galahad, Lancelot and Arthur, and he's also Roxy's mentor. Hopefully, if he returns to the sequel he'll take up Arthur's rank, just before Harry revealed his comeback (also hopefully) and becomes the new Arthur. Also, when I mentioned that we would like to see more of the organization, I don't mean expand the story to other employees and loosen the focus on the main character, but just add supporting characters that makes the Kingsmen organization more interesting, like Q, Moneypenny did for MI6 in James Bond movies, something like that. They're not field agents themselves, but they make James Bond's life more interesting. Of course, we already kinda got a Q in form of Merlin, but maybe there's another tech genius somewhere inside Kingsmen to make all of those cool gadgets. (There's been no mention that who made those bullet-proof umbrellas, poisoned shoes or exploding lighters, so maybe it's not Merlin and someone else.)

Hand on the button

• Why did Valentine keep his hand on the thing? Throughout the film he's just characterised as a Well-Intentioned Extremist with extra emphasis on the "extreme" and doesn't seem to be interest in doing anything just For the Evulz. When Merlin explodes the heads of everyone that was on board with Valentine's plan there doesn't seem to be much legitimate point left in keeping the signal going. If he succeeds then everybody's dead except for Valentine, Gazelle, and whatever unwilling captives he's holding. That doesn't really seem to be enough to keep things going after everyone else is dead—he'd just be accelerating the extinction of the human virus—so it just comes across as him killing everyone for spite or For the Evulz, neither of which really seems to be in-character. One would think, if anything, he'd rather aim to escape, hide out, and try again another day.
  • He's having a Villainous Breakdown. All his friends except Gazelle are dead, and there's no way for him to escape the base anyway. (To escape means Valentine must go to the hangar, which is the direction Eggsy is coming for him and Merlin's plane is already on the runway.) Even if Gazelle can take down both Eggsy and Merlin, Roxy's still alive and she can inform the rest of the Kingsmen to track down Valentine (because by this time, even if there's any Kingsman other than Arthur that turned to Valentine's cause, they're all dead). He just simply decided to screw it all and continue his plan out of spite, because this is his only chance left.
  • Remember, there are also the locked-up politicians who did not agree to the plan and therefore do not have a chip. Maybe he wanted to rely on them to "rebuild" the world afterwards, if not in terms of cooperation, because they have no other choice.
• Why did he NEED to keep his hand on the button? The whole movie he makes it clear that he's well aware of old spy movies and doesn't want to do stupid things like monologue his plans or make an elaborate death trap that can be escaped from but in the end his plan fails because instead of just needing to switch the signal on, he has it so the signal needs to be continuously held on otherwise it turns off automatically.
  • In what possible way does the violence engine sound like the kind of thing that you want to let function without anyone watching it? Valentine himself says that he doesn't want anyone other than himself to be able to activate the main machine.
  • Valentine is obsessed with control. It makes sense for him to set it up so that it only works for him for precisely however long he wants it to work for.
  • I saw this as being intentionally Opposite the Spy Movie Villain cliché of the death trap; those villains are invariably done in by the fact that they've left the death trap running and hope the hero remains in its clutches... only to find the hero escaped because the trap was unattended
  • How long is he intending to sit there with his hand on the button anyway? It would be prudent to allow quite a bit of time for the Hate Plague to kill off the bulk of the world's population so how long would that be? A couple of days? What about when he wants to sleep? Or go to the toilet?
  • That sounds like a great time to pause the Hate Plague, take a look outside, and see what progress has been made. If the population is low enough, great, job's done. If not, the world gets a ten minute reprieve while he's in the bathroom.

Gazelle's implant

• Gazelle was shown to have the same implant as the rest of the people in Valentine's conspiracy (she's seen with an implant scar in some news footage). Why didn't her head explode?
  • When exactly in the news footage? I don't remember. There's a woman in Valentine's employee that has the implant scar. She shows up in the news when Valentine announced his free SIM cards, at Valentine's house when Harry infiltrated it, and at Valentine's mountain base greeting all the guests. She's quite similar to Gazelle when one look at first glance. But even if Gazelle did in fact has an implant inside her, maybe Valentine cared for her enough that her implant's not like the others and cannot explode.
  • It makes perfect sense when you think about: the explosive implants were only in case anyone tried to talk. Valentine had no need for that with Gazelle because she's the one person he fully trusts.

Rich and famous survivors

• Everyone that Valentine chose to spare was among the rich and famous. Who exactly was supposed to handle all the infrastructure of the world once Valentine killed everyone who wasn't locked in a bunker?
  • Remember that Valentine has total control over who lives or dies. He just needs to lift his hand up from his machine once he sees that people have died enough, and use the survivors as slave labour. Those survivors will have no choice but to agree because of the aftershock of the mass massacre + Valentine's people in power ordered them + if they don't do, Valentine will just activate the machine again. Valentine even mentions to Princess Tilde when he locks her up that he needs her to bring the Scandinavian region back in line after his plan completed, that means he planned to leave survivors.
  • Plus, not all of the survivors are necessarily rich and famous, considering that Tom Arnold, a college professor, made the list to get the implant.
  • And then there's all of Valentine's nameless, faceless Mooks. They may have been plumbers, farmers, factory workers, etc. before Valentine gave them implants and put guns in their hands. "Keep me and mine alive, and you can work for us in the new world order. . . or I can just let you die along with the other 90% of humanity. Square deal?"
  • Extremely unlikely. It would have been immensely simpler to just hire mercenaries and PMCs, guys who are already in the whole "armed goon" business, rather than individually conscripting hundreds of people from other walks of life who would need that much more training.

Sending Roxy to Space

• I'm Merlin. I've just discovered that my boss is a mole for an evil Well-Intentioned Extremist megalomaniacal billionaire with a mass depopulation / world domination plot. I've got exactly two field agents at my disposal that I know I can trust and no time to determine the trustworthiness of anyone else. It's up to the three of us to foil this plot. Conveniently, there are exactly three roles that need playing: go into space and shoot down a satellite, sneak into a heavily-fortified enemy base and do some covert ops (and, incidentally, kick some ass should my cover fail), and hang back in the plane, play Mission Control, and do some Hollywood Hacking. I'm a better hacker than my field agents, so I'm Mission Control. That leaves the other two roles. Both of my field agents are green, but both have shown themselves to be intelligent, adaptable, and overall exemplary badasses. The only relevant difference between them is that one has a serious performance-compromising fear of heights and one does not. Well, that makes the decision easy, doesn't it? I'll just send the one with the serious performance-compromising fear of heights into fucking space. What?
  • Merlin needed an agent to impersonate Arthur to get into Valentine's base, and since Arthur is a man (Heck, his real name, Chester King, is definitely a male name), that leaves only one field agent as a probable option, is it not? The real question here is why can't they think of a better plan to infiltrate Valentine's base to stop his plan and make the best use out of the two agents. Granted, they were running out of time, but still!
  • Because just walking in and blasting Valentine's brains apart wouldn't have worked. First off, this was the first mission since Galahad got killed, and they had very little resources. Eggsy was obviously chosen to fill in Harry's position because Galahad was the one who would go in and do the ass-kicking, and Lancelot did the technical stuff. In addition, blowing up the satellite was the only way to guarantee there being enough time to foil the plan (yes, Merlin could hack away at the mainframe all he'd like but it would have taken him ages to do had the satellite not have been blown up- that was the very reason for sending her in the first place). Another reason is that if Eggsy did indeed just walk in and kill Valentine, then maybe V-Day wouldn't have happened, but there's no way they'd have been able to have survived the army (some of them were even in the party room themselves). Eggsy's realization to set off all the chips is also very last minute. Also, performance compromising? both during the satellite scene and the skydiving, she takes a deep breath and just does the job and does a good job at it (otherwise she wouldn't have been Lancelot).
  • Because Roxy hadn't had a bulletproof suit made yet. Assuming they could've convinced someone that Chester is a girl's name, Merlin would essentially have been sending her in without any protection. Eggsy even asks if Roxy has been fitted for a suit yet; she says no.
  • This might not be a huge point, but it was stated earlier that Eggsy had very high marks with weapons. It may simply be that Eggsy was the one better suited for the part he played rather than the technical part of blowing up a satellite. Eggsy might simply not have had the know-how to figure out how to work it and not enough time to figure it out. If you're going to send someone into a heavily guarded stronghold, if they have a bulletproof suit or not, you're going to want to send the one who knows how to use guns the best, aren't you?

Chester King, Old, Err, Young British Gentleman

• That just raises another question: how screwed would Eggsy have been if Valentine had taken the simple common-sense precaution of giving his door guard pictures of all the hand-selected people to be let into his secret compound? He doesn't exactly look much like Michael Caine, after all.
  • A definitely Bond Villain Stupidity on Valentine's part, despite all his Genre Savviness. Though he might be justified because for all he know, he had successfully stopped the Kingsmen, who are pretty much the only faction that knows what he's going to do, when he killed Harry and turned Arthur to his cause. He had no reason to believe that the Kingsmen are a threat anymore because he knows Arthur can take care of it (and even if Arthur has a change of heart, he'd still have that exploding chip...). He didn't even know Eggsy is a Kingsman-to-be until Charlie exposed him in the party himself. And if anything goes wrong, he's confident that his many guards and their arsenal (they have freakin' AA-missiles!) are enough to deal with them, and even if all else fails, he'd still have Gazelle as his trump card. Also, being Valentine, he probably didn't think much about security because he wanted his 'friends' to feel comfortable during the party and not feel like they're under threat 24/7.
  • But is it really common sense? They are all supposed to be rich and famous, politicians and such, so there's no need to give them photos (if you had your staff waiting for Obama, you wouldn't really give them a picture of him). Chester is an exception to that, but is also the head of the most secret agency on the planet, and the difficulties to get recognition for the first Lancelot might also be a sign that there actually are few (if any) pictures of the knights, let alone of the king (notice that, in all his scenes, Arthur is inside a building, actually always the same one).
  • Valentine had to have met him in person at least once (to install the immunity chip). He could have pulled a still from security camera footage, or snapped a Polaroid while he was out, or even just given the guards a broad description of the man. "Elderly white guy" would have been enough to totally blow Eggsy's cover.
  • The reason you hand out ID cards and match phones as identification is so that you don't have to personally describe to every henchman what your guests look like. He was expecting hundreds of people, remember, and had other things to do.
  • I'd tend to think that the head of the international spy agency that had been causing him enough trouble to warrant all kinds of personalized attention over the course of the film might warrant special treatment. He didn't have to "personally" describe him to "every" henchman, either— no reason that job couldn't have been delegated, as long as it got done.
  • As mentioned before, for all he knew, he already killed Galahad and turned Arthur to his cause. He had no reason to believe the Kingsmen are a threat. Besides, all security measures are more than enough. He had AA defense that will aim at ALL VIP aircrafts approaching the base until the confirmation is given so it can land, and that confirmation required an advanced phone identification system, plus hundreds of guards at his disposal plus Gazelle in case some enemies got through. In fact Eggsy and Merlin eventually got pinned down because there's too many guards for them to handle. What he didn't count was that the Kingsmen will got a hold of a VIP chip from Valentine and reverse-engineered it so everyone with the chips exploded.
  • His security measures obviously aren't "more than enough" considering that he, y'know, loses. And "for all he knew" doesn't really fly when he's otherwise a remarkably Genre Savvy villain. Law Of Narrative Convenience in action....
  • He's very Genre Savvy...about James Bond. As far as he knew, he killed James Bond and converted M to the cause. You know what's not in James Bond movies? Young, hip male heroes that take over when James Bond dies.
  • Well, one can never be too perfect... If Valentine had pulled all stops in regard to his security and not for, well, completing his main goal of remaking the whole world with mass produced cutting-edge SIM cards capable of transmitting a freaking Hate Plague wave (which is of course, costs a fortune already), the Kingsmen would have no chance of winning, however tough they might be. Genre Savvy or not, even Valentine can't account for every possible scenario. Think about this, if you were Valentine, and you knew for certain you successfully convinced Arthur to support you and getting the rest of the Kingsmen out of the picture, would you rather spending more time improving your security of your base in case some persistent, loyal Kingsman tracked you down, or turning your focus to complete your original plan? With ID smartphones, implants in VIPs that can be self-destruct in case they have second thoughts, and a very own private army with heavy weapon arsenals, I'd say Valentine's quite thorough in his planning more than most Bond villains. The irony is the only thing beyond his control is Arthur, the very person he believed that when on his side means nothing else can stop him. Arthur spilled all his secrets to Eggsy and got himself killed, his ID phone taken by Eggsy to infiltrate his base and his implant hacked by Merlin to make the implants in his soldiers/VIPs self-destruct, effectively turning the tide to the Kingsmen. If there's anyone to blame in a hole in Valentine's security, I'd say it's Arthur. In my opinion, Valentine's good when it comes to long-term plan, but he's just out of his league when playing a Xanatos Speed Chess with the desperate Kingsmen...
  • TL;DR: If the villain accounts for everything and does everything perfectly we don't have a movie. People make mistakes. It happens.
  • ^I agree with this and I really have to wonder why this is such a common question in Headscratchers: Bad guys are not hyperprecognitive, and it's really not possible to perfectly plan for every single outcome that could possibly happen.
  • I work for local government. I need a picture ID in order to enter my office building. It does not require "hyperprecognition" to have better security than a county government office building. Just saying.
  • I can almost guarantee that whoever's taking that ID doesn't scrutinize your picture much, if at all. I'd bet money they don't check it at all if the person who does the checking expects that you're coming and has already gotten the OK to let you in. And I imagine your local government job isn't waiting for potentially hundreds of people to come all at once. Eggsy had valid ID in Arthur's phone. Nobody knows about Eggsy. The circumstances that let Eggsy in on the plan, frankly, should not have happened even if they did know about Eggsy — Arthur could have very easily just not let him into the room; and if he was smart, he'd have been a lot more cautious with someone who made it to the very end of Kingsman training. As far as Valentine's security was concerned, the only person who could have Arthur's phone is Arthur himself.
  • My job also isn't at the heart of a plan to kill 90% of the world population. That I know of. Might be going on above my pay grade. They are waiting for hundreds of people to come in all at once every morning, though. (It's a big building, and some of the departments are crammed into their cubicles like sardines.) And it doesn't exactly take much scrutinizing to spot the difference between Michael Caine and Taron Egerton.
  • Exactly, Punch-Clock Villain is in full play! Maybe probably a little of The Guards Must Be Crazy, too. They are not Genre Savvy like Valentine, and just do their jobs according to what their leader tell them to do like programs, common senses be damned. Perhaps Valentine did give them both the names and the pictures, but the assistant's just too lazy to check the list thoroughly and just check whether Chester King's name is among the guest list. His plane is allowed to land after all, so she has no reason to doubt the passenger is someone else, and she did check for any weapon that 'Chester' might carry and found none. She also has to walk every single guest deep inside the base to the party every time one arrives, too, and one can guess that she's just too tired to follow the standard, more sensible security procedure.
  • With all the technology at his disposal and hundreds of underlings to do the common jobs, some security oversight is acceptable. Valentine's company isn't a government. He has no need to check after every single member in his organization. Sure, photo IDs is one of the most basic security you could have, but that doesn't mean it's necessary after you applied other, much more complex measures like ID phones or chips. And you know how laid-back he is. He's more concerned with his guests' joy in the party than to check whether any of them isn't really his 'guest'. And even if Valentine did check for Eggsy's real identity, who's to say he'll be screwed over completely? This is Kingsmen we're talking about. Merlin is just right there behind him, and with two of them working together they'll have no trouble holding off the guards. They might even come up with the whole 'exploding ID chips' plan much quicker than they did in the film, too. Either way, it's a lose-lose situation for Valentine in the long run.
  • The odds of the wrong person showing up is really unlikely, when you think about it from a real-world perspective. To successfully infiltrate you'd have to hijack the identity of one of the people on the list, which would be very hard to do to begin with, as not only would they be naturally protected by virtue of being incredibly rich and important people, up until the very last day Valentine and his crew were keeping a close eye on their chosen many. You'd also have to take the identity of someone who wouldn't be recognizable to the guards—you couldn't steal the President's ID or that of a celebrity. Then you'd have to know where the base was—it's not like you could stumble upon it by accident, the Kingsmen were lucky to already know where it was beforehand. Finally, even once you get in, there's not much you could do unless you had a top-notch hacker at your back and someone already taking out the satellites for you: the place is swarming with guards, Valentine and Gazelle are on high alert, and you'd be always running the risk of someone realizing that you're not the person you claim to be. It's really more of a failing on King's part than anything else, as he was perhaps the only identity on the whole list whom Valentine wouldn't be actively monitoring and who wouldn't be recognized by anyone at the party. It's not Valentine's fault that he expected the head of the Kingsmen to not fall into Bond Villain Stupidity.
  • Valentine is overly reliant on and overconfident in technology. He simply assumes that his security measures are perfect because they use cutting-edge technology designed personally by him. It honestly never occurs to him that his security measures could be defeated by someone pinching a cell phone.

Valentine's plan: Brilliant or Just Plain Crazy?

• Okay, so Valentine's plan is basically killing off about 99% of humans on the planet to prevent the mass consumption, pollution, whatever that is killing the planet, and from the surface, it's a fine plan! But what if some of the humans are working in a freakin' nuclear power plant? We've all seen how the effects of the Hate Plague does to people. If some of them caused a nuclear reactor to meltdown by accident? Or even set a whole city or a forest on fire? Maybe crashing a plane into some oil derrick and blowing up all the fuels? Granted, the chances of all of these happening at once are slim, but it's still possible that the resulting mass destruction from destroying human civilization might do more harm to the world than good?
  • We don't know who exactly was on his list of people to offer a place in his new world. Sure, world leaders, but also at least one college professor. It could be that everyone in charge of nuclear power plants and other highly dangerous locations were either in on the scheme or in a cell.
  • Most nuclear power plants are equipped with automatic safety shutdown systems. But otherwise, yes, Valentine was powerful and influential enough to have most world leaders in on his plan, so perhaps he was able to have most nuclear reactors shut down, oil refineries stopped, and flights grounded just prior to the countdown. Anything that's left is considered acceptable losses in the grand scheme of things.
  • if we're concerned about threats on the timescale of global warming even effects of the world's nuclear power plants blowing up would be short-lived in comparison.

The SIM cards are BS

• So Valentine just willingly gives out SIM cards compatible with every phone that allow unlimited cell phone and internet access. Now, I can't speak for companies in other countries, but I know damn well American cell phone companies would do everything they can to block it happening in America because it would hurt their bottom line if suddenly no one needed to buy plans from them, not to mention their stocks would tank. These are the same companies that were against unlocking cell phones and net neutrality after all. And to get them to not fight it Valentine would have to either convert or kidnap the entire board of directors, all the important chief officers, all the lawyers, and at least enough investors that won't sell their shares of stock. Multiply that by how many cell phone companies there are in the USA, and this plan, frankly, strains my suspension of disbelief too much.
  • Google and Facebook are already carrying out plans to deliver free internet; or at least free limited internet. Google's is in the USA. Granted, Fiber is not yet entirely free (there's an installation fee), but that is their eventual goal. The fact of the matter is that, no matter how much a company cries and throws a tantrum, they cannot prevent another company from using their infrastructure however they please. Also, very recently, and despite opposition from pretty much every big cable company, net neutrality rules were passed in the USA. Besides, by that point, Valentine already had in his bag the president of the USA and some other high dignitaries (as suggested by the fact that everyone in the war room lost their head). They could have made sure to get Valentine clearance to deliver his SIM cards.
  • A) if you think the FCC coming out in support of net neutrality is the end of it you are seriously mistaken: it's already gotten lawsuits. Secondly, the key word in your first argument is 'limited'. You still have to pay to get more than just a few websites. Valentine had no stipulation, as I recall.
  • The limited one is Facebook's internet.org; Fiber has no stipulation. The battle for net neutrality is not over. But it is a battle that had been going on a long time... And yet the big cable companies working together against it haven't been able to accomplish much. And this is against the government. Against another, maybe even more influential, company that already had the government on its bag, they don't stand a chance.
  • I suppose Valentine just made a deal with them: "Give me free unlimited SIM cards access for everyone on the planet so I can kill them later, or refuse and I'll kill you guys, too" This is the guy who has his own mountain base and a private army. He can do anything he wants. The other phone companies, however big or influential they are, simply don't want to die, so they had no choice but to agree with Valentine's free SIM cards plan or join the others in the mass killing when Valentine activated the SIM cards.
  • More importantly, what about countries with heavy internet censorship that wouldn't allow the SIM cards in the first place? Valentine was effectively just handing the world over to China.
  • That one's even easier. China has serious overpopulation problems, it would be easy to get their leaders onboard. Then they just let him do the SIM card thing. China has relaxed their own censorship laws plenty of times.

Blow all the chips!... at the worst possible time

• So they've had Arthur's chip with a full day's warning to stop Valentine. Why didn't Merlin fergus out the detonation signal inside an hour, pop the heads off all the collaborators and monks, zerg rush Gazelle with the Kingsmen who didn't die on the spot (and hence are loyal), and arrest Valentine?
  • They didn't figure out that they could use Arthur's chip to send out a self-destruct signal until the worst possible time. Merlin said so himself when Eggsy asked him what use could they do with Arthur's chip and Merlin simply said they couldn't. It wasn't until the Kingsmen are about to lose that Eggsy finally figured out that they could use the signal from Arthur's chips to detonate others, and told Merlin to do it. Maybe the heroes didn't figure it out sooner because they simply had too many things on their minds at that moment. Call it a plot convenience for the sake of drama, perhaps?
  • Yeah, I think it just didn't occur to Merlin that the chip could be useful beyond what they'd already figured out about them. It wasn't until the last minute that Eggsy, desperate beyond all measure, came up with it. Also, even if they had figured it out ahead of time (uh, no pun intended), is your suggestion really what they would do from a moral standpoint? Logically, it's a great idea, but there are hundreds of people who've been implanted, and we don't even know who all of them agreed to it completely, or were simply terrified into it because they wanted to protect their families. I don't know that Merlin would have agreed to a genocide just to make things easier on the Kingsmen – it was only when they were down to the wire with no other options and the freaking world at stake that they chose to kill those people. Plus, the Kingsmen were fairly confident heading into Valentine's place because they didn't realise Valentine would piggy-back off of another person's satellite or that there were biometrics in place. Merlin figured okay, head in, have Roxy yoink the satellite, we'll have like, two hours and I can probably hack the system in ten minutes. Instead, the satellite plan that they were counting on turned out to be useless, and Merlin discovered there was no way they could hack Valentine's computer. Instead they had to improvise, and Eggsy just managed to have a good idea that saved their asses at the last minute.
  • I've just thought of another issue – the way that Merlin hacked into Valentine's system. Eggsy had to physically walk into the base and give Merlin access by plugging into a laptop there that was on a private network. There would be no way for Merlin to detonate the chips prior to arriving at the base itself, which would ruin their chances of teaming up with any other Kingsmen because they’d have to tell those Kingsmen something about what was going on beforehand and any who were traitors would have time to act against them. And even if they completely lied about where they were going and what they were doing, any traitors would be able to figure out what was really going on.
  • If Merlin had blown the chips prematurely, Valentine would probably have just shut the door of his lair and went on with his plan anyway.

Smash the phone?

• So, it's not really feasible to have everyone in the world smash their phones into the nearest available hard surface, but when Roxy is on the phone with Michelle, she instructs Michelle to lock her baby in the bathroom and toss the key. Fine. But why not just tell her to smash her phone? That way, at the very least, Eggsy's sister would have been safe.
  • Smashing the phone would not at all have guaranteed Michelle's child's safety. Firstly, Roxy doesn't have a clear understanding of how precisely the phone's crazy-inducing system works, so she would not know if destroying it would necessarily stop the SD card from picking up the signal - and if Valentine had some way of waterproofing them, or if Michelle happened to have a good, water-resistant phone, even throwing it in the toilet might not have worked, either. If Michelle actually removed the SD card from the phone and destroyed it, that might work for her phone... except she's in an estate flat surrounded by hundreds of other people who also have Valentine's cards in their phones. Remember that Harry was affected at the church despite not having one of Valentine's cards in his phone - it appears to be a strong enough signal that if you're just in the vicinity of others' receivers, you go crazy as well (and Roxy has no way of knowing the size of that vicinity). Roxy has one chance and very little time to convince Michelle that she's not making this up, and take quick measures to get Eggsy's little sister to safety. Blocking her off in a room where people (hopefully) can't get to her is a more reasonable option than trying to stop the crazy signal from getting to Michelle in the first place, since it's unlikely that the latter would succeed. She might also have told Michelle to leave the flat, to prevent further risk to her daughter, but then that would have exposed Michelle to other people in the complex, so Roxy's suggestion was the safest and most effective solution to keep both of them safe.

Lancelot?

• Eggsy's father was Lancelot. Years later, Eggsy is a candidate for the position of ... Lancelot. Was the name retired until Eggsy came along? There aren't that many Arthurian names. Or did someone else have that codename, and conveniently die?
  • Eggsy's father wasn't Lancelot. Eggsy's father was, like Eggsy, one of the two final candidates for the Lancelot position. When Eggsy's father died, the other guy was the only candidate left and became Lancelot. He's the guy who Gazelle kills in the opening, thus opening up the Lancelot position again.

Lowered Hiring Standards?

• When the last Lancelot was selected, part of the training included an actual field op with actual enemy combatant. One of the contestants died, and the other became Lancelot. Fast forward to the present... and all the tests, down to the last one are staged? Did the Kingsmen's standard sink?
  • Probably because of the disastrous field op training itself. Maybe the Kingsmen realize that until the chosen candidate is a fully Kingsman agent, sending them to perform real field ops is a terrible idea, so they changed the tests to be a series of Secret Test of Character instead, by informing the candidates that there is a real chance that they can die during the test so they would give them their all not unlike participating in a field op.
  • Or Eggsy's dad and the other guy both shot the dog, and the combat op was the tiebreaker. Kind of like Sudden-Death overtime.

The Hat

• So after Valentine tracks Galahad back to the Kingsman shop, Galahad suggests he go to a hatters, since Valentine is meeting the queen at Ascott House. We then learn the hat is bugged so that Galahad can listen in on his conversations, and this pays off when Galahad learns about the demonstration at the church. But if he got the hat for the Ascott meeting to talk to the queen, and afterward we see him — still wearing the hat — ticking the royal family off on his list, doesn't that mean he was wearing the hat when he talked to her? Wouldn't Galahad have been able to learn about his plan just from that?
  • A gentleman removes one's hat indoors.

Why a Tokarev TT-30?

• This is probably being nitpicky, but why do the Kingsmen use the Tokarev TT-30, a sidearm with only eight rounds and hasn't been produced since 1952? Surely there are other options available, like the Beretta 92FS, for instance.
  • Doylist explanation: the Tokarev simply works with the film's aesthetic, old-fashioned but modified in a way to make it cooler and functional in a modern setting.
  • It's weird; the TT-30 uses an uncommon caliber, has a small magazine capacity and is a Soviet pistol. It is reliable though and fairly concealable, so that may have played a part.

Kidnapping Princess Tilde

• Valentine said he wanted the Princess due to her ability to "galvanize the people", but what's the point if the population of Sweden will be wiped out and the remainder either agreed to Valentine's genocide or are being held prisoner like her?
  • Valentine wasn't going to have every single person outside his compound killed. A culling isn't a complete, total genocide, no more than deer hunting season aims to wipe out every deer in the forest. His plan was to kill a huge chunk of the population, then use the dignitaries he'd coerced, turned or kidnapped to resettle the situation afterward.

Kidnapping Dr. Arnold

• With every celebrity or dignitary we see, Valentine simply sets up an appointment and explains his plan. Then, if they aren't on board, he kidnaps them and locks them up. But with Dr. Arnold, for some reason he goes the opposite way. Kidnapping him, then releasing him when he agreed to the plan. Why? Why didn't he just set up an appointment with the college professor? Usually if you want to interview a professor about their work, they're eager to talk to you. I know, Doylist, he did it to set the plot in motion by giving Lancelot a reason to attack and rescue him, so the Kingsman could be killed and start the recruitment and training of a new Kingsman, but I just can't see a Watsonian explanation for siccing a bunch of mercenaries on him.
  • From what little we see of Arnold, the dude seemed very eccentric and was probably at least somewhat reclusive. It could be that kidnapping him was the only way for Valentine to meet him.

Swedish Royal Family

• So during the scene where Valentine is crossing off the names of the people who have gone along with his plan, we see that the King and Queen of Sweden are on that list. This raises a few questions. For one, are the King and Queen of Sweden fine with Valentine keeping their daughter hostage? Why doesn't Valentine ask them to talk to her and try to win her over to his side? When the media is wondering about the missing VIPs, why doesn't the Royal family issue a statement saying that Tilde is fine?
  • When you have a boom boom chip in your head you do what you're told. And if you say somebody's fine, then you have to provide proof of life to the insatiably curious press.
  • Tilde's parents are still alive to appear in the second film, which wouldn't be the case if they'd received implants. The logical conclusion is that they'd rejected Valentine's plan outright, so he kidnapped her to force their obedience the old-fashioned way.

Eggsy's Drink Order

• When Eggsy's doing his best to blend in at Richmond's gala at the climax of the movie, he orders a drink from the bartender. His drink order? "Martini. Gin, not vodka, obviously. Stirred for ten seconds while glancing at an unopened bottle of vermouth." There are literally just two ingredients in a traditional Martini: gin and vermouth. A Martini without vermouth is just straight-up gin—which is the last thing that somebody would order if they were trying to blend in at an upscale cocktail party. And Eggsy should really know better, since Galahad supposedly taught him how to mix a Martini. So why did he order it that way?
  • This is called a "Churchill Martini" Churchill famously said the only way to make a martini was with ice-cold gin, and a bow in the direction of France.
  • As for "blending in": Consider where Eggsy is; he's in a secret bunker full of arrogant, stuck-up, self-righteous elites. He decides that the best way to fit in is by acting like a pretentious asshole — by trying his best to obviously call attention to himself, he is effectively blending in by standing out.
  • It also works as a middle-finger to James Bond, since anyone who's ever tried one of his famous vodka martinis will tell you how awful they taste. Hence: 'Gin, not vodka, obviously'.

Eggsy's Family's Poverty

• So, Kingsman doesn't give a widow's stipend. Good to know.
  • Apparently not. Is there a question here?
  • He wasn't a kingsman. Maybe if Lancelot had a family they were taken care of.

Guns in Church

• A nitpick mind you, but if you were to watch the massacre scene in South Glade Mission Church, there were only three guns (not counting the one Harry brought with him) in that church. Anyone who visits or was raised in the American South — much less Kentucky, the Fifth most gun-friendly state in America, in a Right-Wing extremist Fire-and-Brimstone religious organization that just throws around "faggot" and "n*gger" around like chickenfeed in a henhouse — would know that this is impossible.
  • Conservatives aren't so gun-crazy that they insist they bring a gun to every single event.

Pointing the gun at Arthur

• I never understood this. After Eggsy 'fails' to shoot his dog, he then turns the gun on Arthur, and holds it on him for quite a while, until he hears a shot from the other room, implying Roxy killed her dog. Eggsy then hands over the gun and leaves. So what exactly was the purpose behind pointing his gun at Arthur for so long? I've heard people say it's a hint to Arthur's later reveal as a villain, since he actually looks taken aback when Eggsy aims at him, as if he's thinking 'oh god, he knows', except there's no feasible way Eggsy could know anything, so Eggsy's actions still make no sense from his character's perspective.
  • Eggsy didn't suspect that Arthur was a rat, he was just furious that he was forcing him to kill his dog and was considering killing him instead.

What about Percival?!

• So Harry has been killed by the bad guys. Arthur has been exposed as a traitor and killed by Eggsy. Eggsy, Roxy and Merlin don't know who they can trust, so they go face the bad guys alone... but what about Percival? How hard would it be to have Roxy or Merlin approach him, check if he has a scar and once confirmed that he's not in league with Valentine, get him involved? The entire free world is about to literally tear itself apart in an orgy of feral rage. Why limit yourself to two rookie agents to the field? If you feel you can't trust Percival, then why are you trusting his hand-picked successor to Lancelot? If there was any chance that Percival was involved with Valentine, then logically that lack of trust would extend to Roxy, his protégé.
  • Maybe Percival was either killed and/or discovered to be a traitor offscreen.

'Eggsy, you should know that your father made it this far.'

• Okay, this is a really minor point, but while I love the movie, this line has always annoyed and confused me. Merlin says it to Eggsy as the test period draws to a close, it's meant to be comforting and maybe even inspiring... but it's completely pointless. Obviously Eggsy's father made it here, he was a Kingsman agent, it's like saying someone licensed to drive 'made it this far' by sitting down for their theory test. Isn't it a complete given that he would have made it this far? It just seems like such a redundant thing to say, from a character who's meant to be incredibly smart. Am I missing something?
  • Eggsy's father wasn't a Kingsman Agent. He was a trainee who down to the last two candidates when he was killed, that's what Merlin is referring to. The other was "James" who became Lancelot by default when Eggsy's father was killed (and is the one killed by Gazelle at the start trying to rescue Professor Arnold)

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