Henry Cavill's Argylle movie and that surprise ending was spoiled two years ago (and we all missed it)

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The promotional campaign for Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle was based around one simple question: “Who is the real agent Argylle?” The irony being, the answer to that question had been answered publicly more than two years before the movie opened in theaters.

Spoilers for Argylle follow. Proceed at your own risk.

As audiences who have seen the movie already know, the real Agent Argylle is, in fact, author Elly Conway, who is, in fact, a former agent whose real name is Rachel Kylle — making her Agent R. Kylle, and yes, that really is the big reveal even though it sounds like a joke. There is a further twist to the question with the seeming appearance of Henry Cavill as an actual Agent Argylle at the end of the movie, complete with a flashback during the credits at the end to confirm that his name really is Argylle this time around, but we’ll ignore that for now, mostly because it’s still unclear what any of that actually means.

Here’s the thing, though; early reports about the feature from way back in 2021 explain that the movie is “about a best-selling spy novelist who turns out to be a world-class spy suffering from amnesia,” literally giving away the movie’s central twist even before the movie has been cast. While most people had (understandably) forgotten about those reports by the time the movie’s promotion started, links to the spoiler-filled reports started circulating on social media just days before the movie’s actual release.

To be fair, Conway’s true identity being a lie is something that makes more sense of the fact that everyone involved in the movie has been so cagey about the identity of Argylle author Elly Conway all along. Conway isn’t just a pseudonym for whoever wrote the actually-real Argylle novel that ties in with — if interviews with director Matthew Vaughn are to be believed, the “real” Conway helped inspire the film, although the identity of that actual author has been a curious secret for some time.

One of the more crazy suggestions for the real person behind Conway has been Taylor Swift, with Claudia Schiffer — supermodel and, importantly, wife of Matthew Vaughn — also in the running. Internet sleuths on Reddit believe they have the answer, suggesting it’s actually Terry Hayes, who’d be a fascinating choice if true — he’s perhaps better known as a screenwriter on Mad Max 2 and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, as unlikely as that might be.

It’s a pop culture mash-up that feels almost too good to be true: could the writer for two Mad Max movies in the 1980 actually be the pseudonymous author some believed to be Taylor Swift, who’s actually the James Bond stand-in in a new movie directed by the guy behind Kick-Ass and The Kingsmen? We can only hope this theory is correct. Argylle is in theaters now. Buy tickets on Fandango or Atom Tickets.

The actually biggest question about Argylle might be how many people were turned off by the trailer for the movie.