Argylle: What that mid-credit sequence might mean for the future (of more than one movie series)

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The twist in the tale is only the beginning. Argylle is a movie that advertises itself as having one big secret — who is the real Agent Argylle? — but there are, in fact, multiple to contend with, and it’s a ride that doesn’t let up until midway through the closing credits, with a scene that immediately puts everything that the audience has just seen in a new perspective.

But what are audiences supposed to make of that mid-credit reveal, and what does it mean for the future of the series… and the future of what had previously been an entirely different movie series altogether? Keep reading.

Spoiler warning: the following will reveal spoilers for Argylle, currently in theaters. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know more.

What happens in the mid-credit scene in Argylle?

The mid-credit scene of Argylle is a flashback scene set decades earlier than the main movie, in which a young man played by Louis Partridge enters a bar called The King’s Man — with its signage using the same typeface as the Matthew Vaughn-directed movie of the same name from 2021 — where he explains that he has been told to show up and collect a package. That package, shared by a barman who tells him that he must be in trouble if he’s there, turns out to be a gun.

The young man then introduces himself as Aubrey Argylle, and a caption on the screen promises that “Argylle Book One The Movie” is coming soon.

Wait, who’s Aubrey Argylle?

That’s a very good question. The majority of Argylle centers around the idea that there is actually no Agent Argylle, who has been invented by Ellie Conway, the writer who is, in fact, an amnesiac secret agent actually remembering her own past as Rachel Kylle. (R. Kylle = Argylle, get it?) However, the last scene before the credits features Henry Cavill showing up at a book signing, seemingly aware that he is, in fact, the figment of Ellie’s imagination that she’s been seeing for the rest of the movie.

So, is that Aubrey Argylle? It’s initially unclear, not least because there’s an accent difference — Cavill’s accent in that final scene is an oddness that sounds somewhat American, at least on first listen, while Partridge’s is distinctly English, but also arguably an age discrepancy, if the mid-credit scene does, in fact, take place decades earlier. That said, it’s already been reported that Partridge will play a younger version of Cavill’s character in a future series of projects, so perhaps the accent issue will get explained away in the future… or entirely ignored.

But what about the King’s Man pub?

Yes, it certainly seems that Argylle — who may or may not be an actual secret agent or a figment of Ellie’s imagination, depending on what gets revealed in the future (maybe her imagination was based on a real person, which is entirely in keeping with the rest of the movie’s reveals, let’s be honest) — has some for of connection with the Kingsman, the secret intelligence agency introduced in 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, directed by Vaughn. While we’ve never seen the bar in the mid-credit scene before, the idea that the group would hide in plain sight is entirely in keeping with the gentleman’s tailor shop used in the first two movies in the series.

So, was Argylle a member of the Kingsman? Does this mean that Argylle is a stealth sequel to the earlier three movies in that series, or the first installment in a reboot of that series? Samuel L. Jackson and Sofia Boutella appear in both Kingsman: The Secret Service and Argylle as entirely different characters; will that ever be referenced, or is it a sign that Argylle is rebooting Kingsman canon entirely?

We’ll have to wait to find out the answer — and hope that it’s not all just the latest twist in Ellie Conway’s very convoluted imagination.

Argylle is in theaters now. Buy tickets on Fandango or Atom Tickets.

Yes, it's true; Argylle's big twist was spoiled by a news story published two and a half years before the movie's release.