The Ending Of Kingsman: The Secret Service Explained

In 2014, Kingsman: The Secret Service sleuthed its way into the hearts of moviegoers everywhere. Enough people spied on the film in theaters to make well over five times its original $81 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo. The massive ode to everything about spy films combined the genre's elements of comedy, intrigue, and action for one of the most exciting and entertaining movies of the year.

The movie follows Gary "Eggsy" Unwin (Taron Egerton), a young British street bloke with a knack for impromptu parkour escapes and a heart of gold. He is recruited by his deceased father's war buddy, Harry Hart (Colin Firth), to be part of a British spy agency known as Kingsman. Along the way, the Kingsman service comes into conflict with billionaire cellphone mogul Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), who hatches a plan to thin out the world's overpopulation using aggression-inducing waves emitted from his company's SIM Cards; once activated, everyone within range becomes murderously insane. When Harry is killed and the other members of Kingsman join Valentine, it becomes up to Eggsy to stop the madman's plot in traditional spy fashion.

In the end, Eggsy stops Valentine's schemes before any significant damage is done to the world's population. However, Eggsy would not have been able to do that had he not buckled down and made the transformation from a chav to a debonair secret agent in the vein of James Bond. When the movie first starts out, Eggsy is anything but a slick-talking spy. He's a heavily-accented punk who steals cars just for a good time. In fact, he only gets the opportunity to become a Kingsman when he uses the number on his father's old war medallion to call Harry for a get-out-of-jail-free card. Most of the rest of the movie actually focuses on Eggsy's training instead of his world-saving escapades. He learns how to fight, shoot, train dogs, mix drinks, and practically any other skill one would expect a spy to know off the cuff.

In the end, that's what the movie is really about, becoming a hero. Eggsy doesn't directly engage the antagonist until the beginning of the third act. Even then, that's only because Harry Hart is removed from the picture by the swift urgings of a bullet to the head. When Eggsy learns that every other Kingsman is actually on Valentine's side, Eggsy has no choice but to save the world. It's a character development that is equally the result of circumstance as it is Eggsy's morals.

To those outside of the comics world, Kingsman seemed like an original movie that burst out of the blue to great success. However, it's actually based off of a graphic novel by comic book legends Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. According to CineFix, the original comic — simply entitled The Secret Service — has a similar basic plot that contains some huge differences throughout the story, including the ending. In the film version, Eggsy pretty much assaults Valentine's mountain compound all by his lonesome. He kills the members of the 1% backing Valentine's plans, stabs Valentine through the chest, and ties the whole night up nicely with some impromptu relations with a Swedish princess. It's a triumphant, humorous, and fitting end to a campy action movie about British spies.

Meanwhile, the comic book sees Eggsy gathering his fellow Kingsman recruits to stage an all-out storming of the villainous Dr. James Arnold's hideout. There, they save many of the world's most famous actors — whom Arnold kidnapped — and dispose of the villain with a graphic, point-blank gunshot to the face. There is no Swedish princess, though they do alter the villain's radio waves from an aggravator to an aphrodisiac. Eggsy may not get his "happy ending," but the rest of the world did.