The Argylle post-credits scene, explained

At the end of Argylle, the Division has been uncovered and vanquished, naturally, and Rachel (still going as Ellie), has combined her two lives into some kind of spy-author mash-up. A happy ending! But, as Marvel and DC films have conditioned us to stay planted in our cinema seats until the midway point of the credits, that's not the end of the story.

Argylle's post-credit scene opens on a pub called The King's Man, which is less of a wink and more of a light-up arrow pointing directly to Vaughn's massively popular series of Kingsman films, including 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service, 2017's Kingsman: The Golden Circle and 2021's prequel extension The King's Man.

A dapper Louis Partridge, with the kind of symmetrical English face destined for a Vaughn vehicle, approaches the bar and asks for a complicated drink order that's very obviously a code. The barman then presents him a box holding a pistol and a silencer, as Partridge introduces himself as Aubrey Argylle. A note then flashes up on screen saying that ‘Argylle: The First Book’ will be coming to screens soon.

Prequelising his offerings isn't new territory for Vaughn. As we said, he already did that with Kingsman. But Argylle's promise of a before-story poses some interesting questions, the kind that could circle your mind endlessly until you too find yourself hypnotised into adopting an entirely new identity.

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Firstly, the post-credits scene suggests that Agent Argylle and Kingsman, the hyper-secret service agency, live in the same universe – perhaps Argylle is even one of their operatives. That seems simple enough – he is a suave British spy, after all. But in Argylle, we come to learn that Agent Argylle isn't just the stuff of fiction, he's the proxy by which Ellie Conway can retell her own life. To that end, was Ellie a member of Kingsman? The film doesn't really go deep into her spy backstory, so it could be a possibility, although her being American seems to throw a spanner into that theory. She could, however, potentially have been a member of the Statesman, America's Kingsman counterpart which was introduced in The Golden Circle. It's possible!

Pub names aren't the only things shared between Kingsman and Argylle. Both Samuel L. Jackson and Sofia Boutella, the antagonists of 2014's Kingsman, both appear in Argylle and they definitely don't play the same characters. In Kingsman, Jackson is a hype billionaire with a malevolent eco-conscience and Boutella is his right-hand-woman with blades for feet. In Argylle, Jackson plays the former head of the CIA, while Boutella is a mysterious international keeper of super secrets. Honestly, it just seems like Vaughn wanted to put his faves back in another one of his films, but it does still present some mental hurdles.

So far, the post-credits scene gives us more questions than answers. Is Kingsman (sort of but not actually) fictional like Argylle? Do we need to consider the idea that Samuel L. Jackson may have an evil twin? Could it be possible that Matthew Vaughn is simply loosely tying his oeuvre together with dental floss because extended cinematic universes are all the rage? He could tell us, but then he'd have to kill us.