The latest entry in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman franchise differs from the previous outings in a number of ways.
Not only does The King’s Man have a historical setting – with the events unfolding during the First World War – but it also includes several real-life historical figures among the cast of characters, with exaggerated versions of Grigori Rasputin (Rhys Ifans) and King George V (Tom Hollander) among those to appear.
This all culminates in a mid-credits scene that introduces a couple of other well-known faces from history – read on for everything you need to know.
The King’s Man end credits explained
The end credits scene takes place after Orlando (Ralph Fiennes) and his various accomplices have got the better of villain Morton aka The Shepherd (Matthew Goode) – and have now set up the Kingsman agency, the very same organisation that Harry and Eggsy from the first two films would go on to work for.
But what the scene reveals is that despite Morton’s demise, his league of villains is not going anywhere soon – and Erik Jan Hanussen (Daniel Brühl) has replaced him as the chief. More chilling than that, is the fact that the scene sees Hanussen introducing his friend Vladimir Lenin (August Diehl) to another new upstart – Adolf Hitler.
The new Shepherd clearly sees Hitler as a potential ally in his bid to further exploit tensions in Europe, after being impressed by his presence at the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II.
Like the rest of the film, there are elements of both fact and fiction to this scene. The events that led to the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II have long been a matter of historical debate, and so it’s not clear if Hitler actually had anything to do with it, but in real life, Hitler was indeed trained by the real Erik Jan Hanussen.
The pair had several reported meetings in the years after the First World War and despite Hanussen’s Jewish heritage, they became allies, with Hitler learning some of his crowd-control techniques from him.
So could this scene feed into a future Kingsman movie? It’s not clear just yet, but Vaughn clearly enjoys the idea of seeing the agency come up against more terrible villains from history.
“I mean, if you think about it, they have two very extreme people on the left, and extreme people on the right, with this nut case in the middle, who’s taken over The Shepherd, which is Daniel Brühl,” he explained in a recent interview with The Wrap.
“But yeah, I mean, when you look at history, that’s where I sort of got excited, when we were writing the script going, I couldn’t have ever created a character as interesting as Rasputin, let’s put it that way. That’s why I’d love to go through each decade – because history has written these unbelievably great heroes and great villains, which I’d love to explore and bring to life in a different way.”
Read more: The King’s Man review: Kingsman prequel film is a tonally jarring slog
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