Eggsy Unwin

In The Secret Service (2012), Gary "Eggsy" Unwin is recruited by his uncle, Jack London, to work for Kingsman, part of the British Secret Service. After Eggsy is put on an extensive three-year training course, performing assassinations and arresting a Colombian drug lord, Jack is killed by cellphone entrepreneur James Arnold for sleeping with his girlfriend, unaware of his Kingsman allegiance or Jack's knowledge of his plans to use a satellite signal to make the poor of humanity slaughter each other in order to solve the overpopulation problem. Having witnessed his uncle's death through his spywear eyeglasses, and on learning Arnold's plans are supported by the elitist high-level members of Kingsman, Eggsy recruits his fellow trainees to an assault mission on Arnold's base, hidden inside a mountain in Switzerland. After ambushing and battling Arnold's troops, and freeing the celebrities he had kidnapped (so that they wouldn't die when the satellites activated), Eggsy engages in a fist fight with Arnold's henchman and former Kingsman agent Gazelle, before leaving to confront Arnold. Arnold activates the satellite signal and waits for the people to slaughter each other, but instead, due to one of Eggsy's colleagues having changed the frequency, people worldwide begin to have sex with one another. Eggsy then kills a confused Arnold. In an epilogue, Eggsy reads his uncle's will, revealing that two-thirds of Jack's estate will go to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the British Heart Foundation, the final third going to Eggsy's mother, informing Eggsy to take good care of his gadget-laden car, or he will "come back and bloody haunt him." As Eggsy reports to Kingsman Headquarters, Sir Giles briefs him about a mission that concerns "trouble in Moscow".[3]

Artist Dave Gibbons holding aloft a signed drawing of Eggsy at San Diego Comic Con International in 2017.

In The Big Exit (2017), shortly after Brexit, Eggsy is tasked with safeguarding the United Kingdom's controversial "divorce fee" for leaving the European Union on its journey to Brussels, consisting of £100 billion in solid gold bars, from being stolen by a group of pro-Brexit terrorists, "The Union Jacks", disguised as French activists to steal the gold back for the UK. It is eventually revealed that Eggsy's mission is in fact a decoy so that Kingsman themselves can destroy "The Union Jacks" and swipe the gold from both the British Parliament and the European Union and use it to fund hospitals and education services back in England.[4]

In The Red Diamond (2017–2018), after knocking out Prince Philip on saving him from a group of Greek terrorists, Eggsy is put on a week-long leave of absence. Following a date with actress Emma Watson, which he abandons to return to Kingsman headquarters to retrieve a pill to treat his little brother Ryan's norovirus, an alert comes in from the South African Secret Service (SASS) regarding an encrypted message that was sent to a wanted hacker named Alias at Times Square in Manhattan. As the only agent present, Eggsy is sent out on a rocket to find Alias before the SASS.[1][5]

Upon finding him, Eggsy is confronted by Kwaito — a SASS agent, and Ingot — a Red Diamond agent. Upon restraining Alias, Alias explains that he was trying to shut down the servers in the financial district to protect them from a computer virus released by Ingot, who kills Alias and makes his escape, trapping Eggsy and Kwaito. Once he leaves, the virus is unleashed worldwide, causing a global blackout. The Prime Minister of Britain receives a Betamax tape from the head of the Red Diamond, self-made South African mining magnate Jakobis Du Preez, who explains his plans to replace the world's physical money with gold and jewels; in a separate tape, he invites the “Kings and Queens of the new material world” to a remote location in the Hunan Province, China.[6]

Eggsy and Kwaito independently go undercover to the event only for Du Preez to set off a bomb to get rid of "the competition". Retrieving a map to the Red Diamond base from Ingot and crashing into a forest with Kwaito, Eggsy and Kwaito make love. Later finding civilization and a phone to use, Eggsy finds Kwaito to have stolen the map. Having memorized it, Eggsy travels to Guam where he is reunited with Kwaito. Making their way inside the base, the pair find Du Preez on a hill of jewels and gold bars, who explains they cannot kill him lest a fail-safe he attached to his heart open the airlocks and kill everyone. After killing Ingot, Eggsy shoots Du Preez with a poisonous spy-dart which will slowly kill him, and makes his escape with Kwaito and Treeman, a hacker Du Preez had held captive, deleting the Red Diamond virus whilst fleeing. In the epilogue, a ceremony is held in Eggsy's honour. Several esteemed guests are invited—including Watson and Prince Philip, the latter of whom wants to apologise and shake Eggsy's hand. However, Eggsy instead takes his family and Kwaito to his favourite pub.[7]

Eggsy returns in Big Game, where-in he rescues a mid-20s Mindy McCready from assassination at the hands of agents of the Fraternity of Super-Criminals (who plot to assassinate all the world's superheroes), with whom he then infiltrates the headquarters of to assassinate their leader, Wesley Gibson. However, after the couple are ambushed, Eggsy is shot in the head and killed, and Mindy steals the Fraternity's own stolen time machine to travel back in time, aiming to save Eggsy's life, only to end up in prehistoric times.[8]

In The Secret Service, Gary Unwin, better known as "Eggsy", is an antisocial Chav who is recruited into Kingsman by Harry Hart. In the years since the death of his father, himself a former Kingsman agent who worked with Harry, Eggsy has fallen into delinquency. He excelled at gymnastics before pressure from his stepfather Dean forced him to quit. He dropped out of the Royal Marines due to his mother's fear of losing him like his father. Eggsy has a high I.Q. and exceptional driving skills, but his life of crime has prevented him from getting any job. Upon his entry into the Kingsman training program, Eggsy becomes the outcast, as the other candidates are well educated and come from wealthy families. He overcomes bullying from Charlie Hesketh and the other male trainees to become a finalist alongside Roxanne Morton; however, he ultimately loses when he fails the final test, which involves shooting his pet pug J.B. (which he named after Jack Bauer). Unknown to Eggsy, the gun was loaded with blanks. Upon discovering Richmond Valentine's plans to solve the world's overpopulation by unleashing a neurological wave broadcast to cause the world's poor to fight to the death, Harry is shot in the head point blank, and after Eggsy thwarts an attempt by Kingsman leader Arthur (loyal to Valentine) to kill him, Eggsy teams up with rogue agents Merlin and Roxy to stop Valentine from killing billions. Now a full Kingsman agent, Eggsy takes Harry's former codename of Galahad.[11]

In The Golden Circle, Eggsy has since inherited Harry's home and is in a relationship with Crown Princess Tilde of Sweden, who he saved during the Valentine incident. One night, he has dinner with the Royal Family of Sweden, which indirectly saves him from being killed along with all the other Kingsman agents in Britain in the hands of the Golden Circle. Eggsy and Merlin get help from the American spy organisation Statesman to figure out the Golden Circle's motives, only to discover that Harry is alive and has been under their care for over a year. Eggsy marries Princess Tilde after he and Harry save the world from the Golden Circle's virus outbreak.[12]

Eggsy will return in Kingsman: The Blue Blood.[13][14][15][16][17][18]

On July 20, 2017, Fox released an animated crossover short film between Kingsman and Archer, titled #TBT to That Time Archer Met Kingsman, featuring Eggsy and Sterling Archer.[19] The short was unveiled at the 2017 Comic-Con’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle panel in Hall H, following Eggsy as he discovers Archer to have stumbled into the Kingsman's secret arsenal hidden in the bespoke suit shop, helping himself to guns and alcohol. Fighting to reclaim the goods, Eggsy challenges Archer to "the most gentlemanly of competitions": a drinking contest, while planning to drug him via a glass; Archer instead drinks the bottle and passes out. Eggsy, insulted by Archer's behaviour, vows to go to America and "teach them a lesson". Taron Egerton reprises his role as Eggsy Unwin.[20]

Originally the marketing campaign for Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) was going to begin with a teaser short film featuring all six actors who portrayed James Bond—Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig—discussing the need for a new generation of secret agents before Harry and Eggsy entered the room, symbolizing the passing of the torch to a new franchise of spy films. All of the actors agreed to appear and Matthew Vaughan agreed to shoot the scene, but the plans were shelved because Connery had become too ill with dementia by that time to participate.[21]

Eggsy Unwin appears as the main playable character in the 2017 turn-based match-3 role-playing combat game Kingsman: The Golden Circle by NHN PixelCube.[22][23] and the 2019 hybrid action adventure-construction simulator Kingsman: The Secret Service.[24][25]