Major spoilers from the new movie Hitman: Agent 47 will be discussed in this article, so proceed at your own risk.
Zachary Quinto plays a not-so-good guy in Hitman: Agent 47. That’s not really a spoiler, though. The trailers for the film let that one slip out early on, but we didn’t know just how bad a guy he actually was. If you’re unfamiliar with the world of the original video games — which, admittedly, I wasn’t before seeing the film — then the ending of Agent 47 might have you scratching your head. Luckily, the producer and cast were on hand during a recent press day to help us answer some pivotal questions.
Hitman: Agent 47 stars Rupert Friend as the title character. A product of the now ended Agent Program, he is one of many clones genetically enhanced to become the world’s best killer. He encounters Katia van Dees (played by Hannah Ware) and the two set out to undo a rival organization led by a man named Le Clerq (Avengers: Age of Ultron star Thomas Kretschmann). Le Clerq is attempting to restart the Agent Program, and Quinto’s John Smith is a product of these efforts. Though Smith is a formidable threat, Le Clerq needs Dr. Litvenko (Ciaran Hinds), the man behind the original program, to complete his work.
Agent 47 has a couple of face-offs with Smith, but their last encounter sees the villain electrocuted and left for dead. However, if you stayed in your seats to watch the mid-credits stinger, you see the camera zoom over Smith’s body, now with blonde hair, to reveal he’s still alive. This is the origin of The Albino.
"He’s kind of like Agent 47’s Joker," producer Adrian Askarieh told Cinema Blend in describing the character. The Albino, called Mark Parchezzi III in the games, is much like Agent 47; he too is a clone, made by a rival Agent Program, with a comparable skill set to the games’ title character. As Askarieh described,
He’s a complete anarchist, he has no allegiance. He just wants to destroy 47… We wanted the Albino in here somehow. It’s funny because the John Smith character in the games does not become the Albino, they are two different [people], but we wanted to merge them for this, for this incarnation because we felt it would still feel organic.
Elsewhere, I spoke to Zachary Quinto, the actor behind John Smith/The Albino in the film. Though he says the mid-credits scene was shot during the middle of production — he was fitted with a bald cap, as opposed to dying his hair blonde — he knew from the beginning that this was the ultimate trajectory for his character’s arc. "Who knows what that means?" he said. "We’ll see." Watch the full video with his reaction below.
We’ll have more on what the possibilities for a potential sequel are shortly, but in the meantime, Hitman: Agent 47 is currently playing in theaters.
