WMG / Men in Black: International

Pre-release Theories

Liam Neeson's character High T, the head of the U.K. branch of M.I.B., will turn out to be the villain.

We've been teased with a mystery story and naturally there hasn't been a villain clearly established yet. Liam Neeson is the most iconic actor in the new cast of characters, and given the contentious issues in modern political discourse it wouldn't be all that surprising to see them put in a new villain who was a person of authority within the Men in Black that just has it out for the aliens coming to Earth or something as a kind of allegory.

• There's a precedence for an Evil Brit M.I.B. head with Alpha from the cartoon. Maybe Neeson's character will become a Captain Ersatz after The Reveal.
• Agree with this theory. Either that, or he'll die halfway through the film to give the heroes motivation toward the climax. Or even both of these theories—faking his death initially, then turning out to be alive and the real villain.
• Confirmed.

If Liam Neeson's character really is the bad guy, he will turn out to be an alien in disguise.

Just like Edgar from the first MIB movie.

• Confirmed. Kind of. High T was assimilated by the Hive.

Alternatively, thought not necessarily mutually exclusively, Agent M will turn out to be an alien in disguise.

Particularly if the first theory about Neeson's character is true than this might be a dynamic they'd find interesting to play with by having a human antagonist and an alien protagonist. She has an as of yet unclear backstory before she's shown finding the M.I.B. so perhaps the film and the character herself are hiding it for fear or some other reason. It would add an extra new spin to the formula anyway. Heck, perhaps that will make her and her partner Agent H each have an Evil Counterpart in Rebecca Ferguson's now confirmed alien villainess character Riza and Hight T respectively if things line up the right way. The way she phrases the Men in Black as the "best kept secret in the universe" rather than something along the more usual lines of "best kept secret in the world" given the perspective everyday people would come from with it could just maybe be a hint. And that was following a voice over by Neeson saying to "Always remember, the universe has a way of leading you to where you're supposed to be at the moment you're supposed to be there" before cutting to M's aforementioned dialogue.

• Jossed.

Agent O was working in the London office.

This is why she isn't seen until the third film. She transferred there at some point prior to 1997 only coming back to replace Zed.

If the villain is an Earthling, his goal will be to break the masquerade.

With his own Insane Troll Logic, he believes that revealing the existence of aliens will make humans set aside their differences, by giving them other sapient lifeforms to hate other than each other.

• And that will be because he read (and watched) Watchmen way too many times. He'll also try to deliver an Ozymandias-like line, to humorous effect.
• Jossed.

H and M will make some reference to Norse Mythology, as a Shout-Out to their Marvel roles.

• Given he throws a hammer at an alien in the trailer and all...
  • Confirmed. H throws a hammer at one point, and M is called a Queen.

The agents that neuralyzed M’s parent, were J and one of his rotating partners after K retired.

• It's unlikely a veteran like K would have made the mistake of assuming the child was asleep. However J was still relatively new and a bit cocky at that point.
• Jossed. They're different Agents.

Post-release Theories

H and M will meet K and J in the next film.

• Given the poor reception, I feel that Men In Black 5 will be an Un-Reboot focusing on J and K.

Gustave Eiffel was a long-lived alien

He's said to a Men In Black founder even though Agent K said the in the first movie that the MIB was founded in the 1950s. Maybe Eiffel lived for decades after his publicised death and helped found the Men In Black in the fifties. He either built the portal independently or added it to the Eiffel Tower later with M.I.B. blessing.

The Men In Black have had multiple foundings

The nature of keeping a global thing so secret as the Men In Black do is that until you have a really developed global surveillance system, it's fairly likely that multiple groups will have similar encounters and a similar reaction leading to multiple MIB-likes running around until they stumble upon one another in the course of investigating supposed alien activity. The 50s founding mentioned in the first movie may simply have been the most relevant one to whom it was said and where it was said (because the organisation it founded became the American branch of the MIB, which of course is the branch that K works directly for and that recruits J, and K was part of its first alien contact). This is how the MIB could have been founded in the 50s yet also have had Gustave Eiffel as a founder: he didn't found that MIB, he helped found a French (or maybe Franco-British, or European) MIB-like organisation in the 1880s that would join up with the Americans some time in the 60s to form the modern MIB we see in the films.