Merlin

## Hamish Mycroft

### Status

Deceased - Lured away soldiers at Poppy Land, then blew himself and them up with a landmine

## Appearances

### Last

*Kingsman: The Golden Circle*

"*Take me home, country roads!*"
― Singing right before he dies
**Hamish Mycroft**, also known as **Merlin**, was a Kingsman agent. He was the one who oversaw the testing of the Kingsman candidates and was the technical expert of the organization.

## *Kingsman: The Secret Service*

### 1997

In 1997, Merlin along with Galahad was on a training mission in the Middle East with trainees Lee Unwin and James Spencer (candidates for the position of Lancelot at the Kingsman Agency). While they were holding a soldier captive for information, he pulled a grenade pin and Lee sacrificed himself by jumping onto the soldier, covering the explosion, and saving his surrounding team.

### Recruitment

17 years later, Merlin, Harry and the other members of Kingsman were tasked with finding a replacement Lancelot when Spencer was killed during a failed rescue mission of Professor James Arnold in Argentina.

Merlin oversaw the training of the candidates so that one of them might become Lancelot. The tests included filling the sleeping quarters of the trainees with water and seeing their reaction (after which he praised Roxy and Charlie for their quick thinking and Eggsy for being able to deal with it, though chastised all the candidates for not working together), a written test, a sky diving test and a test of faith to Kingsman. Through the training, only Eggsy and Roxy were left. As part of one of the tests, he sent Eggsy to see Arthur while Merlin himself had Roxy. Merlin (like Arthur was doing with Eggsy) told Roxy to shoot her dog, which she did (though it was revealed the bullets were actually blank as part of one of the tests) and got her the position of Lancelot.

### Valentine's Attack

     Merlin witnessed Harry going undercover at the South Glade Mission Church and was shocked when the latter began killing the people in the church and then was supposedly killed by Richmond Valentine. After Eggsy told Merlin and Roxy about texts Arthur (who had sided with Valentine) was getting, he and Eggsy headed to Valentine's headquarters via a Kingsman Jet while Roxy took out one of Valentine's satellites. Merlin tried to hack into Valentine's systems, only to find that Valentine had a biometric scanner. After he got Eggsy away from Valentine's guards and then equipped Eggsy to fight him, he and Merlin both ended up being surrounded by Valentine's forces. This led Merlin to being forced into activating all of the implants Valentine had put into his supporters, causing their heads to explode. After Eggsy stopped Valentine, Merlin saw him head to Princess Tilde's cell (the code for which Merlin gave to Eggsy) and get into bed with her.

## *Kingsman: The Golden Circle*

After he directed Eggsy to a safe place where he was able to defeat Charlie's colleagues and then through a sewage pipe where Eggsy was forced to go through to turn up on time for a special thing he couldn't be late for, Merlin debriefed Eggsy and told him that Charlie had barely survived his implant being destroyed. Unlike every other agent save for Eggsy, Merlin wasn't killed when Kingsman was destroyed by the people Charlie had defected to as they didn't think he had much importance since he was "mere staff". He and Eggsy then went wine shopping and began drinking in honour of the fallen Kingsman, which led him drunk and sobbing. Eggsy soon noticed the whiskey they were drinking was made in Kentucky and that the 'K' in Kentucky was circled so that it resembled the Kingsman emblem, which led them to a distillery and a secret base.

After Merlin tried to break into what he thought was the entrance to the base, the two were discovered by Tequila, a member of Statesman (Kingsman's American counterpart), who questioned them. Eggsy tried to tell him the truth that they were from Kingsman, but Tequila refused to believe them and knocked them unconscious. Tequila later had the two tied up, still interrogating them and accused them of pulling off a rescue mission, revealing Harry was still alive. After Ginger Ale revealed the two were telling the truth, Tequila apologised and welcomed them to Stateman. Merlin and Eggsy attempted to reunite with Harry, only to find he didn't remember them due to some amnesia caused by the trauma Valentine shooting him caused.

Merlin later tried to work with Ginger to retrieve Harry's memories, only to be unsuccessful at first. After Eggsy was able to do so, Merlin reunited with Harry. He later went to a bar where he and Eggsy gave him some new gear and found that Harry was still dealing with some after affects of his memory being restored. After Eggsy informed that Whiskey had been shot by Harry, Merlin thought that it was also an after affect and tried to question him of his memory. When he, Harry and Eggsy led the final fight towards Poppy Adams, he equipped Eggsy with a weaponised brief case, Harry with a new weaponised umbrella and himself with a machete.

In Cambodia, when invading Poppy Land, Eggsy accidentally stepped on one of Poppy's landmines. Merlin sprayed a canister which freezed the detonation temporarily. However, once Eggsy lifted his foot off the mine, Merlin suddenly stepped on it. The effect of the spray by that point was diminishing and the canister was empty. Merlin decided to sacrifice himself to save both Eggsy's and Hart's lives whilst killing a few of Poppy's guards, by singing 'Take me Home, Country Roads' before stepping off the mine.

## Relationships

### Allies

* Kingsman - Teammates
	+ Harry Hart/Galahad - Friend and Colleague
	+ Lee Unwin - Former Student
	+ James Spencer/Lancelot - Former Student and Former Colleague
	+ Gary "Eggsy" Unwin/Galahad - Former Student, Friend and Colleague
	+ Roxy Morton/Lancelot - Former Student, Friend and Colleague
	+ Amelia
	+ Sir Giles/Arthur - Former Leader
* Statesman
	+ Tequila - Former Enemy
	+ Champagne
	+ Jack Daniels/Whiskey
	+ Ginger Ale - Friend

### Enemies

* Richmond Valentine
* Gazelle
* Charles "Charlie" Hesketh - Former Student
* Chester King/Arthur - Former Leader and Ally, turned Enemy
* Poppy Adams

## Trivia

* Merlin's glasses have a correction, as he wears them all the time.
* Merlin seems to have a liking towards country music, as the song he sung as a distraction before he died, was "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and his favourite singer is John Denver.
* Merlin seems to be right-handed, even if he doesn't wear a Kingsman ring we can notice he wears all his weapons in his right hand.
* For not being a full-fledged Kingsman agent, Merlin is still very adept in combat and proficient with weapons. The fact that he was present at the attack on the castle in the initial movie indicates that he might, in fact, have been a field agent who was later downgraded, either voluntarily or otherwise, to trainer and technician – or 'mere staff', as he himself put it.
* His death is very similar to that of Malcolm Merlyn in the TV series *Arrow*; Both step on a land mine in someone else's place, and then set it off, blowing themselves up along with multiple enemies. Their names are also similar.
* It was intended for Merlin to have been revealed to have survived the landmine he was on - though at the cost of his legs - and crawl into the diner once Harry and Eggsy had stopped Whiskey. However, the producers believed that this would've just taken away the feeling that Merlin had died in a final stand and in sacrificing his life for Eggsy, which led to this being cut out.
* Merlin's real name "Mycroft" is ironic, since Merlin's actor Mark Strong worked on the 2009 film adaption of Sherlock Holmes alongside Robert Downey, Jr., who starred with Valentine's actor Samuel L. Jackson on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
* Merlin's real name is Hamish, as he'd told Ginger Ale in the novelisation of the second movie.
* Originally, there was a romance between Ginger Ale and Merlin that was cut for time in the second movie. However, this appears to still be apparent in the novelisation.