Warning: Major spoilers for Mr. & Mrs. Smith season 1 below!
Paul Dano’s role in Amazon’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a mysterious one and uses prior knowledge of the actor’s work against the audience. While Amazon’s adaptation shares the same title as the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt film, the Mr. & Mrs. Smith show and movie have no links to each other. The latter was a glossy, big-budget blockbuster starring two impossibly gorgeous people, but the series is a more grounded, emotionally honest remix of the basic idea. Mr. & Mrs. Smith cast Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as “John” and “Jane,” two spies paired together by a mysterious agency.
One element Mr. & Mrs. Smith shares with the movie is keeping the villain’s identity a mystery and, for a time, the series doesn’t appear to have a central antagonist, with the Smiths’ boss “Hihi” only interacting via text. Over time, Hihi penalizes the couple for failing mission objectives, with three fails seeing them targeted for termination during the finale. Audiences expecting to learn who Hihi is are in for a surprise though.
Mr & Mrs Smith Uses Paul Dano’s Past Villain Roles To Make Him The Biggest Season 1 Suspect
Mr. & Mrs. Smith season 1 has plenty of guest appearances like John Turturro or Sarah Paulson, but the most prominent guest star is Paul Dano as the Smith’s neighbor. Dano only makes a few brief appearances throughout the season, so it’s possible to forget about him entirely until the finale arrives. Given Dano’s past playing roles like The Riddler in The Batman, he’s the most obvious suspect to be revealed as Hihi. Since the show is all about subverting the genre, Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s finale “A Breakup” reveals Dano isn’t a villain at all.
This neighbor isn’t an enemy agent or Hihi, and Dano’s character is actually called Harris and is a real estate analyst for Sotheby’s. After John finds surveillance photos in Harris’ house of him and Jane, Harris reveals he’s obsessed with their home as he doesn’t understand how “software engineers” could afford to purchase and combine two historical brownstones. He calls their home his “Moby Dick” and badly wants to sell it. Of course, viewers familiar with Dano’s roles would peg him as the inevitable villain, so the reveal of his true nature is like a punchline to a season-long gag.
Mr & Mrs Smith’s Real Villain Reveal Is So Much Better Than Paul Dano’s Red Herring Character
Given this misdirection, audiences will likely put the idea of a true villain aside, especially during John and Jane’s epic shootout minutes later. After they’ve gotten the aggression out and have reconciled, Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s finale reveals the friendly “High-Risk” Smiths – played by Wagner Moura and Parker Posey – are the ones trying to kill them is a real surprise. They reveal their job is labelled “Extremely High-Risk” since it involves killing other Smiths, and they’ve been trying to manipulate Glover’s John and Erskine’s Jane into offing each other.
Paul Dano’s Harris serves as a red herring during Mr. & Mrs. Smith and plays on audience expectations and knowledge of his other credits. It’s genuinely refreshing that Harris isn’t at all what John – and by extension, viewers – are expecting him to be, and underlines how much fun the showrunners had toying with the traditional spy story.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a TV adaptation of the 2005 film starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine take on the lead roles for the series as spies who are placed in an arranged marriage for an undercover mission only to develop real feelings for each another.
- Cast
- Donald Glover , Maya Erskine , Paul Dano , John Turturro , Michaela Coel
- Seasons
- 1
- Creator(s)
- Donald Glover , Francesca Sloane
- Writers
- Francesca Sloane , Donald Glover , Yvonne Hana Yi
- Streaming Service(s)
- Prime Video
