Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ takes the audience on an adrenaline-fuelled ride where a couple who work together as secret agents of an international spy agency have to figure out their personal relationship while trying to stay alive in the high-risk missions assigned to them. While the missions take up a lot of space in the story, we also get to see John and Jane Smith in their guarded as well as vulnerable moments. The nature of their job makes them keep things from each other, but slowly, they start to open up and evolve as a couple. The Company provides them with everything to make them look like a proper family, and having a pet together is certainly one of the things that helps maintain the cover. But their lifestyle also puts the things they love in danger, and their pet, Max, has to pay the price. SPOILERS AHEAD
Max the Cat Becomes Collateral in a Gunfight
On the first day of their job, Jane and John move into the house and find a cat accompanying them. John is surprised, but Jane comments that it must have come with the house, which seems like a good enough cover story for the cat. However, the next day, following an assignment, when the couple comes back home, John says that they should name the cat. Jane calls it “Max,” but John thinks it’s more of a dog name, and a cat’s name should be something regal, like “Samuel.” When Jane refuses to call the cat “Samuel,” he offers a compromise, but she stands her ground about “Max,” which is when John realizes that the cat actually belongs to Jane. She brought it with her from whatever past life she left behind when she took over Jane Smith’s identity.
As her and John’s relationship goes through ups and downs, the cat remains a constant in their life. John hates the cat and is most likely also allergic to it because, in one scene, Jane mentions how he must take shots for his allergy. Despite his repulsion for the animal, John puts up with it because it has become a part of their family now. Moreover, he also believes that Jane possibly loves the cat more than him, and she would definitely kill him if he tried to get rid of it.
In the final episode, when Jane receives the order to kill John after another failed mission, she is attacked by someone. They fire at her, and while she finds cover in time, poor Max is not so lucky. The cat takes one of the bullets and dies before Jane can figure out how to save him. The cat’s death comes as a major blow to her because, despite the problems in their relationship, Jane hadn’t actually thought about going through with Hihi’s orders to kill John. In fact, she wanted to talk to him about it, but she didn’t realize that a completely different game was in play at the time.
In reality, it was the other John and Jane Smith (played by Wagner Moura and Parker Posey) who’d opened gunfire on her. John and Jane #2 worked super high-risk assignments, which meant that they were ordered to kill other Johns and Janes, who had either defected or were thinking about it. They’d mentioned this to John and Jane #1 during their double date, but at that time, #1 was still in the early days of their work and didn’t think about the fact that one day, Hihi might send #2 after them as well.
In the end, the #2 couple plays a card, which makes the #1 couple think that their partner is trying to kill them. It is only when they’ve come clean to each other about their true feelings and emotions that it comes to light that John and Jane #2 are behind the carnage that claimed the life of Max.
Read More: Mr. & Mrs. Smith: All Filming Locations of the TV Show
