The 2024 action-comedy film on Amazon Prime, My Spy: The Eternal City, brings back wrestler-turned-actor Dave Bautista to the screens as he reprises his role as a toughened spy with a soft heart from 2020’s My Spy film. The plot this time has the protagonist, JJ, travel to Italy with his adopted daughter Sophie as part of her school’s choir trip. But the spy soon has to get back to his old ways when the CIA receives a serious threat and a close friend’s family is kidnapped. Overall, The Eternal City lacks content and style and might be adequate only for a light, mindless dose of entertainment.

What Is The Film About?

The 2020 film My Spy first introduced us to the character of JJ, a muscular former soldier of the US Special Forces who had recently started his new profession as a CIA operative. During his adventures at the time, JJ had come close to a woman named Kate and her young daughter Sophie, both of whom he had eventually developed feelings for. JJ and Kate got together, and he became a father figure to Sophie, although no legalities or official relationship were enforced. At the beginning of The Eternal City, JJ is seen aboard a private jet along with a teenager named Ryan Kerr, a high schooler who has also become a music sensation because of his recent performance at the People’s Choice Awards. But Ryan’s life is soon threatened when the sole air hostess on the plane turns out to be an assassin sent to kill him, and JJ has to step in. As it becomes difficult even for the veteran spy to tackle the situation, Sophie, now a teenager, flies in with a jetpack and rescues the men from the jet. But as JJ refuses to give her permission to go to prom and Ryan says that he wants to go to prom with someone else, she throws both of them into the air and kills them. This weird twist is enough for Sophie to wake up from her fantastical dream—the whole private jet scene—and she has to quickly get ready for school.

It has been quite a few years that JJ has been living with Sophie and Kate, but the teenager is not very happy with how hard it sometimes is to maintain schedules and go for regular workout sessions. JJ has been training Sophie for any unforeseen situations, and he is not at par with the kind of life that a high school teenager wants to live. Therefore, hanging out with friends or chatting with them on social media apps is a waste of time for him, and there is a growing wedge between the two. As Kate is away on a professional trip to Rwanda, JJ has to handle the girl all by himself, and Sophie’s statement about him not being her father hurts the man. JJ is losing his edge in the professional sphere as well, as he wants to accept only desk jobs for the CIA despite his expertise being needed in tough field jobs. He keeps turning down the offers made by his boss, David Kim, and ignores his tech operator Bobbi’s enthusiasm to work on such missions so that he can concentrate on being a good father figure to Sophie.

Around this time, Sophie is selected to be part of a choir group that is to go to Italy and perform in Vatican City. JJ agrees only on the condition that he will accompany her and sign up as an official chaperone for the school trip. But this new role is even more difficult for him, as he struggles to manage the tech-savvy teenagers and the strict rules set by the new vice principal, Nancy Buck, who is also a part of the trip. But the tour to Italy goes seriously wrong when Sophie’s best friend Collin, who also happens to be the son of CIA boss Kim, is kidnapped and kept hostage.

Who Is Bishop Crane?

When Collin is kidnapped, Sophie coincidentally catches part of the act on a video she had been taking, and in this, the face of the man driving the van used for the kidnapping can be seen. When she shows it to JJ, he can immediately realize who this crook is and learn more about him. Bishop Crane had once been a member of the Special Forces, too, along with JJ, but he later deflected out of greed for money and then got involved in kidnappings, extortions, and other such crimes as a private contractor. In fact, Crane and JJ had once worked together on a mission in Colombia, where they were supposed to take down a drug cartel. Although Crane was part of the elite unit working on this mission, he betrayed the entire Special Forces unit by siding with the cartel for money, and everyone except for JJ was killed in the incident. The incident still haunts JJ to this day, as he continues to keep a photograph of his entire unit beside his bed.

Incidentally, we also see Bishop Crane getting called into action towards the beginning of My Spy: The Eternal City, much before JJ and his CIA friends know about his involvement. At the time, the CIA was working on recovering the locations of old Soviet suitcase-nuke, i.e., nuclear bombs that were manufactured inside small suitcases to make them portable. These bombs had been made by the Soviet Union and had been spread all across Europe in an effort to scare its political rivals. The codes required to activate these bombs had already been found by NATO back in 1973, which was also probably the reason why the bombs were never detonated, but the suitcases could never be traced. At the beginning of the film, a CIA operative named Christina breaks into a Soviet facility and accesses a record about the location of these suitcase-nuke, which she copies onto a thumb drive as well. All of it is part of the CIA’s attempt to find and defuse the nuclear bombs so that terrorists or others will not be able to get their hands on them.

While the plan is for Christina to hand in the thumb drive at the CIA facility in Germany, she never arrives at the place, and there is no trace of her either. This is because, at this time, someone had hired Bishop Crane’s services and sent him after Christina to collect the thumb drive. It is Crane who kills the woman and hides her body, which is part of his expertise as well. This means that someone else, the one who had hired Crane, had also been keeping an eye on Christina when she sneaked into the Soviet facility, hoping that she would access the locations of the bombs and then they would snoop in and collect them.

Who Is The Mastermind Behind The Terrorist Plan?

The terrorist plan, or at least the CIA’s investigation of it, begins with the kidnapping of Collin in Florence, and he is made the target because of his father, the CIA’s head of covert operations, David Kim. Once the boy is made a hostage, Kim receives a blackmail call that informs him of his son’s situation and then asks him to go to a specific location at the Colosseum in Rome. He brings along Bobbi as well, and when they unite with JJ and Sophie, the team realizes that the kidnappers want them to break into a NATO base in Aviano to access the intercepted nuclear bomb codes. As Kim is a top CIA operative, he will have permission to enter the NATO base, and the terrorists want to get hold of the codes through him. The characters have no option but to follow the orders, and while Kim uses his real identity, the others pretend to be part of his family. They are able to get the codes and leave the place, but information about them coming to the NATO base reaches the CIA headquarters back in the USA, and Kim is believed to have gone rogue.

After the codes are secured, JJ and Kim are given a coordinate where Collin will supposedly be handed over to them, but it turns out to be an ambush to kidnap them. It is now that the real perpetrator and the mastermind behind the terrorist plan are revealed, and it happens to be the new school vice principal, Nancy Buck. She had been planning the attack for a very long time and had meticulously approached every step of it, which included becoming the new vice principal of the school as well. Nancy was once married to the love of her life, Nicolai Gagarin, who was an oligarch with numerous accusations of corruption against him. When the USA and its G7 allies decided to intervene and freeze the assets of a group of oligarchs upon suspecting that they were funding terrorist activities, Nicolai’s business was also affected. As a result, the man took his own life, and the grieving Nancy took an oath of revenge.

Therefore, it is not any particular individual that Nancy wants to hurt by blowing up the suitcase-nuke, but she wants to send a message to countries like the USA. In order for her plan to work, she needed a suitcase-nuke and its code, and it was for this reason that she started to follow the lives of JJ and his boss Kim. She planted herself in their lives by becoming the vice principal at the school that both their respective children attended and then arranged for the school’s choir team to be selected for an event in Vatican City. This ensured that she would be able to kidnap Collin and extort Kim into stealing the detonation codes from the NATO base, and this was her elaborate plan of revenge. The final step of the terrorist attack is to detonate the nuclear bomb underneath Vatican City while representatives from all the G7 countries are present. While this would scare the countries and add to Nancy’s notoriety, it is also very likely that she wants to conduct more such terrorist attacks with the other hidden suitcases in the future.

How Did JJ Defuse The Bomb In Time?

In My Spy: The Eternal City‘s ending, Nancy is able to find the bomb hidden inside the walls of a church, and she then takes it to the Vatican City. She is able to arm the explosives, too, before JJ and Bobbi arrive at the scene. JJ is initially unable to fight, as he is clearly out of practice, but Crane’s instigations finally work, and he is able to bring the situation under control. But both Nancy and Crane flee the spot, as the former wants to protect herself from the bomb when it detonates, and the latter carries the remote controller for it. Bobbi’s tech skills are not up to the mark to be able to defuse the bomb, and so JJ goes after Crane, chasing the villain on a motorcycle across the city.

As can be expected from a usual action comedy like this, My Spy: The Eternal City ends on a positive note, as JJ is revealed to have defused the bomb just in time, despite almost drowning. The Vatican City is saved, although the public does not realize what has been going on, while Kim and JJ are hailed as heroes by the CIA. Nancy’s effort to run is marred by Collin’s intelligent intervention, who had managed to escape earlier. He is able to keep her occupied while the police come and arrest her. Because of JJ’s injuries, he has to be taken to the hospital for a basic check, and Sophie now wants to come along. She states that JJ is her father, which makes him immensely happy, and their relationship reaches a full circle.

In My Spy: The Eternal City‘s credits scene, Kim is seen celebrating his recent marriage with Bobbi, and their friends also join the ceremony marking the special event.