Agent J

• 1. Introduction

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  Agent J was born James Darrell Edwards III on the 19th of October, 1965, on the island of Manhattan. The organization he would eventually join erased that entire biography when he signed on. His identity documents were deleted. His civilian record vanished. Will Smith played the character across three Men in Black films. Keith Diamond voiced him in the animated series. Beneath all of that is a story the franchise keeps pulling back toward. The life behind the erased file was already entangled with the alien war J was about to enter. And the partner who recruited him had already crossed paths with J's family decades before J knew any of it.

• 2. The Blank Dossier

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  Twenty-eight years of James Darrell Edwards's life are almost entirely undocumented. The records that survived his entry into the Men in Black are narrow. He had been a member of the New York City Police Department sometime in or before the 1990s. He was a fan of rap music and video games. A line of dialogue from Men in Black II suggests he owned a Game Boy. Before his recruitment, he had a membership at Gold's Gym.

  Colonel James Darrell Edwards Jr. fills in some of what the personal file cannot. J's father, a United States Army colonel, was working security at Kennedy Space Center for the Apollo 11 launch when an alien named Boris the Animal killed him. He had helped Agent K stop a chain of events that would otherwise have ended with K dead and a large-scale alien invasion of Earth. Men in Black 3 would later reveal that K's recognition of J at the moment of recruitment ran deeper than a police file. Their first encounter had happened in the 1960s.

• 3. Recruited on the Street

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  K found his next agent by watching Officer Edwards run. A swift, wall-climbing alien was moving through New York City on foot. Edwards kept pace. He never stopped. K saw in that refusal exactly the instinct the Men in Black needed. The enrollment that followed gave the former detective a single new designation: Agent J. He had been suspicious at first but decided to join.

  K had a habit of calling his new partner by diminutive names: son, sport, slick, kid. J didn't like any of them but got used to it. His energy and genuine enthusiasm stood out against the organization's practiced blankness.

  Jeebs, a pawnshop owner J had previously dismissed as a buyer of stolen goods, turned out to be an alien. So did Frank the Pug. Frank was a dog whose mundane appearance hid an alien intelligence. J also delivered a squid-like alien baby during this period.

  The Arquillians issued the first major test. That species had lost a galaxy and demanded its return. An alien bug was trying to leave Earth with it. The Arquillians were prepared to destroy the planet if they didn't get it back. During the confrontation that followed, K was swallowed by the bug while reaching for his weapon. From inside the creature, K fired and killed it. A morgue worker named Dr. Laurel Weaver, portrayed by Linda Fiorentino, delivered the killing blow. The bug had kidnapped her. She was also J's love interest during this period. When the mission ended, K asked J to use the neuralyzer on him, the organization's memory-erasing device. K wanted to retire. J honored the request. Dr. Laurel Weaver took on the designation Agent L and became J's new partner. The partnership would not survive into the next film.

• 4. The Partner Problem

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  Agent L returned to her career as a morgue worker at some point between the first and second film. J was left without a partner and developed a habit that frustrated his superiors. He neuralyzed them. Partner after partner was subjected to the memory-erasing procedure and sent home, each one judged unfit for the work.

  Zed, J's superior at the Men in Black, eventually confronted him directly. The most pointed case involved an agent known as T. J pushed T into admitting that he had joined the organization to be a hero. The Men in Black operated in total secrecy. Heroism requires recognition. T was neuralyzed. Zed told J to stop.

  The Krelon were an alien species J stopped from invading Earth on his watch. K, in a rare editorial moment, described them as the "Backstreet boys of the universe." J also stopped an alien criminal named Jarra from stealing Earth's ozone layer. By the time of the second film, J had earned a reputation as one of the most highly regarded agents inside the organization. Boris the Animal would eventually escape from prison. The confrontation that followed would force J to reckon with everything K had been keeping from him.

• 5. The Return of Boris

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  By 2012, Agent J carried the rank designation simply called "Men in Black." He continued working alongside K but remained frustrated by K's habit of withholding information. K claimed the secrecy was for J's protection. J did not find that convincing.

  Boris the Animal, the alien criminal responsible for events J's family had already experienced, escaped from prison. He traveled back in time to 1969 and murdered a younger version of Agent K. The consequence was severe. K was the agent responsible for establishing a force field that would permanently protect Earth from invasion by the Boglodites, Boris's species. Murdered in 1969, K never got the chance. That protection would never exist. The invasion would proceed unchecked. The world as J knew it was at stake.

  The animated series would give J a different context. In that version of events, the organization never quite stopped treating him like a newcomer.

• 6. The Animated Agent

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  In Men in Black: The Series, J was treated as a permanent rookie. He was rarely allowed to drive an official Men in Black vehicle. Many secrets were kept from him. He was not permitted to handle certain equipment. He remained partnered with K throughout.

  The Noisy Cricket, J's standard-issue weapon, received his personal attention. He attached a silencer to reduce its noise. One episode, titled "The J Is For James Syndrome," offered a glimpse of his life before the organization. When the Men in Black briefly terminated J's employment, he went to live with his aunt, a woman named Rose. She was known for making meatloaf for the two of them at dinner.

  Men in Black: Alien Attack at Universal Studios Florida placed J in an interactive format the films could not provide. In Men in Black: International, he appeared only as a painting hanging in the office of a character named High-T. In a Japanese anime called Waiting in the Summer, a character named Ichika Takatsuki mentions J by name. She is afraid of being captured by him. The name, in that context, needed no explanation.