The companies also seem to serve different functions. Jolie and Pitt’s characters in the film work solely as assassins, in a job that’s akin to the second pair of Smith’s “super high risk” work in the new series. That pair, played by Wagner Moura and Parker Posey, seem like the series’ most overt reference to the original film, as they’ve been through marital high and low points and work primarily as contract killers. That being said, they still work for the same company, and were matched together by the entity they know as Supe – whereas the original “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” had no mention of arranged relationships.
Most of all, though, quality seems to be the difference between Hihi and the agencies referenced in the original film. Hihi acts as a sort of all-knowing entity, yet it also reminds me of a crappy, AI-driven startup. The company uses a basic chat interface, seems to auto-generate responses almost instantly in most cases, recruits middling spies who already have lots of work experience from past agencies, and cares much more about data and details than any sort of context surrounding the Smiths’ missions. Several of the show’s targets are extremely wealthy, but so far we don’t know why any of them needed to be taken out. Could the entire company be algorithmically driven, a la Peacock’s “Mrs. Davis”?