| “ | You lost, you insignificant little speck! You wasted 20 years of my time, and for what? The complete destruction of the Zarthas, all because you went mushy! | „ |
| ~ Serleena gloating that she’s seemingly succeeded in causing the Zarthas to go extinct. |
Yikes, what a gruesome way to go…
Greetings, humans. I, Pixarfan1234 am here to deliver a message… that I am more than excited to discuss a hot, yet deadly babe that I once thought to not count but with a refresher… I am now making a good case. I hope you appreciate it, lest I come and exterminate you all from the face of your miserable, wretched Earth.
What’s the Work?[]
Men In Black II (MIIB) is a inferior 2002 sequel to the 1997 Men in Black film based on the Malibu comics of the same name by Lowell Cunningham. This time, Agent “J” Jay and the MIB faces a huge crisis when an infamous feminine alien lands on Earth to look for the mysterious Light of Zartha. J, realizing that his old partner K might contain the clues necessary to fend off the invader, looks around for him while falling in love with pizza shop worker Laura Vasquez: who is more than what she seems.
Who is Serleena and What Has She Done?[]
Serleena Xath is introduced as the leader of the Kylothians. Having been involved in a war with the Zarthans for five decades, they are forced to escape from her in 1978. The princess of the race, Lauranna gives the Light of Zartha to the MIB: they decided it was best to move the Light for safe keeping. Serleena is then withheld by the Men in Black when she came for them: allowing the Zarthans to travel away. Serleena, being pissed at this, simply goes to her ship and starts to obliterate planets that don’t contain the Light, promising to continue to do so to any and all until she gets the Light for herself. Serleena is able to destroy about six (as shown in the title sequence) in creative ways such as shattering one, setting another ablaze, etc.
Serleena enters the Earth around July 2002 as a plant-based lifeform and terrifies a dog named Harvey before finding a Victoria’s Secret magazine featuring actress Lara Flynn Boyle on the front cover. Serleena manipulates her shape to resemble her. Serleena then swallows a stranger who was about to drag her to the bushes to do… unsavory things to her before throwing him up and taking his wear because she doesn’t want to walk half-naked around the city.
Serleena encounters her right-hand men: Scrad and Charlie in an apartment. Serleena forcibly places her plant tentacles on their ears to get information on the Light when they initially don’t recognize her and she calls them a “idiot” before leaving to Ben’s Pizza. Serleena interrogates the owner, Ben who is an Zarthan and expresses anger for wasting her time for twenty-five years before cutting Ben in half with her tentacles.
Serleena invades the MIB headquarters by revealing her goods, with Scrad and Charlie pretending to suffer heart failure so that Serleena can defeat and kidnap all the agents/personnel except for J and K and releases the aliens who are captured to get K at all costs by searching a Denuralyzer: giving an incentive for whoever finds him first to have Earth and eventually switches out Scrad and Charlie for her old, secret partner Jarra. Scrad and Charlie then say to J that if he doesn’t give up K, Serleena would “kick his ass”.
Serleena kicks Chief Zed around and forces him to reveal K’s location but he refuses so she resorts to something else. Serleena unveils that if the Light of Zartha isn’t returned within midnight then it would go off, which would kill off all life on Earth and Zartha as well. Serleena has Jarra look for J as a deal and then unleashes Gatbot. Serleena in the past is revealed to have gunned down Lauranna, who was K’s wife in a fit of rage after the Light left Zartha.
Serleena finds out that Laura Vasquez is not only the Light, but also K and Lauranna’s young daughter and ties up Frank the Pug with rope to make sure he doesn’t tell J and K anything important before sending Jarra to injure the Worms, withhold Laura, and send her to Zartha while he prepares Serleena’s ship so that she can return to Kyloth. Serleena then notices J and K and then seizes the latter to taunt him about Lauranna’s demise, with K saying he should’ve disintegrated her when he had the chance.
Serleena is vaporized by J but reforms and bumps into their car to finish them off across New York City. J and K however lure her into Jeffrey the Worm and she is seemingly eaten. Serleena then uses this to her advantage and consumes Jeffrey from the inside out before showing her true form as she reaches for Laura’s craft and almost devours J before he and K blast her apart: saving the galaxy from her evil.
Heinous Standards?[]
Serleena isn’t the only nasty threat in the film series:
Edgar the Bug kills sums of people, including his archenemy Rosenberg and seeks to finish his war with the Arquillians at the expense of Earth while plotting to start more across the galaxy.
Boris the Animal not only helps the Boglodites in wiping out the Arcanans, but goes on a killing spree for the remaining few who escaped from their uninhabitable planets as a result of the Boglodites’ notorious history, allows his own girlfriend Lily who freed him to suffocate in the vacuums of space and casually offs another prisoner who wanted to come along with Boris, plots to shut down the ArcNet shield and allow his race to basically murder through Earth, and finally shoots Jay’s father when he was a young child/kid for K besting him.
High-T who, while having the lowest kill count does have the highest scale: intending for the rest of the Hive to cause the “downfall” of everything and everyone in the universe after Earth is done and over with and pretended to love Agent H as a son before callously betraying him.
How does Serleena stick out? Well, she has the highest on-screen body count: she explodes about six planets within the beginning alone which are all inhabited simply because the Light wasn’t there… meaning billions of lives were wasted, she’s got a few brutal deaths by her bare hands such as targeting and firing at Lauranna, proceeding to boast about it to K when they meet again years later, splitting Ben into two when he doesn’t cooperate with what she’s saying, trapping nearly all the the MIB agents in cells, injuring several Worms, torturing Scrad/Charlie and Chief Zed, eating Jeff’s insides, and ultimately seeking to doom both Zartha and Earth and later rule over the galaxy. Serleena herself is more than ready to burn through as many worlds as possible until the Light appears so that means that if she hadn’t realized Earth was the one, she definitely would’ve continued to annihilate them. All put together, I’d say she just manages to clear the bar for the movies.
Mitigating Factors?[]
Serleena does get involved in some funny scenes such as her remark to Creepy after munching him down, conquering with her “mammary glands”, etc. But all of that belies a childish, cruel psychopath whose goals, killings, and torments of (mostly) innocent people are treated with the appropriate gravitas. Her final words (before reverting back to her plant-based self) being a resigned “Oops” isn’t something I would use to dock off points as Alpha from the MIB cartoon also says something similar before dying.
Serleena also engages in friendly-enough banter with Jarra and teases about bringing him whatever he desires but it’s pragmatic as she needs him as a crucial setpiece so that she can win and shows zero care when he perishes thanks to J. Serleena then seems to be in love with Zed, calling him “feisty” but has no qualms with assaulting him to have him make a choice to sell out K and Zed is visibly repulsed by her advances so I’m not inclined to treat this as a disqualification.
Serleena is mentioned by the director, Barry Sonnenfeld to love her children back on her origin residence but she never displays nor mentions them at any point so it’s just Word of God, as is she’s treated as the scum of the universe and she knows it.
Final Verdict?[]
A eager yes to one of my childhood crushes!