History Main / Hex

* For the game, see ''VideoGame/{{Hex}}''

* For the 80s Horror film, see ''Film/{{Hex}}''

* If someone was trying to link to a {{Curse}}, change it to that page.

* For the game, see ''VideoGame/{{Hex}}''

[[redirect:Series/{{Hex}}]]

[[redirect:Series/{{Hex}}]

[[redirect:Series/{{Hex}}]]

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hex_1208.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:From left to right: Thelma, Ella, Azazeal and Cassie]]
Originally marketed as The British ''Series/{{Buffy|the Vampire Slayer}}'', which was true in much the same way that ''{{Coupling}}'' was the British ''{{Friends}}'' (which, again, was part of the early hype). ''Hex'' told the story of a blonde schoolgirl named Cassie who gets supernatural powers with which to fight demons, but has her style cramped by her falling in love with the leader of the aforesaid demons, Azazeal, discovering that her destiny is to give birth to his child, the Anti-Christ.

It had high production values, a pretty and talented cast, and an intriguing (if hardly original) premise. But the thing was... it wasn't as great as it could have been, running on twists and good dialogue and character emotion, but overflowing with plot holes.

And then the lead actress left, taking half the supporting cast with her as she did so.

It was then rapidly retooled into a show about a kickass red-headed immortal schoolgirl named Ella who has supernatural powers with which she fights demons. Unfortunately she was blind-sided by the Anti-Christ (Cassie's sprog Malachi)'s evil plans, the demons won, and the show's second (and final) season ended with the cast divided into the evil, the very dead, and the fleeing in terror. To call it a DownerEnding would be a gross understatement, especially as one of the three survivors was actually dead anyway. Although as it ends with the DefrostingIceQueen and JerkWithAHeartOfGold happily spooning with each other while the [[NonHumanSidekick wacky ghost]] claps her hands joyfully, none of them seem to be particularly bothered about the end of the world taking place just down the road.

In both seasons, Thelma the ghost was the heroine's sidekick and speaker of memorable quips.

Notable for characters who managed to be simultaneously GenreSavvy and TooDumbToLive.

On the other hand, it had Colin Salmon and MichaelFassbender in it. And they're always awesome.

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This show provides examples of:
* ActionGirl - Ella Dee (when she wasn't crazy), complete with BadassLongcoat.
* AdultsAreUseless - The asylum staff in particular. Plus a whole bunch of murders go completely unnoticed.
* AlphaBitch - Roxanne, before her character development in late Series 2
* TheAntichrist - Malachi.
* ArtifactOfDoom - The stone of Belial
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor - If Malachi grants it for you, you become his succubus or incubus.
* BigEater - Thelma gleefully abuses the fact that ghosts cannot gain weight.
* BlackComedyRape - Thelma can affect Cassie's dreams, and [[PowerPerversionPotential does so without her permission]]. Cassie wakes up furious and states that she's told her not to do that, and Thelma clearly finds the whole thing funny, saying that she didn't seem to mind at the time. She does it to Roxanne, too.
--> "Do you have any idea how frustrating it is being a lesbian ghost?"
* BondOneLiner - Ella, once or twice.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy - People Azazeal has possessed, especially Cassie in "Possession", and later people Malachi has turned into succubi and incubi, especially Leon in "Seven Deadly Sins".
* BringOutYourGayDead - Subverted somewhat by Thelma, taken to [[DeaderThanDead extremes]] by Maya.
** It is probably worth noting that ''every'' ghost in the series is gay.
* BritishBrevity - The first season was only 6 episodes. The second branched out to 13.
** DividedForPublication - The first season was originally written as a MiniSeries with three feature-length episodes, but each of the original episodes was split into two for broadcast.
* BumblingSidekick - Leon develops a complex about Ella seeing him as this.
* BuryYourGays - Parodied when Thelma first manifests as a ghost at her funeral. Taken to [[DeaderThanDead extremes]] by Maya. '''All''' of the characters who end up as ghosts in the show are gay.
--> '''Thelma:''' They're bloody loving this. Don't be a dyke or you'll end up topping yourself.
* ButICantBePregnant
* ButtMonkey - Leon at times. He gets to dress up as a nurse to bust Ella out of the asylum, and to be whipped by a BDSM fairy godmother.
* CannotSpitItOut - Several times.
* CharacterDevelopment - Leon and Roxanne both mature from having been shallow jerks.
** Azazeal becomes less ManipulativeBastard and more PapaWolf in the second season. However, because he wants Malachi to choose his own destiny, the forces of hell [[PutOnABus put him on a bus]] and send Mephistopheles to make sure the apocalypse goes as planned.
* TheChessmaster - Malachi has this written all over him. As do Azazeal and Mephistopheles at some points.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome - Peggy.
* CirclesOfHell: The traditional nine, apparently.
-->'''Mephistopheles:''' "Well, if you'd been on a permanent loop through the nine circles of hell, you wouldn't look too hot either."
* CloudCuckooLander - Ella, in the scariest possible way, while she was being {{mind rape}}d and shot full of liquid AntiMagic.
--> "She's my fairy godmother! She's got something nice for me!"
* ColdBloodedTorture - Azazeal, Ramiel and Perie inflict this on Max.
* CoolAndUnusualPunishment - Raphael gives Ella boils for fancying the guy she’s supposed to be killing. Mephistopheles makes Malachi go blind, [[spoiler: but this turns out to be a cunning plan to get him to sleep with her anyway despite her disfigurement]].
* DatingCatwoman
* DangerouslyGenreSavvy - Azazeal.
* DeadpanSnarker - Cassie, usually bouncing off poor Thelma. Also Mephistopheles (played by the fantastically deadpan Ronan Vibert).
* DecoyProtagonist - Cassie. Although this was more a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot.
* DefrostingIceQueen - Ella's character arc.
* DevilInPlainSight - The demons are fond of this...and with no small sense of irony either, taking on pious disguises such as priests and witchhunters.
* DissonantSerenity - Perie is so good at this that it comes all the way round and becomes something akin to a DeathGlare.
* DoggedNiceGuy - Felix. He gets [[spoiler: gutted by Baraquel]] for his trouble.
* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnFemale[=/=]DoubleStandardRapeSciFi - Thelma imposes a dream of making out with her on Cassie, and is implied to have gone much farther with Roxanne. This is played entirely for laughs.
* TheDragon - Ramiel, aka [[spoiler: Jez]]
* DrivenToSuicide - Subverted: Ella makes it look like Jez was driven to suicide after she kills him.
* EmotionsVsStoicism - A major theme of the series.
* FaceHeelTurn - Quite a few...
** Malachi (who despite being the Antichrist, starts off as more ChaoticNeutral) does this after he gets a taste of the power that mind-controlling people brings.
** [[spoiler: Jo and Cassie]] both succumb to their love for Azazeal, the former turning evil and the latter sacrificing herself to protect Malachi.
** Basically one of the major themes of this show is that LoveMakesYouCrazy. And sometimes [[LoveMakesYouEvil evil]] too.
* TheFairFolk - Perie the Faerie is... disturbing as well as evil.
* FallenPrincess - Ella is Type 1, Roxanne is Type 2
* FanService
* FetusTerrible
* FriendlyEnemy - Azazeal towards Ella, [[DangerouslyGenreSavvy but only to a point]].
* GlowingEyesOfDoom - Played with in the first season, where firelight causes demon eyes to appear bloodshot (as Thelma puts it, “manky eyed”). Played straight in the second season with Malachi and his succubi.
* GoodIsNotNice - Archangel Raphael. As Leon comments, “he’s a lot darker in real life”.
* GoodSmokingEvilSmoking - Virtually all of the demons smoke.
* GreatBigBookOfEverything - The Revelations of Orokiah, which Ella frequently refers to.
* HeelFaceTurn - [[spoiler: Mephistopheles]] after coming to admire Leon (presumably because of his undying devotion to Ella).
* HesBack - Ella in ''You Lose'', and she even namedrops it ("Didn't they tell you? I'm back!")
** Immediately subverted when Sariel floors her, leading to BadassInDistress, but this serves to highlight the fact that she does need Leon after all.
* HotForStudent - Roxanne and her art teacher in season 1, Roxanne and Jez in season 2.
* HulkingOut - Ramiel snaps back to his daemonic form a couple of times, usually when something has pissed him off.
* IdiotBall - All the heroes, passing it back and forth, but especially Cassie and Leon.
** ''Deeper Into Darkness'' is a particularly bad offender. [[spoiler: Thelma tries to tell Cassie that Troy is possessed and Cassie...accuses her of being jealous]].
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice - Ella shoots Perie full of hypodermic needles. Which is [[KarmicDeath suitably ironic]], seeing as how Perie had been posing as a nurse and injecting Ella with massive doses of [[KryptoniteFactor St John's Wort]].
* IncompatibleOrientation - Thelma is in love with Cassie, but Cassie is either deeply closeted or mostly straight.
* InformedFlaw - Thelma is said to be incapable of touching living things (though not inanimate objects, so she can eat and call a help line) and thus incapable of snuggling with Cassie, but is never shown trying to do so.
* InTheBlood
* IneffectualSympatheticVillain - Inverted with Raphael, who is ostensibly there to help the heroes but achieves precisely nothing (beyond a bit of snark) before [[spoiler: pulling an inexplicable AttemptedRape on Ella and disappearing]].
* KillItWithFire - Die, scary fairy, die!
* KryptoniteFactor - Both demons and Anointed Ones lose their powers if exposed to St John’s Wort. This becomes a plot point of several episodes.
* LargeHam - Jez, on occasion.
* LightningCanDoAnything - It can bring Anointed Ones back from the dead. Thus MagicalDefibrillator is weirdly justified [[spoiler: even though ultimately it is Thelma armed with Ella's volta that saves the day]].
** It also cures possessed people (resulting in a rather amusing episode where Thelma tries repeatedly to electrocute Cassie)
* LoveMakesYouCrazy - Arguably the central tenet of the show. Both heroines end up falling for their respective enemies, and love for [[spoiler: Cassie, and later Maya]] causes Thelma to betray Ella and help out the bad guys several times.
* LoveMakesYouEvil - The Nephilim and the Faeries, who were originally angels and the human women who tempted them from heaven.
* LoveRedeems: Mephistopheles of all people says this at the end: "I've traveled this cosmos long enough to know that there is only one thing worth fighting for, one thing that truly moves people, that makes them better than they are. And that is... Love".
* MagicalAbortion - A double subversion: it's an actual abortion...and Cassie doesn't get it because Azazeal talks the doctor into safely removing Malachi instead.
* ManipulativeBastard - Azazeal (mostly in season 1) and Malachi. Mephistopheles too on occasion, though he refers to it as "a touch of reverse psychology".
* MeaningfulName - "I called him Malachi. It means messenger."
** NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast - Azazeal and most of the Nephilim (Baraquel, Araquiel, Sariel, Ramiel). On the good side, Ella Dee, daughter of John Dee.
* MercyKill - Malachi grants this to [[spoiler: Max]].
* MindRape - Azazeal when he starts playing hardball. He did this offscreen to Cassie's mum causing her to become a BrokenBird, and onscreen to Jo, causing her to become evil. He also uses the Stone of Belial to inflict it on Ella.
* MoreThanMindControl - Malachi pulls this on the entire school.
* MsFanservice - Perie the Fairy
* NewTransferStudent
* NiceJobBreakingItHero - Thelma insisting that Cassie wears her mother's necklace because she thinks it will protect her, when actually it serves to blind her to the fact that Troy is possessed.
* NiceJobFixingItVillain - In an attempt to psychologically torture Thelma, Azazeal sends her back in time, allowing her to [[spoiler: rescue Ella from being burned alive]].
* NobleDemon - Mephistopheles seems to see the war with God to be about giving humans free will rather than hurting them. As such [[spoiler: he deliberately betrays Hell to save Leon.]]
* NoodleIncident - Ella’s previous boyfriend. Azazeal also alludes to previous encounters with her.
-->'''Azazeal:''' "You remember that time in Egypt? You know I still can't stand the sight of sand."
* NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization - Azazeal's attitude to sleeping with a possessed Cassie.
* OfCorsetsSexy - Ella.
* OurFairiesAreDifferent - Perie and the (unseen) rest of her kind were the women who tempted the angels from Heaven.
* PeekABooCorpse - Twice. Neither is mentioned again, or subsequently found by anyone else.
* PerkyGoth / CuteGhostGirl - Thelma.
* PlotRelevantAgeUp
* PreAssKickingOneLiner - Ella has several.
--> "This is one party you're going to wish you'd missed!"
* PrimalFear - Thelma can de-succubize someone by going into their dreams and invoking it. For Ella it was being burned alive, for Leon it was castration.
* PuppeteerParasite - Azazeal makes use of one in ''Deeper Into Darkness''.
* RageAgainstTheHeavens - The angels and demons are as bad as each other.
* RealSongThemeTune - Uses "#1 Crush" by Music/{{Garbage}} for both the opening and closing credits. The first episode uniquely used "You Can't Hurry Love" by the Concretes for the closing credits.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld - Ella.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure - David Tyrel, the school headmaster.
* RuleOfDrama - Occasionally supplemented by the RuleOfCool, RuleOfFunny and RuleOfSexy.
* {{Satan}} - Azazeal is the closest thing we see, though season 2 implies that there are higher powers that even he is answerable to.
* ScarsAreForever - Ella has scars on her wrists, which she tends to hide with long sleeves or sweatbands. They are later revealed to be [[spoiler: manacle burns from when Azazeal tried to have her executed as a witch]]. At one point, Ramiel tries to convince David that they are evidence of self-harming.
* SchoolgirlLesbians - Thelma and Maya were dead lesbian schoolgirls. Which didn't stop them having a sex life. Prior to this, Thelma was in love with Cassie, who realized too late that she felt the same way.
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong - [[spoiler: Subverted]]
* ShockAndAwe - The best way to get rid of Nephilim. Ella usually achieves this with a two-part staff called a [[PunnyName volta]].
* ShoutOut - Leon quotes Catherine Tate at one point, and Ella and Thelma make a Blackadder reference. Azazeal and Ramiel, rather creepily, discuss ''Film/ReservoirDogs'' while they torture Max.
* SlashedThroat - Ella's preferred method of dispatching non-demonic targets.
* StarCrossedLovers - Ella and Malachi. It doesn’t last, as Malachi gets DrunkOnTheDarkSide and Ella does not appreciate being mind-controlled.
* SpiritAdvisor
* StraightGay - Tom. There's no strong indication until Thelma sees that his dream is Leon being in love with him.
* SupportingProtagonist - Thelma, arguably, as she goes from being Cassie's sidekick to being Ella's sidekick and thus is the most constant character.
* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt
* TheBadGuyWins - In both seasons.
* ThematicThemeTune - ''#1 Crush'' by {{Garbage}}. Given that it's a downright creepy song about a StalkerWithACrush, it fits the show's premise quite well.
* UnluckyEverydude - Leon in season 2, though when given the chance he frequently has moments of CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass.
* VillainousBreakdown - Azazeal averts this, instead simply commenting in a dry tone, "I'd forgotten how much fun it is having Ella around..." [[EvilIsCool Evil is indeed cool]].
* WhatCouldHaveBeen
* WhatTheHellHero - Thelma and Raphael's actions towards the end of ''You Lose'' ([[spoiler: respectively, Thelma saving Malachi because she's afraid to go to heaven ''despite the fact that Maya would presumably go with her'', and Raphael attempting to rape Ella for no reason at all]]) are pretty inexplicable.
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim - Thelma repeatedly calls Ella out on this.
* WildTeenParty - In the first episode of season 2.
* YouCantFightFate - Zig-zagged.
* YouKeepUsingThatWord - Characters frequently mix up the singular and plural forms of incubi/succubi. Understandable for [[UnluckyEverydude Leon]], but you'd think [[DemonSlaying Ella]] would know better.

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[[Literature/{{Discworld}} Of course, you might be thinking of a different Hex...]]

* RealSongThemeSong - Uses "#1 Crush" by Music/{{Garbage}} for both the opening and closing credits. The first episode uniquely used "You Can't Hurry Love" by the Concretes for the closing credits.

* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnFemale - Thelma imposes a dream of making out with her on Cassie, and is implied to have gone much farther with Roxanne. This is played entirely for laughs.

* RapeIsLove - [[spoiler: Azazael to Cassie, in a ridiculously jarring way.]]

* BuryYourGays - Parodied when Thelma first manifests as a ghost at her funeral.

It was then rapidly retooled into a show about a kickass red-headed immortal schoolgirl named Ella who has supernatural powers with which she fights demons. Unfortunately she was blind-sided by the Anti-Christ (Cassie's sprog Malachi)'s evil plans, the demons won, and the show's second (and final) season ended with the cast divided into the evil, the very dead, and the fleeing in terror. To call it a DownerEnding would be a gross understatement, especially as one of the three survivors was actually dead anyway. Although as it ends with the DefrostingIcePrincess and JerkWithAHeartOfGold happily spooning with each other while their whacky ghost sidekick claps her hands joyfully, none of them seem to be particularly bothered about the end of the world taking place just down the road.

It was then rapidly retooled into a show about a kickass red-headed immortal schoolgirl named Ella who has supernatural powers with which she fights demons. Unfortunately she was blind-sided by the Anti-Christ (Cassie's sprog Malachi)'s evil plans, the demons won, and the show's second (and final) season ended with the cast divided into the evil, the very dead, and the fleeing in terror. To call it a DownerEnding would be a gross understatement, especially as one of the three survivors was actually dead anyway.

* ShoutOut - Leon quotes Catherine Tate at one point, and Ella and Thelma make a Blackadder reference. Azazeal and Ramiel, rather creepily, discuss ReservoirDogs while they torture Max.