Characters / Forever (2014)

Henry Morgan

Played by Ioan Gruffudd

Born September 19, 1779. A doctor who was shot and thrown off a ship two hundred years ago for refusing to allow a healthy slave to be killed on suspicion of cholera. This event somehow managed to grant him immortality; he doesn't age, and every time he "dies," he sees his life flash before his eyes and is reborn in the nearest large body of water moments later.Henry's tombstone lists his (first) death as April 7, 1814. He broke ties with his father after finding out he'd been engaging in the slave trade. He has had two wives we know of so far, the first being Nora, who he was married to before his first death, and the second Abigail, who he met in early 1945 and married in 1955. Henry and Abigail raised Abraham from when he was a baby, and Henry still sees Abe as his son despite looking half Abraham's current age.Henry has been a doctor since before his first death, although he hasn't been a practicing physician since the 1950s. Henry currently works for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York. He created a fake medical degree from a university in Guam for his current identity, but has since obtained better-faked credentials placing him first in his class at Oxford. He carries a pocketwatch which is a family heirloom, and usually dresses in tailored suits with a scarf instead of a tie.

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• Actual Pacifist: Doesn't kill or fight, even in self defense, only in defense of his loved ones. He fights a man who had assaulted Abigail, but it was (supposed to be) a bare-knuckles brawl, nothing fatal. When he does kill - not even in self-defense, but simply to protect Abe - in "Skinny Dipper", he believes he's fighting Adam, who can't die. Henry is horrified to find the man he's killed doesn't vanish and is merely dead.
• The Alcoholic: After Abigail left him, Henry fell apart. When Abe comes to check on him, Henry is passed out on the floor, an empty bottle near his head. In the modern day, in the pilot, Abe mentions that Henry quit drinking 28 years ago, which would put it at about that time.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: We see Henry's father in flashbacks, and he's discussed, but there is no mention of Henry's mother, even in conversations which definitely should have mentioned her if she were still in his life.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: For a guy who has not only lived for 200 years, but whose body completely vanishes and reappears naked in another location when he dies, he's not very open to any explanations other than scientific ones.
  Henry: I believe that 99.9% of everything can be explained scientificly. There's no fate. No magic. No curses, except for one: my own.
• Beard of Sorrow: Throughout Henry's forty years with Abigail, he's clean-shaven. When Abraham finds him in his Room Full of Crazy Stalker Shrine after Abigail leaves him, Henry has very scruffy stubble. The modern-day Henry sports Perma-Stubble pretty much all the time, to varying degrees. This can be seen as a sign that he's still mourning Abigail and hasn't come to terms with her loss yet.
• Big Secret: Given his immortality, the show's main suspense tactic is that he can't let himself die in front of witnesses who will then see his body disappear, which has happened a few times before with nasty consequences.
• Blessed with Suck: Henry can be hurt just as easily as anyone else, and won't heal any faster or feel any less pain. He'll die like anyone else when he takes lethal damage, complete with all the painful consequences. The difference is that when he dies, his body vanishes and reappears, completely healthy, in the nearest large body of water, making him immortal. He knows a lot of different ways to die, and which ones are worse than others.
• Character Catchphrase: Along with being the main person to say the show's Arc Words of "It's a long story," Henry also says, "I couldn't agree more!" repeatedly, and he uses "It's complicated" often enough that he gets called out on it in-universe.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: He can't help himself. On top of taking his responsibilities as a doctor extremely seriously, he has to help others (see My Greatest Failure, below, for how he reacts when he can't). It's led to his being killed more than once.
• Complete Immortality: Since Adam's theory turned out to be wrong, nothing known can kill him permanently.
• Creepy Good: His eccentricities and behavior accumulated over his lifespan make him this to modern people; several people describe him as "creepy" in the pilot, but once they get to know him better they come to see what a good person he is.
• The Dandy: As pointed out by Jo, Henry dresses very well for city work, wearing tailored suits with waistcoats, usually accompanied by a high-quality scarf (reminiscent of the cravats he wore before his first death).
• Dark and Troubled Past: It’s implied that Henry is reluctant to reveal his secret is because the last time he did it, he ended up in a mental asylum as his first wife Nora believed he was crazy.
• Death Seeker: He is at the point where he wishes that one of these times death would just stick, and has been trying to find a way to take away his immortality or die permanently. (Though he admits he doesn't so much want to die as grow old like everyone else.)
• Defrosting Ice King: Henry strictly avoids building relationships, presumably out of the fear of loving them and inevitably losing them to outliving them or having to run away to keep his secret. But working with Martinez is getting him to care about people despite himself.
• Disowned Parent: Henry broke all ties with his father and refused to accept any gifts or support from him after finding out he'd gotten involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The only exception was accepting his father's watch, a family heirloom and thus not a product of blood money, on his father's deathbed.
• Everyone Has Standards: Although he ignores a lot of social niceties himself, he's appalled when he realizes Abe wanted him to serve as wingman, so Abe could pick up an old friend's widow. At that friend's funeral.
• Expansion Pack Past: Thanks to his immortality, Henry's knowledge and experience far exceed that of someone his physical age. It is inevitable that he'll bring up an anecdote about something he did that is somehow connected to the case of the week. Other characters, with the exception of Abe^note who's heard all of Henry's stories so many times he's bored of them, question why they're surprised when Henry reveals something new and unusual about himself.
• Fearless Fool:
  • Played with. Henry is not precisely unafraid to die, but he is willing to undertake life-threatening risk (such as climbing onto a narrow ledge under the 59th Street Bridge) without too much concern because he knows he'll come back.
  • Taken up to eleven after he's tricked into killing someone for the first time, as for a while he even stops caring about whether there are witnesses to his disappearance.
• Gentleman and a Scholar: While he tends to avoid interaction with many people, he is always very pleasant and courteous with those he does.
• The Gentleman or the Scoundrel: Comparing Isaac versus Henry as potential love interests for Jo provides a lot of insight into both characters. On the surface it might seem that the well-dressed, well-mannered, well-educated Henry, who was actually raised a literal gentleman, would fit the first role, and fast-talking Isaac, who was born poor and fought for everything he has, would be the second, but their ideas of the perfect trip to Paris illustrate how it's actually the other way round. Isaac wants to plan out every minute, nice and safe, doubtless traveling by nice, safe, private cars and staying in secure, fancy hotels. Henry would stay at a regular small hotel or boarding house, get up every morning and set out in a random direction, and just explore wherever the roads take them, eating at whatever cafe is closest when they get hungry, leaving what they see and how safely they see it to chance. Isaac is the safe choice, whereas unconventional Henry is the one who challenges and excites Jo.
• Has a Type:
  • Henry's first wife, Nora, and his next on-screen love interest, Anne, are both petite brunettes. Later, after his life with blonde Abigail, he goes for a blonde cello player and the blonde Molly Dawes.
  • Henry could also be said to go for nurses (Anne and Abigail) although that could be a side effect of him working as a doctor, so that most of the women he meets would be medical professionals. Therapist Molly Dawes could also be said to fit this category.
• Hates Small Talk: He's not really fond of interacting and talking with more than a select few people, although he's not above making use of it when chatting up a pretty Russian cello player on the subway, wishing her good day and wishing her luck with the evening's performance.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • He had a year-long breakdown after Abigail left him and had collected a sizable Room Full of Crazy while trying to track her down. It took Abe coming back and clearing it all away before Henry could start functioning again.
  • After Adam tricks him into killing a man, Henry is practically catatonic in the aftermath, his friends and colleagues quietly supporting him and giving him space to process it. Hanson tells an unnamed investigator, "Give him a break, he's one of us. He'll talk when he's ready."
• Heroic Neutral: Tries to stay as neutral as possible early in the series, preferring to be left alone and out of any sort of trouble, but has a bit of a soft spot for a person in trouble and with a little coaxing will intervene. Evolves into Chronic Hero Syndrome within a few episodes, which seems to have been his default much of his life.
• Kuudere: In the pilot, most of his colleagues see him as creepy and he deliberately avoids making emotional connections, sometimes deliberately and calmly saying outrageous things (like which poison he would have killed the victim with) in order to throw people off. Once they start to get to know him, it becomes obvious to most that Henry is especially vulnerable to heartache and cares too deeply about cases and victims if he lets himself start.
• Mad Scientist: Has a basement laboratory (which he pronounces with five syllables, emphasis on the second) with body parts in jars and odd critters (including an Immortal Jellyfish), and casually speaks to Jo of experimenting with poisons in the past. Keeps a record of all his deaths, including how painful each was, and analyzes how long he stayed dead with different types of injury. Has EKG and other medical equipment, and uses them when he casually has Abe kill him to find out what poison a victim was given.
• Mage Born of Muggles: So far as we can tell, Henry's parents were both perfectly ordinary mortals.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: This in the pilot. Due to him being a little odd, a loner, and obsessed with death, Jo initially thought him a suspect until she came to believe in his heart of gold.
• My Grandson, Myself: By proxy. Henry is Abe's father, but when Abe's ex-wife (twice-over) Maureen assumes Henry is his son, Abe plays along with it.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • He was a doctor for many decades, but stopped in the '50s after he was forced to abandon a dying man so his secret wouldn't be discovered.
  • He tried to free the slaves on the ship he was killed aboard but was shot before he could give the key to the shackles and cells to one of the slaves. He carried the guilt of that failure for 200 years until he learned that the key had fallen from his dead hand and within reach of a slave, leading to a successful uprising.
• Naked on Revival: Every time he dies and comes back to life, he reappears naked in the nearest large body of water (in Manhattan, usually the Hudson or East River).
• Nice to the Waiter: In the past, his refusal to let the ship captain kill a sick black slave is what causes his first death.
• No Body Left Behind: As soon as Henry dies, his body and anything he's wearing vanishes.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Thanks to his sheer breadth of experience, Henry is a talented forensic scientist on top of being a medical doctor and pathologist.
• Papa Wolf: The mere thought of Abe being in trouble is enough to get Henry riled up. Abe actually being in danger will drive Henry to fight tooth and nail to protect him.
• Parental Substitute: Averted, as Abe, whom Henry adopted when he was just a baby, makes it clear Henry is his father, not a substitute.
• Perma-Stubble: Present-day Henry has stubble that varies in thickness but is never completely gone. He's clean-shaven in flashbacks, however.
• Really 700 Years Old: He's over two hundred years old, born September 19, 1779.
• Resurrective Immortality: Whenever he dies, he vanishes and ends up in the nearest body of water. Naked.
• Scarf of Asskicking: His Iconic Item, which gets Lampshaded a few times
• Searching for the Lost Relative: Henry spent over a year searching for Abigail after she left and they never heard from her again, leaving his life in a shambles. Abe had to take away his notes and clippings and browbeat him to get him to stop.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Almost always dressed in a sharp suit, as he's The Dandy. Fits with his old-fashioned image.
• Sherlock Homage: He's British and is able to deduce facts merely by a quick look at things.
• Sleepwalking: Henry claims to suffer from this, as an explanation for how he ends up naked in the East River after he dies and resurrects there.
• Small Steps Hero: After Henry has stolen the key to the shackles and cell door in the slave ship in "Dead Men Tell Long Tales," he's ordered to check a man for signs of cholera, and despite his insistence the man is not contagious, the Captain orders him thrown over the side of the ship. Henry refuses to step aside and let them kill him, even though by standing up for this one man's life, he puts in jeopardy his plan to save all three hundred African prisoners destined for slavery.
• The Smart Guy: With over 230 years of experience, Henry is brimming with information and wisdom, and he shares it pretty freely, often helping to advance or close a case.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: He now looks half the age of his adopted son Abe (which is near exact in real life, with Gruffudd being 40 to Hirsch's 79 at the time of filming).
• The Wonka: He's picked up an irrepressible irreverence for everything sometime in the past two hundred years. Adam insists that it won't last.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: In over two hundred years he has killed only once, to protect Abe and even then not actually meaning to kill, and is disgusted to learn of Adam's cavalier attitude towards life.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Henry certainly doesn't. After Abigail leaves him, he tells Abe he doesn't want to live without her, and would kill himself if he could. It clearly breaks Abe's heart.

Dt. Jo Martinez

Played by Alana de la Garza

A recent widow and a cop who finds Henry to be shockingly useful.

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• Action Girl: She's an NYPD homicide detective, confident with a gun or in a fight.
• The Alcoholic: As pointed out by Henry, she has taken to drinking (and casual sex) after the death of her husband. This improves greatly during the course of the series, as she finally begins to open up and let herself feel again,
• Berserk Button: Played for laughs. She threatens to draw her weapon if Henry starts talking about the perfect symmetry of her face again in "Fountain of Youth".
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: He may not really be a Cloudcuckoolander, but she frequently has to explain Henry and his actions to others, or remind Henry when he's being strange or uncommunicative.
  Jo: Henry, use your words.
• Daddy Didn't Show: Jo says she spent most of her childhood just waiting for her father to show up, but he never did.
• Fair Cop: Also pointed out by Henry. She implies that she actually considers being good-looking a detriment to her career; people don't take her seriously as a detective because she's hot.
• Good Bad Girl: Jo is introduced the first morning returning to her car after a one night stand. When the guy suggests they could become a regular thing, Jo tells him that's very sweet but if she wants him, she'll find him. She's also a career cop who puts her life on the line to save others and repeatedly offers to be there for Henry if he needs a friend to talk to.
• Heroic Seductress: Jo only strays into this territory once, in "Fountain of Youth," when she starts acting flirty with a suspect in order to get him to give her his business card with his cell number — which she then lifts his fingerprints from.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After nearly being killed with aconite in the pilot, Henry correctly deduces that Jo feels this way.
• One of the Boys: Jo fits right in to a male-dominated workplace at the 11th Precinct, and readily joins her (generally all-male) colleagues for drinks or karaoke. She complains to Henry in "Fountain of Youth" that in her line of work, her drop-dead gorgeous looks are more of a liability than an asset.
• Ring on a Necklace: She's a widow who constantly wears her wedding ring on a necklace and occasionally touches it, especially when she's thinking about her late husband Sean. During their first meeting, Henry notices and remarks upon it, saying he's sorry for her loss. When she asks how he could know she's a widow, he explains that the tan-line on her ring finger indicates she wore a wedding band up until recently "but most divorcees don't wear their wedding band around their necks". She continues to wear it until her first date with Isaac, when she conspicuously takes it off, at one point reaching up to it only to find it not there. It does not return even after they break up, a visible sign that Jo is through mourning Sean and is ready to move on.
• The Watson: At crime scenes and when interviewing witnesses and suspects, Jo is often the one to get Henry to explain his reasoning. Played with/subverted in that, because of the need to keep his immortality secret, Henry sometimes can't or won't provide an honest answer.

Dr. Lucas Wahl

Played by Joel David Moore

Morgan's coworker in the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York, who thinks Henry is very weird, but nevertheless repeatedly tries to bond with him despite Henry's stated disinterest. Their relationship grows closer through the series. Creator Matt Miller has stated that Lucas would have been the next person to learn Henry's secret.

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• Adoring the Pests: Finds rats cute, even going so far as to perform life-saving surgery on one collected as evidence in a case.
• Adorkable: Gets all flustered when talking to pretty girls. Wants badly to become friends with the M. E. he admires the most, getting shot down repeatedly and accepting it with good grace but still keeping the offer open until it finally pays off. Loves animals, including a nest of rats recovered from a crime scene. Makes nerdy references to TV shows, movies, and graphic novels.
• Appeal to Familial Wisdom: Quotes his mom's advice to "Let your freak flag fly!" in "Skinny Dipper."
• Butt-Monkey: A lot of humor comes from Henry's irritation with him.
• Cuteness Proximity: When he catches a bunch of rats as part of a murder investigation, he grows quickly attached to them. Even giving one life-saving surgery.
• Hippie Parents: Lucas has mentioned that he was conceived under the influence of 'shrooms and that his mom's advice is to "Let your freak flag fly!"
• Insistent Terminology: They're graphic novels, not comic books!
• Missing Mom: Possibly. In "Skinny Dipper" Lucas tells Henry, "Let your freak flag fly! That's what my mom used to say." The use of the past tense implies she is not currently a part of Lucas's life, although it's possible she just became more conservative or circumspect over time.
• A Mistake Is Born: Lucas mentions being a twinkle in his parents' eyes, then adds that it was a regretful twinkle following a night involving psychedelic mushrooms.
• Motor Mouth: He tends to ramble.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Wishes to get an interesting dead body, and reads a graphic novel series about a demon who inspires history's most infamous serial killers.
• No Social Skills: His foot is almost constantly in his mouth.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: A rare positive example happens in “Skinny Dipper”. Lucas’ aforementioned habit of putting his foot in his mouth makes it all the more noteworthy when, after Henry is shaken from having just killed a man, Lucas just silently wraps a blanket around him. No words are spoken to ruin the moment.
• Techno Babble: Lucas sometimes provides a running translation for Henry's medical jargon.
• The Watson: Within the O. C. M. E. Lucas is usually the one to ask Henry to explain his Sherlock Scan conclusions.

Abe

Played by Judd Hirsch

Abe was a concentration camp survivor, tattooed at Auschwitz and later rescued from "one of the camps"^note Most likely Bergen-Belsen, which was liberated by the British and where large numbers of Auschwitz prisoners had been transferred, rather than Auschwitz itself, which was liberated by the Russians. He was subsequently adopted by Henry and Abigail. He's aged normally while Henry's appearance stayed the same so the son now looks twice as old as the father. Abe now addresses Henry by name to maintain the illusion that Henry is the son of a deceased friend of Abe's.

The number tattooed on his arm is 432289. He was a paratrooper in Vietnam and a social activist afterwards. He now runs an antique store, Abe's Antiques, in the lower east side at Stanton and Suffolk.

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• Accents Aren't Hereditary: Henry and Abigail both speak with pronounced British accents, while Abe's is a strong New York accent peppered with Yiddish words and phrases accurately pronounced.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: When Abe asks Lucas for help locating his Missing Mom, and tells him she went under multiple aliases, his response to Lucas's concerned look is his father's, "It's a long story." The implication is that he's picked up a few phrases and quirks from his dad.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Abe has had to call his father "Henry" in public ever since they started looking more like brothers than father and son. Since Abe now looks like he's twice as old as Henry, calling him "Dad" or "Pops" would certainly draw attention.
• Cool Old Guy: In part because he knows Henry is immortal, Abe envies him his permanent youth, and tries to live his own life as enthusiastically as possible, up to and including trying a half-pipe at 69 years old.
• Extremely Protective Child: Abe is devoted to his father, giving up another marriage to Maureen in favor of staying with Henry. He looked into a supposed Fountain of Youth treatment not for his own sake but because he worries who will take care of Henry when he's gone.
• Happily Adopted: While Abe expresses an interest in discovering his roots he considers Henry and Abigail to be his true parents. It's later revealed that Abe and Henry are related through an illegitimate child of Henry's uncle.
• Interracial Adoption Struggles: Not shown directly, but can be inferred from the fact that Henry and Abigail adopted a Jewish baby from a concentration camp, but Abe seems quite a part of Jewish culture, with a New York Jew accent, using Yiddish words and phrases frequently. In the era they would have been raising him, discrimination and prejudice were still common and often openly expressed.
• Missing Mom: Abe's mother, Abigail, disappeared in 1985, and Henry was unable to track her down after over a year of looking. It turns out she died April 7, 1985 due to an encounter with Adam.
• My Greatest Failure: During the Vietnam War, he froze during an ambush and three of his squadmates were killed. He's wondered every day since if he could have saved them.
• Outliving One's Offspring: The inevitable end to Henry and Abe's relationship is that Henry will outlive him, no matter how senior a citizen Abe manages to become first.
• Parent-Child Team: Henry and Abe often team up for varying shenanigans, such as breaking into a warehouse together in "Dead Men Tell Long Tales."
• Raised by the Supernatural: Abe was brought up by Henry, who is immortal and doesn't age. They had to move frequently to avoid people noticing and Abe still frequently has to help Henry cover up his condition.
• The Rival: The Berkowitz brothers, who are also antiquers, are bitter rivals with Abe, and he returns the sentiment.
• Secret-Keeper: To Henry.
• Supreme Chef: "Look Before You Leap" has him using Henry as a guinea pig for his cooking in preparation for a date, and then mentions him cooking rather exquisite foods during the date itself. When they rediscover Abigail's old cookbook it's clear that Abe gets his culinary talents from his mother.

Abigail

Played by MacKenzie Mauzy and Janet Zarish

A British Army nurse in World War II, Abigail was 24 when she met Henry Morgan in 1945, when she asked him to examine an apparently healthy baby boy (Abe) rescued from one of the concentration camps. They quickly fell in love and adopted Abraham, raising him together. They didn't actually marry until early 1955.

Abigail learned Henry's secret when he was stabbed in a fight and died in her arms, vanishing; when he snuck into their home to say goodbye to baby Abraham, she discovered him there, still alive, and immediately accepted him. Abigail willingly moved from place to place, identity to identity, with Henry, sometimes in a hurry, to protect his secret. She always insisted in bringing the family pictures as a top priority, since they couldn't be replaced.

Abigail and Henry stayed together for forty years. At 64, the visible difference in their apparent ages and people's reactions to it had worn on her and she left, sending Henry a letter that she needed a little time to think. Henry and Abe never saw her alive again. Abigail had found a house in the country where she and Henry could live together in peace, but she never got the chance to send the letter telling him. Adam, a patient in the hospital she was working at, discovered she had known another immortal, and tried to force her to tell him who; she killed herself rather that betray Henry's secret.

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• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: The women Henry finds himself drawn to often bear an uncanny resemblance to Abigail.
• Let's Have Another Baby: Suggests this to Henry in "The King of Columbus Circle". Henry at first objects, not wanting to face inevitably losing that child, but by the end of the episode he's come around to trying.
• Missing Mom: Fulfills this role for Abraham, as she left Henry in 1985 and they never heard from her again.
• Secret-Keeper: While they were married; if Abigail is still alive she'd be in her 90s. Morgan's continued occupation as a medical examiner is indication that if she still lives, she still keeps the secret. Otherwise, she took it to her grave. Eventually we find out she did just this, even taking her own life to prevent Adam from finding Henry.
• Temporary Love Interest: She declared she wouldn't let Henry end their relationship due to his Big Secret. She became his wife, but eventually left him in 1985.

Lt. Joanna Reece

Played by Lorraine Toussaint

The precinct's detective commander. She's frequently frustrated by Henry's antics.

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• Affectionate Nickname: Her subordinates occasionally address her as "Lou", a contraction of her rank and title.
• Black Boss Lady: Head of the Major Case Squad of the 11th Precinct.
• Deadpan Snarker: She reacts to strange developments with an understated dignity that makes her comments all the more funny.
• It Gets Easier: Has this opinion about cops forced to shoot suspects.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: When Henry reveals that he has a stalker in "Skinny Dipper" who is trying to frame him for murder, she not only believes him, she takes immediate action to not only find the killer, but to protect Henry from the stalker.
• Sassy Black Woman: Downplayed Trope, she's snarky but not unjustified.
• Shipper on Deck: She seems to want her subordinates to be happy and have fulfilling personal lives; she's almost always the first one to suggest one of her subordinates go on a date with someone they like.
• Verbal Backspace: After Henry got arrested for buying heroin to see if he could trace it to the one that killed the victim.
  Reece: That's the dumbest police work I have ever seen.
  Lucas: [coming in] Okay, I couldn't find the rat that ate the victim's face, so I just got the whole nest.
  Reece: Second dumbest.

Det. Mike Hanson

Played by Donnie Keshawarz

A detective in the police department. Jo's official partner, although people sometimes refer to Jo and Henry as partners too. Married to Karen, with two young and rambunctious sons (listed in the credits as Ronnie and Donnie Jr). Has a brother named Anthony who is a foreman at the docks; they have a strong sibling rivalry, especially after Mike slept with Anthony's prom date.

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• Acrofatic: Despite his size, he's more than capable of keeping up with a fit crook.
• Big Fun: He's a stocky build.
• Bratty Half-Pint: His kids are portrayed as constantly causing trouble. In "The Night In Question" Hanson locks his gun up at work before a family ski trip because he doesn't trust his kids around it, and the boys are seen sword-fighting with their ski poles. In a deleted scene, one has possibly broken his arm in a hospital parking lot and the other gets his arm stuck in a vending machine while they're waiting on x-rays.
• Butt-Monkey: He gets this, but not as much as Lucas. Often shows up with information he's tracked down on a suspect or victim, only to learn Henry has already figured out the same information.
• Doting Parent: Played with. Mike frequently grumbles about his kids and claims he doesn't want to go home to them, but between the lines it's clear he's a devoted Family Man.
• Hidden Depths: He used to be in a band and played at The Trash Club which, in the show's universe, is held in the same esteem as CBGB.
• Real Men Hate Affection: Mike frequently acts like he sees his family as a burden and his kids as a hassle. Even when everyone shows Henry support at the end of "Skinny Dipper," Hanson's comes in the form of calling Henry "one of us" and telling him it was "a righteous kill" rather than being more overtly affectionate.
• The Watson: A tertiary one for Henry.

Adam

Played by: Burn Gorman

^{Click to see Adam.}

Another immortal who discovers Henry, with a sinister purpose in mind.

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• And I Must Scream: The Season 1 finale: Henry realizes that killing Adam with the puggio might not actually result in Adam's permanent death so he injects air into Adam's brainstem, causing an embolism resulting in Locked-In Syndrome. Adam's brain is fully functioning but he can't move, speak, or communicate in any meaningful manner.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Like Henry, his secret has led to imprisonment and torture. Unlike Henry, he didn't maintain a very positive outlook on the world.
• Big Bad: Shaping up to be this towards Henry.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Oh Adam, if you hadn't decided to gloat over Henry's body...
• Even Evil Has Standards: He really hates Nazis, as you might expect from someone who had received the treatment that he did at their hands.
• The Faceless: Mostly heard on the phone, with a brief glimpse of his hand. Until he's revealed in "Skinny Dipper".
• Family Man: "Dr. Lewis Farber" has pictures of a wife and two little girls in his office, and Henry deduces that the family moved to America for his wife's work, adapting his own career as a secondary concern. Invoked, because Adam doubtless chose and planted those pictures specifically to give Henry this impression.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: He says he's just bored and it's interesting to have found another like him; but it's anyone's guess what he actually wants with Henry now that he's found him.
• I Have Many Names: He's used quite a few over his life, with "Adam" simply being his own suggestion for what Henry should call him. He also uses the identity of "Lewis Farber", psychiatrist.
• Immortality Immorality: Has been around so long, he feels he's now Above Good and Evil.
• Jack the Ripper: He was in London at the time of the Ripper murders, and Henry suspects he might have committed them, but based on the evidence Henry himself says that Jack was likely a larger than average man, and Adam is later revealed to be of smaller stature, so he probably wasn't actually Jack.
• Must Make Amends: In his own way he seems to have steered into this territory after tricking Henry into killing a man.
• My Greatest Failure: He seems to see letting Abigail die as this, as he is apologetic to Henry and even did revive her only for her to slit her own throat.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Or so he claims. He tells Henry that he was once very much like him - decent and compassionate - but two thousand years of endless life has dulled his empathy toward mortals (being experimented on by frigging Josef Mengele probably didn't help much either). Like Henry, it was a moment of compassion - stepping in to try and stop the assassination of Julius Caesar - that caused his first death, triggered his Immortality, and led him to where he is now...and on some level he resents his own compassion for that reason. At one point he taunts Henry with the promise that one day Henry will end up just like him: bitter, amoral, and detached from the world at large.
• The Older Immortal: Claims to be over two thousand years old when talking to Henry.
• Red Herring: It repeatedly looks like he's behind some of Henry's weirder cases, when actually he's just following him. The Pilot is an especially notable example; it appears to the audience (and Henry) that he caused the train crash and is investigating the sole "survivor," but in reality he was already stalking Henry and the crash just confirmed his immortality to Adam.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Adam claims that he was once a good man, like Henry, and his first death came trying to save someone else's life. He believes that after over two thousand years, his turning into an uncaring jaded killer was inevitable, and that the same will happen to Henry eventually.
• Villainous Rescue: A very dark version. Henry is very rapidly bleeding to death in a basement, but Martinez is in the building. He can't possibly fake his way out of surviving the punctured lung and vena cava or the broken back that a killer's inflicted on him. Then Adam comes in through the street door to... help.
  Adam: Your partner's bound to find you, and if you die in front of her... that's no good for anybody. You can thank me later. [slits Henry's throat]
• What Happened to the Mouse?: His office has photos of a wife and two daughters, but aside from Henry pointing that fact out and making deductions from the pictures, they are never seen or brought up again.
  • The photos show a woman and two young girls, but "Lewis Farber" isn't in any of them. They could be anything from stock photos to hired models; given Adam knew Henry would be making deductions from them, he likely chose or created them very carefully.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Two thousand years of interminable life has not had a universally positive effect on Adam's mentality.

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