Characters / Luther Criminals

Series 1

Madsen

Henry John Madsen

Played By: Anton Saunders

• Arc Villain: A variant. Luther lets him fall off a structure while he's begging for mercy. He's in a coma as a result and the whole Series 1 is structured around Luther's attempts to get away with it.
• Convenient Coma: Played with. He's in one for most of Series 1. On one hand, if he'd died outright, Luther would've been less troubled by him; on the other, it's very convenient that Alice gets to him before the police can question him.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Luther lets him fall off a building after he buried alive (and therefore killed) a young girl.

Owen

Owen Lynch

Played By: Sam Spruell

An Afghan war veteran whose father was incarcerated for murdering a police officer in a brawl, Owen goes on a killing spree, targeting police men in an attempt at forcing them to free his father in the second episode of Series 1.

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• Abusive Dad: His father, Terry, emotionally and physically abused him, leaving him totally dependent upon his father's approval.
• Ax-Crazy
• Berserk Button: Insulting his or his father's military record.
• Cold Sniper: He's a brilliant cop killer via sniping, though the coldness cracks progressively throughout his rampage.
• Cop Killer: Specifically targets the police.
• Driven to Suicide: Tries to kill himself at the end of the Russian Roulette game, but is stopped by Luther.
• Foil: Like Luther, he's the child of a military veteran who had a difficult relationship with his father, and Owen guesses Luther has some sort of association with the military within seconds of the two meeting. Just about everything else about the two men is very different, and both the similarities and differences are shown throughout the episode and especially their confrontation.
• Freudian Excuse: He was abused relentlessly by his father. He served in Afghanistan and was discharged due to mental health problems. This only increased his father's disdain for and abuse of Owen, leaving him the ruin we meet.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: He went from being an Army vet (albeit a mentally disturbed one who was discharged because of his psychological issues), to a ruthless Cop Killer. Ironically, at least one of the police officers he killed was also ex-military.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Was discharged from the army due to mental health issues.
• Russian Roulette: Plays a game with himself and Luther.
• Serial Killer: With a double digit bodycount, all of them police officers.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: His experiences in Afghanistan only further unbalanced his already damaged psyche.
• Villain of the Week
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Owen is utterly dominated by his father, who he desperately needs to impress.
• Western Terrorists: His case is turned over to the anti-terrorism unit.

Terry

Terry Lynch

Played By: Sean Pertwee

Owen's vicious father.

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• Abusive Dad: Emotionally and physically abused his son to the point that his son wet the bed from fear, causing Terry to beat him even more. He's even unmoved by the idea of his son dying, saying that he will die "Doin' what he loves."
• Bald of Evil: In keeping with his thuggish persona.
• Cop Killer: Was sent to gaol for murdering a police officer in a bar brawl. He manipulates his son into going on a killing spree to target police men in order to force them to free him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Downplayed. He is absolutely sickened when Luther threatens to plant child pornography in his cell to make people think that he raped his son. However, his visible outrage stems more from his own fear that it will destroy his reputation in prison rather than having any moral opposition.
• Evil Sounds Deep: He's a despicable man and being voiced by the growly Sean Pertwee, he's very deep voiced.
• Hate Sink: He's a vicious thug who cares for nothing but indulging his own love of violence and even treats his own son like dirt.
• It's All About Me: Fails to see his son as anything more than an extension of himself, physically and psychologically brutalising him for showing any hint of fear or weakness and forcing him to pursue a career in the military like him and ultimately using him as a pawn in his own bid for freedom. The fact that he describes his son murdering cops whilst pretending to be soldier as "doing what he loves" is clearly wrong because it's what he loves.
• Jerkass: That's probably the nicest thing you can say about this violent, murdering, abusive yob.
• The Man Behindthe Man: Terry is the mastermind behind his son's shooting spree.
• Manipulative Bastard: As noted, he orders his son to start shooting police officers in order to force them to release him.
• Not So Stoic: As Luther notes, Terry is "a hard bastard" but he goes to pieces when Luther threatens to set him up as a child rapist.
• Sociopathic Soldier: Sociopathic ex-soldier to be exact.
• Villain of the Week

Burgess

Lucien Burgess

Played By: Paul Rhys

An owner of an occult bookshop who was investigated for murdering a woman ten years before, Lucien Burgess was beaten by the police, and parlayed that beating into a successful autobiography. A decade later, he tries to repeat his success, kidnapping another woman to replicate the pattern in the third episode of Series 1.

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• Berserk Button: Being disrespected.
• Blood Lust: Obsessed with blood, drinking it after draining it from his victims.
• Control Freak: If Lucien isn't in control it bothers him badly, and he'll do anything to get it back.
• Cult Used to be the head of one.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He got his victims to come with him by threatening to murder their children. While it looks like he's going to kill them anyway he does in fact keep his word and leave the infants unharmed.
  • But this is somewhat deconstructed as he seems to have no qualms about doing it. It's just that it doesn't serve him to do so.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He doesn't always wear glasses but he does when his creepiness needs to be emphasised.
• Hemo Erotic: As he does from his victims and seems to gain pleasure from it and has done it in the past.
• It's All About Me: Lucien wants to be famous and he wants to hurt women, and doesn't care who he hurts to get there.
• Lack of Empathy
• Non-Action Guy: One of the reasons why he's so creepy. Paul Rhys is very tall and one of the few people in-cast that Idris Elba doesn't tower over, but Luther is able to beat Lucien to get his DNA, and his method of kidnapping his victims is to threaten their babies so he doesn't have to physically overpower them.
• Sadist: Of both the physical and psychological variety, draining his victims slowly of blood and feeding on their terror, while daring the police to come after him.
• Serial Killer: Albeit a very slow one, with three victims spread across thirty years.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: He's very wealthy and from a rich family, having attended Eton and Cambridge, and he has no moral scruples that we see at all.
• Shout-Out: To Aleister Crowley
• Small Name, Big Ego: Obsessed with getting respect.
• Smug Snake: He's clever but Luther's better. He falls into Luther's trap and when confronted by him, undergoes an infantile temper tantrum.
• The Sociopath: Hits all of the requirements.
• Villain of the Week
• Villainous Breakdown: After Luther outmaneuvers him.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Loves playing this card for the press.

Shand

Graham Shand

Played By: Rob Jarvis

A former taxi driver and mechanic with erectile dysfunction, Graham Shand begins murdering young women when he discovers that his wife is cheating on him, using the rush he gets from the murders in order to get it up. His pattern of murder rapidly escalates throughout the fourth episode of Series 1, using his guise as a cabbie to locate victims.

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• Bludgeoned to Death: He normally kills by strangulation, but when prostitute Layla hides in the bathroom, he uses a hammer to break down the door. His wife kills him with it in the end of the episode.
• Deranged Taxi Driver: Though he can seem largely nice, he's an impotent Serial Killer who strangles the women he has in his taxi for sexual gratification.
• Evil Is Petty: Graham is a fundamentally pathetic character, which his wife calls him out on in the end.
• Karmic Death: Linda, his emotionally abused wife, beats his head in with the hammer he used to kill her lover, having been cowed by him for decades.
• Laughing Mad: When finally arrested he gives off a series of insane laughs, that then collapse into tears.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: He's impotent and a serial killer, though he can perform after killing.
• Manipulative Bastard: Even more so than usual examples. He clearly manipulated his wife their whole life with suicide attempts, and he manipulates his victims before killing them.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Graham's prone to fits, mood swings, and violent breakdowns.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's extremely wheedling towards his wife, and is said to have manipulated her with suicide attempts.
• Mood-Swinger: Extremely.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: It's implied he raped the women he killed.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Noticeable because it leads to his major Villainous Breakdown. When he learns that his wife has been cheating on him, he hammers him to death and then rampages after a prostitute, Layla. It only doesn't work because Luther arrests him.
• Serial Killer: Has five victims, plus his wife's lover, and the attempt on Layla.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Variant. He's impotent, but he can perform after killing.
• Villain of the Week
• Would Hit a Girl: His entire MO revolves around killing women.

Sugarman

Daniel Sugarman

Played By: Ross McCall

A professional criminal from the USA, hired by Tom Meyer to kidnap James and Jessica Carrodus in episode 5 of Series 1. He proves to be completely without scruples, maiming Jessica to make a point, and threatening to cut her apart piece by piece until the police give him the diamonds he wants.

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• Boom, Headshot!: How Reed kills him.
• Canon Foreigner: He's American.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Of Jessica and later Tom Meyer.
• Finger in the Mail: Sends them Jessica's tongue in the mail.
• Greed: Money is Sugarman's primary motivation.
• He Knows Too Much: Why Reed kills him.
• Killed Off for Real: By Ian Reed
• Only in It for the Money: Claims all he wants are the diamonds.
• Psycho for Hire
• Ruthless Foreign Gangsters: He and his wife, Evangeline, are far more ruthless than their British counterparts.
• Would Hit a Girl: Cuts out Jessica's tongue, and subsequently guts her for the diamonds when he finds out she swallowed them.
• Unholy Matrimony: Married to one of his fellow kidnappers.
• Villain of the Week

Series 2

Pell

Cameron Pell

Played By: Lee Ingleby

An art student with a flair for the dramatic, Cameron Pell turns to murder in order to gain the publicity he wants, aiming to become a legend along the lines of Springheel Jack or Jack the Ripper. The hunt for him takes up the first half of Series 2.

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• Arc Villain: Of the first part of Series 2.
• Attention Whore: Absolutely has to be the centre of attention, mugging for CCTV cameras, putting one of his murders on the internet, and undergoing a Freak Out when he's ignored.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Of Justin Ripley, whom he manages to kidnap.
• Cool Mask: Wears a Punch mask and cannot bring himself to kill without it on.
• Dirty Coward: Ultimately revealed as a coward and a weakling who cannot kill without his mask on.
• Evil Is Petty: His ex-wife sums him up well, if ineloquently when she describes him as "a freaky little freak." For all his delusions of grandeur, Cameron is a pathetic, sad little man trying to gain notoriety.
• Glory Hound: Looking to be famous, in the same way that his idols were.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Was at one point seeing a psychiatrist for treatment of his obsession with "legendary" serial killers. He hasn't been fixed, and his obsession remains.
• Serial Killer
• Small Name, Big Ego
• Theme Serial Killer: Of other famous serial killers.
• Villainous Breakdown: Loses it when Luther ignores him during their last confrontation. It makes him less dangerous, rather than more, and he's practically sobbing by the time Justin knocks him out.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: If you believe his motive rants to Luther and Ripley, Cameron believes that he is going to shock the city of London out of its malaise and fix all of society's problems by uniting them against something to be really scared of. It's ridiculous, but he's not a mentally well man.
• Would Hit a Girl: His early victims are all women.
• Would Hurt a Child: His master plan revolves around kidnapping fourteen children, killing them, and dissolving the bodies, creating a mass disappearance that he hopes will become legendary.

Millberry Twins

Robert & Nicholas Millberry

Played By: Stephen Robertson

A pair of identical twin killers engaged in a game to see who can kill the most people with the most primitive weapons. With each kill, the brothers earn experience points, which they use to upgrade their arsenals, graduating to more lethal weapons and greater massacres. The hunt for them takes up the second half of Series 2.

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• Arc Villain: Of the second half of Series 2.
• Axe-Crazy: Though quietly so.
• Badass Biker: Robert assaults three motorcycle couriers and steals one of their rides.
• Back Up Twin: The arrest of Robert leads to the reveal that Nicholas exists.
• Batter Up!: Another one of the weapons they can use at the "starting level".
• Challenge Gamer: A very screwed up version.
• Creepy Monotone: When they do speak.
• Creepy Twins: Incredibly creepy twins.
• Dead Man Switch: The bomb on Nicholas' chest is rigged up to one. If he dies and releases the detonator it goes off, killing everyone within a hundred foot radius. Getting him to deactivate the switch of his own free will is part of Luther's plan to stop him.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Robert is one within their arc, with his arrest serving to set them up for the appearance of Nick.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Robert: "When you do catch my brother, tell him I love him."
• Fatal Flaw: Luther tries to use the twins' need to play games against them. It fails against Robert (who rolls a different result than what Luther was hoping for), but succeeds against Nicholas, letting Luther maneuver him into a position from which he can be more easily taken out by snipers.
• Final Boss: Nicholas is one for Series 2. He himself views Luther as one, who has to be defeated so that he can ascend to the "next level."
• Hikikomori: Luther references the term when describing the total emotional isolation the twins have inflicted on themselves.
• Lack of Empathy: Totally void of any emotional affect.
• Mad Bomber: Nicholas straps a bomb to his chest to force the police to leave him alone.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Luther describes the twins as suffering from a "shared psychosis", and their total emotional withdrawal from society and unwillingness to make decisions without rolling their dice is indicative of something more than garden variety psychopathy.
• Serial Killers: Engaged in a twisted game of one upmanship no less.
• Siblings in Crime
• Silent Antagonist: The twins barely communicate, and never speak while hunting.
• Single-Minded Twins: Robert and Nichoals come off as two halves of the same psychopathic individual.
• Slasher Smile: Nicholas cracks one out during his last confrontation with Luther.
• The Stoic: Show no emotion on their faces and speak in a Creepy Monotone when they do deign to talk.
• True Final Boss: Nick for their arc and Series 2 as a whole, upstaging both his brother, and series Big Bad Baba (whose defeat is comparatively anticlimactic).
• Water Guns and Balloons: Use plastic water guns loaded with hydrochloric acid as one of their starting weapons.
• Would Hit a Girl: Attack men and women with equal fervor.

Series 3

Ellis

Paul Ellis

Played By: Kevin Fuller

The son of a murdered prostitute, Paul Ellis grew up to be a deeply disturbed man, who apprentices himself to retired serial killer the Shoreditch Creeper, picking up where the older man left off. He targets victims Carney missed, as well as several employees from the nursing home before being stopped by Luther. The hunt for him occupies the first half of Series 3.

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• Abusive Mom: His prostitute mother locked him in a closet so that he could watch her with clients. This left him very screwed up.
• Arc Villain: For the first half of Series 3.
• Bald of Evil
• Clark Kenting: Wears a wig and glasses in civilian life.
• Cop Killer: Kills retired DCI Ronnie Holland, who knew who he and Carney were.
• Enfante Terrible: Had already started creeping on the neighbours as a child.
• Freudian Excuse: His mother made him watch her with her clients; he then saw the Shoreditch Creeper torture, rape, and murder her. This has left him with a fundamentally broken attitude towards women, sexuality, and the world in general.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Hates women due to his treatment by his mother.
• Serial Killer: Kills four people and tries for three more.
• Silent Antagonist: Never speaks in either of the episodes he appears in.
• Would Hit a Girl: All his chosen victims are female, though he's willing to attack Luther and murder Craig Lane when they get in the way.

Carney

William Carney

Played By: Ned Dennehy

An old man in a nursing home, who is later revealed to have been the original Shoreditch Creeper (a serial rapist and murderer active from 1979-1983). Arrested for an unrelated murder, he spent twenty-five years in prison, and is now using his apprentice, Paul Ellis, to kill those he missed back then.

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• Even Evil Has Standards: He does seem genuinely angry about Paul's mother forcing him to watch her with her clients.
• Evil Cripple: Reduced to being on an oxygen tank in his old age.
• Evil Mentor: To Paul Ellis.
• Evil Old Folks: In his seventies and still capable of being repulsive.
• The Man Behind the Man: To Paul Ellis.
• Retired Monster: He was one, until Paul tracked him down and asked for his advice.
• Serial Killer: A retired one.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist
• Would Hit a Girl: Only targeted women.

Marwood

Tom Marwood

Played By: Elliot Cowan

A vigilante who attempts to gain public support for his campaign by murdering criminals on the internet, giving his audience the chance to vote on whether they should live or die. He is the final antagonist of Series 3.

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• Attention Whore: Desperate for the public to love him.
• Cop Killer: Kills Ripley in Series 3's third episode. He then murders George Stark in episode four, and tries to kill both Gray and Luther.
• Cruel Mercy: Luther saves his life so that he is denied martyrdom and trapped in prison with the very people he loathes.
• Cynicism Catalyst: The murder of his wife, and the inability of the justice system to do anything about it. Though it ends up being quite subverted as he himself ends up with a very idealized view of the world that results in his rampage.
• Death Seeker: Aims to commit Suicide by Cop, becoming a martyr to his cause.
• Evil Counterpart: His actions echo Luther's own more morally grey choices.
• Final Boss: Of Series 3.
• Glory Hound: Alice comments that his desire for the public's adoration is driving him as much as his desire for revenge.
• He Who Fights Monsters: By the end of the series, Marwood has become a deranged, hateful man, who is willing to threaten to rape and murder a pregnant woman if it gets him his revenge.
• Hypocrite: His threatening to murder a pregnant woman unless her husband murders Milan Knizac (the man who killed his wife); even though his wife's murder led to his Start of Darkness he's willing to inflict the same pain to get his revenge.
• I Have Your Wife: Does this to try and force a prison doctor to help him.
• Never My Fault: When Marwood does something he himself acknowledges is bad he's quick to try and shift the blame to the police department, or anybody else he can think of.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: What he thinks he's doing and he holds to it until after trying to lynch a paedophile in front of an angry mob.
• Revenge: Aims to have it on the man who raped and murdered his wife.
• Sadistic Choice: Tries to force Luther to choose between Alice or Mary being executed.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Carries a sawn-off Remington 870 Shotgun as his main weapon and a Heckler & Koch USP Compact as a back-up.
• Start of Darkness: His wife's rape and murder, which makes his own kidnapping of a pregnant women and threat to kill her even more hypocritical.
• Vigilante Man: Realistically deconstructed after the attempt at lynching a paedophile fails he targets one other criminal without killing him and ends up killing police, targeting loved ones of police and prison doctors. All because they're in the way of his moral crusade and can't see that he's right. During his final standoff with Justin, Justin flat out points out that if society does things Tom's way than inevitably innocent people will get hurt as well.
• Villainous Breakdown: Killing Ripley triggers one as he starts to slide from his idealized, heroic, moral crusader to just a rampage killer with a desperate need for approval
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Plays this card after killing Ripley, blaming the police for confronting him.
• Would Hit a Girl: Goes after Mary and Alice, and kidnaps a prison doctor's pregnant wife.

Series 4

Steven

Steven Rose

Played By: John Heffernan

A serial killer who breaks into the homes that he installed spy-ware for and eats his victims' organs. The manhunt for him makes up the two-part miniseries that comprises Series 4.

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• Arc Villain: He's the main antagonist of the Series 4 mini-series.
• Axe-Crazy: He's a cannibalistic serial killer who's repeatedly shown to not be in his right mind.
• Final Boss: For the entire show as of Series 4.
• I'm a Humanitarian: He kills his victims then eats a piece of them.

Series 5

Jeremy Lake

Jeremy Lake

Played By: Enzo Cilenti

A successful surgeon and Serial Killer (yes, another one) with a fetish for stabbing people with sharp instruments who goes on a killing rampage in London, despite his wife's best efforts to hold him back.

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• Badass in a Nice Suit: Subverted. Although he wears a pretty nice suit at work, most of his victims are women or young men and he's clearly dominated by his wife. As noted above, Luther defeats him pretty easily in the final episode.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: He and his wife, Vivien make up the main threat for Season 5, with George Cornelius providing a secondary threat and Alice Morgan making the Final Boss.
• Brains and Bondage: He and Vivien are into very sadistic sex, both with each other and others and met in a fetish club.
• Brains and Brawn: The brawn to Vivien's brains. Although, as a respected heart surgeon, he is highly intelligent too, he behaves downright stupidly during the series but is obviously extremely strong, as his brutal stabbing kills demonstrate.
• Control Freak: Seems to enjoy the power he has over his victims, presumably to compensate for being dominated by his wife. Yeah, he's pretty pathetic.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's very snarky with Luther and Halliday visit his office and again, when taunting the victim in his cellar.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Appears to genuinely care about his wife, to the point of letting her corporally punish him by making him sleep naked on a bare floor and throw buckets of iced water over him, scourge him with a shower and make him wear a paper bag over his head whenever he disobeys or annoys her. Of course, he probably enjoys it.
• A Glass of Chianti: Enjoys a glass of red wine with Vivien in one episode. Of course, she doesn't know that he's drugged it so that he can go down to the cellar and torture a victim without waking her up.
• Jerkass: In his public life, when not with Vivien or luring in a victim, he's generally unpleasant and intimidating to everyone he meets, including patients.
• Mad Doctor: A cardiologist and sadistic, decades-long serial killer. Vivien has tried to stop him embodying this trope too much by staying away from his patients, but this ultimately fails.
• Malevolent Masked Man: When going about his murders, Lake wears a creepy ultraviolet masks that short-circuits security cameras.
• Psychopathic Manchild: His relationship with his wife is very much like son and mother, with her loving him but controlling and punishing him when he gets out of line.
• Sadist / Soft-Spoken Sadist: Takes pleasure in insulting one of his patients, on whom he is about to perform surgery, ultimately threatening to kill her and then gaslighting her when she asks him what he just said.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: As a wealthy surgeon, he always dresses to impress in his line of work. As Vivien says, "I Like your tie; You wore it the night you kicked that Somali boy to death."
• Shout-Out: The eerie, glowing UV mask he wears is identical to the one worn by the Serial Killer in the horror film, Alice, Sweet Alice. Which romantic partner and arch-nemesis of the hero makes a return in this series? Yeah, Alice Morgan.
• Unholy Matrimony: With Vivien, his partner-in-crime who he has killed with on - apparently - many occasions.
• Villainous Breakdown: Series 5 is revealed to be one long one for him, as he's dying and it's making him act much more impulsively, and he went from being a careful serial killer with his wife's help to a lone wolf.
• Wicked Cultured: Jeremy is cultured, but he is becoming more brutal and impulsive by the time we meet him in Series 5.
• You See, I'm Dying: It's revealed through conversations Jeremy has with Vivien, that the two used to commit murders as a couple before settling down. However he has a brain tumour and not long to live, so he's going on one last killing frenzy whilst he still can.

Vivien Lake

Vivien Lake

Played by: Hermione Norris

Jeremy's wife.

• Behind Every Great Man: Jeremy is a brutal active serial killer, but Vivien is the plotter who helps him cover up his crimes.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Jeremy.
• Brains and Brawn: Vivien uses her extreme intelligence to pick victims for Jeremy and to frame one of her patients as the killer. While Jeremy is theoretically very intelligent too, Vivien embodies brains due to his growing instability.
• Brains and Bondage: She and Jeremy are into very sadistic sex, both with each other and others. They met in a fetish club.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She doesn't take the fact that Jeremy has been killing without her well at all.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Although not a heroic version. She's extremely sharp and brutal with Luther and Halliday, but very emotional towards her husband and their victims.
• Mask of Sanity: When we see her going to kill Jeremy's Basement Woman victim, she is completely different from her regular behaviour and can barely hold it together.
• Psycho Psychologist: She frames her mentally ill patient from a very abusive background for her sadistic husband's crimes.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Villainous example. Vivien is scrupulously polite and calm, but she's also a vicious, sadistic serial killer.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Like Jeremy, never raises her voice but still gets great pleasure out of others' pain.
• Unholy Matrimony: With Jeremy, especially when we learn that they've been killing together potentially for decades.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's not made clear what happens to her after Jeremy's death.
• Wicked Cultured: A straighter example than Jeremy.

David Robey

David Robey

Played by: Andy Serkis

A sinister man with a mysterious grudge against Luther.

• Agent Peacock: Has an ostentatious dress sense and is one of the few villains who can match Luther in combat.
• Attention Whore: A big part of his MO. He hosts his own online forum where sick twisted individuals can watch him forcing people to torture and kill each other, with him presenting it like a cheesy game show host.
• Berserk Button: Despite how much he relishes in taunting and talking down to people, he can't stand it whenever he's made fun of himself. Unusually for this trope, this makes him less dangerous rather than more, as when Luther starts ridiculing him about his former anxious habits which Robey's wife Georgette told him about when he visited her in hospital, he storms out of the room in embarrassment.
• Big Bad: Of Luther: Fallen Sun.
• Big Fancy House: Two. One is his London apartment, the other is his huge palace in Greenland, surrounded by a frozen moat filled with the bodies of people he has killed.
• Blackmail: Uses peoples’ secret shame to make them commit murders or suicides on his behalf.
• Control Freak: Relishes the power he holds over his victims. When Georgette, tried to leave him after he was prosecuted for a serious sexual assault, he locked her in the house and set fire to it, burning and disabling her.
• The Dandy: Always dressed smartly, yet flashily, in keeping with his superiority complex and Attention Whore nature.
• Death by Irony: Fills his frozen moat with the corpses of his murder victims but when he gets into a fight with Luther and crashes his Range Rover into the moat, the two of them fight underwater, Robey gets stuck beneath the ice and drowns alongside his victims. It's as satisfying as it sounds.
• The Dreaded: Acquires this reputation in London during his killing spree. Luther says that this was one of his main motivations, wanting to be thought of as "a bad dream come to life." He's like a more successful version of Cameron Pell.
• Diabolical Mastermind: A tech genius who gathers information on people to blackmail them.
• Ephebophile: Abducts Superintendent Odette Raine's daughter, Anya, and threatens to rape her into order to make Raine cooperate. Unless he was bluffing of course, but you can't be sure with this guy.
• Evil Genius: Almost on a par with Alice Morgan on intelligence, and in terms of villainy, he makes her look like an absolute saint.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He clearly thinks he's very funny but nobody else is laughing. It's quite darkly comedic when he sings "I'm Coming Out" by Diana Ross to his scarred wife in hospital though.
• Expy: His modus operandi of blackmailing people to obey him, together with his perverse nature arguably makes him one to Charles Augustus Magnussen, enhanced by the fact that he used to have a sweat problem.
• Faux Affably Evil: In spite of his despicable nature, he’s able to come across as a kind, gentle and supportive man to the families of his victims and brings flowers to the wife he crippled and scarred when visiting her in hospital.
• Hate Sink: A smug, sadistic, self-righteous, murdering maniac. You will not being shedding any tears for him, put it that way.
• Hypocrite: Accuses Luther of making the world unsafe for criminals like him, despite how unsafe they make it for other people. He also likes to blackmail people using secrets they're ashamed of, but when Luther starts making fun of him for his former habit of sweating and grinding his teeth whilst anxious which he learned from his wife, Robey flees the room.
• Karmic Death: Very karmic. Drowns beneath the ice of the frozen moat of his palace amidst the corpses of his many victims. Honestly, you feel like he got off lightly.
• Knight of Cerebus: Is by faaaar the baddest Big Bad Luther has ever faced.
• Large Ham: One of the hammiest Luther villains by far, up there with Cameron Pell and Alice Morgan.
• Manipulative Bastard: While he has no problems getting his own hands dirty, he prefers to work through others.
• Motive Rant: In keeping with his Bond-villain vibe, he has one of these when he has Luther at his mercy in his torture chamber, which he calls the Red Bunker. He tells Luther that he persecutes people like him "who are different" and that his torture chamber and online forum are a "safe space" for evil people like him to enjoy watching people being hurt without having to worry about being hurt themselves.
• Not So Stoic: He's mostly calm, smug and cocky but when Luther starts exposing his embarrassing secrets in front of his live-audience for added humiliation, he starts sweating and grinding his teeth like he used to, and has to leave the room. He seems to have recovered by the time he gets outside though, so he holds it together better than most Luther villains undergoing a breakdown.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: He likes his pop music, that's for sure.
• Practically Joker: A garishly dressed sociopathic sadist who can occasionally be quite funny.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Comes across as very playful in his evil.
• Sadist: He literally gives Ramsay Bolton a run for his money. This guy abducted a load of people, killed them and then lured their mothers to a house where he hanged their corpses and watches through the window as the house burns down, wearing a mask that's a screen depicting the faces of their children.
• Smug Smiler: His default expression is a sadistic smirk.
• Smug Snake: His ego is the size of London and while he’s definitely intelligent, he’s outplayed by Luther.
• The Sociopath: That's putting it mildly! Empathy and remorse are as foreign to him as Mars and he's able to be very superficially charming, convincing the wives and mothers of people he's killed that he's a good Samaritan there to provide them with a shoulder to cry on. He's also extremely egotistical and willing to take risks with his own safety to get what he wants. Unfortunately he combines this with being a sadist, which is a recipe for disaster.
• The Unfettered: Murder, torture, rape, there seem to be few, if any lengths to which this guy won’t sink.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Luther starts laying into him in front of his audience, exposing everything Georgette told Luther about Robey’s anxious habits and calling him a “weak, pathetic man”, Robey is so humiliated that he storms out of the room.
• Wicked Cultured: About the closest thing he has to a redeeming trait. Robey’s elegant apartment is relished with statuary and fine art.