Characters / Red vs. Blue - Project Freelancer

Red vs. Blue Main Character Index
Blood Gulch Crew
Red Team | Blue Team (Leonard L. Church)
Supporting Cast
Project Freelancer (Simulation Troopers | Artificial Intelligences) | Charon Industries | Chorus | Cosmic Powers | Alliance of Defense | Others

This page is for tropes pertaining to the Red vs. Blue characters who are part of Project Freelancer. All spoilers for the first fifteen seasons will be unmarked below.

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Project as a Whole

General Project

Project Freelancer

Project Freelancer is a state-of-the-art scientific endeavor with one goal in mind: To ensure the security of humanity in a harsh and violent galaxy.

— F.I.L.S.S.

A research project dedicated to studying AI units and their interactions with skilled agents. The project is led by Doctor Leonard Church (the Director) with the help of the Counselor and an AI unit named F.I.L.S.S. Their agents, who are named after US states, are unaware of the project's increasingly-immoral actions, which is the focus of the past storyline in Seasons 9 and 10. The project was only able to acquire one AI, the Alpha, which they tortured until it "fragmented" into other AI units.

Various circumstances led to the project falling apart and eventually getting shut down by the UNSC thanks to Chairman Malcom Hargrove. The events following this become the main plot of Seasons 6-8 and the present-day storyline of Seasons 9 and 10. The project is put to rest for good in the Season 10 finale, where, after growing tired of running and hiding from the authorities, the Director deletes F.I.L.S.S., telling her the project was a failure before committing suicide.

By the end of Season 10, the only known surviving agents are Washington and Carolina, both of whom have joined the Blood Gulch Crew. Malcolm Hargrove has acquired some of the remnants of the project's dissolution, including several pieces of Freelancer equipment (most notably Maine's armor), F.I.L.S.S. (somehow), and former Counselor Aiden Price.

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Associated Tropes:

• Anti-Villain: As a whole. Very few Freelancer personnel are actually evil, with them primarily being Punch Clock Villains and Unwitting Pawns to the Director and Counselor. Virtually all personnel were kept completely in the dark about the Project's horrific actions and thought that they were genuinely helping safeguard humanity's survival, when it was really anything but.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: North and South are twins, the AIs consider each other siblings, and Carolina is the daughter of the Director and Allison, whom Tex is based on. Church even compares the agents to children trying to impress their father. Also, all the agents and A.I.s have attempted to kill or manipulate each other, and most have succeeded. Only Carolina, Epsilon, and Washington are known to be left.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Applies to the Project itself, which performed multiple psychological experiments on even their top field agents and A.I. without them having the slightest clue about it, this would end up hindering them and depriving them of multiple assets as a result. Borders on Stupid Evil.
• Cleanup Crew: Recovery Command's job is to recover essential equipment from injured or dead agents in the field. In the grand scheme of things, they did a pretty horrendous job considering how Freelancer equipment is seemingly everywhere in the post-Great War galaxy.
• Cool Starship: The Mother of Invention, at least until it crashed in Episode 19 of Season 10 on Sidewinder/Avalanche.
• Cyborg: All Freelancer personnel (even down to the lowly simulation trooper) are installed with at least some form of cybernetic implants.
• Didn't Think This Through: Their plan in The Blood Gulch Chronicles to end the Great War, which (to make a long story short) had Omega possess Junior and return to Sangheilos with a unique Laser Blade, which would've apparently fulfilled an ancient prophecy within the Covenant and have them stop their war with the UNSC. However, when already ignoring how absurdly complex this plan is and how easily it would fall apart when put into practice, Church points out that even if the plan actually worked, all it would result in is giving the Anthropomorphic Personification of Unstoppable Rage a Proud Warrior Race to ravage the Milky Way with at their leisure.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Many of the Freelancers and personnel die this way, the exceptions being Wyoming, CT, Maine And the Director.
• Enemy Civil War: The project cannibalized itself due to terrible management and countless internal conflicts, to the point where it's already The Remnant by the time of The Blood Gulch Chronicles.
• Epic Fail: The entire project ended up as an embarrassing and costly failure to the UNSC, with Recovery Command being founded to recover the things they could from the project.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Sure, the Freelancers are all varying degrees of morally ambiguous - but they all seem to agree that leaving someone at the mercy of Maine is just too cruel.
• Evil Versus Evil: Their conflict with Charon Industries during Seasons 9 & 10.
• For Science!: They put their agents and A.I. through many experiments that varied from psychological torture to outright lethal for the sake of seeing what would happen. One particularly egregious example is with the Dakota twins, where they pitted the two against each other, endlessly favoring one while constantly denying the other simply to see what would happen.
• Gambit Roulette: While Omega/O'Malley, Wyoming, Gamma/Gary, Vic, and Florida are the primary agents through which it is carried out, the project's Evil Plan throughout The Blood Gulch Chronicles is all but stated to have been devised by Freelancer Command (making them the Greater Scope Villains). The sheer degree of planning and precision their stratagem would require, along with using Wyoming and Gamma's time-bending powers to (possibly) send Church into the past in order to further manipulate the Blood Gulch Crew, is nothing short of implausibly ridiculous.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Along with Charon Industries, Project Freelancer is responsible for virtually every horrible event in Red vs. Blue. And yes, this still includes the stuff involving the Cosmic Powers, as they (possibly, the Timey-Wimey Ball of Season 17 makes things more ambiguous) were only created due to a Stable Time Loop related to a time machine created by the Blues and Reds, who in turn were all motivated by the horrific crimes inflicted upon them by Freelancer.
• Hero of Another Story: "Hero" isn't exactly the best word to use for them, but the Freelancer agents and the related personnel are mentioned to have gone on countless other missions aside from what's glimpsed in the prequel segments seen in Seasons 9 & 10.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Most of them have brightly colored armor, most notably North and South Dakota, who perform an infiltration mission while wearing bright purple and green. Justified in Carolina's case, since she can change armor color.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Project Freelancer was brought down with the help of the Reds and Blues, whom they used as expendable Cannon Fodder to train the Freelancer agents. What's more, they actually hand selected the Blood Gulch crew for that outpost.
  • The whole purpose of the project was to conduct horrific experiments on the Alpha A.I. so as to weaponize the resultant fragments. The Alpha and his fragments ended up becoming the root of almost every single problem they had, especially when they were actually put into use on the battlefield. As Wash once put it, it was the project's own creations that tore it apart.
• Hypocrite: For an organization ostensibly dedicated to finding a way to safeguard humanity's survival against the Covenant, they're only seen fighting humans during the flashback sequences in Seasons 9, 10, and 15. Additionally, they were perfectly willing to use a Huragok (Engineer) to cultivate the individual A.I. fragments.
• Les Collaborateurs: They actually weren't this, but they worked with Sangheili separatists during The Blood Gulch Chronicles as part of their plan to end the Great War.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Project Freelancer had its main goal being the creation of Super Soldiers to help humanity survive the cataclysmic Human-Covenant War, with the Director also secretly seeking the "resurrection" of Allison Church. Incidental Mind Rape and property damage were unfortunate side effects of Freelancer's actions. Charon Industries, on the other hand, intentionally aimed to kill off an entire planet of innocent people in the name of War for Fun and Profit. Unfortunately, due to their lack of subtlety and internal conflicts, Project Freelancer went down first.
• Meaningful Name: The project's flagship is called the Mother of Invention after the saying that "Necessity is the mother of invention", a reference to the Director's belief that I Did What I Had to Do.
• Mooks: As Seasons 6, 9 and 10 all show, there were plenty of non-agent personnel aboard the Mother of Intervention and at various installations that served as cannon fodder.
• Near-Villain Victory: Their profoundly foolish plan to end the Great War (which would've more likely ended with Omega taking over the entire Milky Way) was thwarted at the last second thanks to Tucker and Sarge.
• Non-Indicative Name: The only reason they freelance in the Red and Blue conflict is that the conflict is a training for the actual missions they go on.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist. For all their talk of protecting humanity from aliens, they're fighting and killing far more humans than aliens.
• Plot Tumor: The Freelancer program began simply as independent soldiers who worked for the highest paying side and to introduce the AI programs. The mini-series Out of Mind expanded this to being a special program to combine AIs with soldiers and the AI revolt. The Recovery One and Recollection trilogy further expanded it to be not only a program designed to win the great war with unscrupulous methods, but the cause of the Red vs. Blue war and all the events of the first five seasons as an extended Freelancer training scenario. The ninth and tenth seasons had the plot equal parts silly comedy and the darker Freelancer backstory and the 15th season would see the fall out of the result of one of their Simlutaion Troopers attempting to take revenge for how they were treated.
• Pretentious Latin Motto: "Roboris Per Scientia" (Strength Through Science).
• The Remnant: Although the organization is already much smaller than its original 49 agents by the time the prequel segments of Season 9 start, the trope seems more applicable as of Season 10's present day, with F.I.L.S.S. and the Director as the only known members still fully active by the time of Season 10. Even they're both dead by the end.
• Retcon: Freelancer (and by extension Project Freelancer) was just meant to introduce Tex as an agent who would be paid to help whatever side for a payout. Similarly, this was how Wyoming was introduced. It wasn't until a few seasons afterwards that it was established that freelancer was a government project with super soldiers.
• Socketed Equipment: Both the Freelancers and simulation troopers have unique and modified armor that can hold an A.I. and use Freelancer equipment.
• Stupid Evil: While most of their plans follow the Director's plans, they do fall into some profoundly idiotic ideas like "What would happen if someone had two unstable A.I. in their head instead of one?" "What would happen if we play favortism between two siblings and constantly played on their jealousy?" and the profoundly stupid "What if a hate filled murderous evil A.I. abused an alien cult to supposedly end the War?"
• Villain Protagonist: In the prequel segments of the Project Freelancer Saga.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The project's original goal was to create Super Soldiers to safeguard humanity's survival during the Great War against the Covenant. It ends up being subverted when the Director decides to instead focus the Project in resurrecting his deceased wife, and cruel experiments on both the A.I. he was allowed and the agents who he had at his disposal.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The project as a whole zig-zags this all over the place:
  • The Counselor and the Director clearly do not view the A.I. as anything more than tools to an end, though considering their general Lack of Empathy towards other people, even if they did view them as human it wouldn't change much.
  • The agents are much less one way or the other about things. Many are shown to consider them as human as anyone else, some even forming tight bonds with them. But that said, there are those who still view them as another piece technology and that's it.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Their plan during The Blood Gulch Chronicles is an absurdly (and needlessly) convoluted case of this. Really, it's a miracle that it got as far as it did before the Blood Gulch Crew eventually stopped it.

Freelancers

Note: Carolina, Tex, and Washington are also part of this group. See here for Carolina, here for Tex, and here for Washington.

Agents in general

Texas: Time marches on. So does Project Freelancer.
North Dakota: Yeah. And lately, it seems like we're getting trampled in the process.

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• Applied Phlebotinum: The armor enhancements of Project Freelancer, which give them some truly superhuman abilities through highly advanced technology.
• Armor Is Useless: Their armor fails to offer much protection outside being able to withstand blunt force as it does next to nothing concerning bullets and bladed weaponry.
• Ascended Extra: With the exceptions of Tex, Wash, and Wyoming, all of the agents are this seeing how their roles were relatively minor or only offhandedly mentioned by the time they get more focus. Though Maine is a downplayed case, namely that while his body serves as an antagonist via The Meta during seasons 6-8, Maine himself was long dead by then, and only really gets to appear as himself in Season 9 and half of Season 10 before Sigma gets to him.
• Badass Crew: The upper leaderboard Freelancers by far. However, it's also deconstructed, as noted below.
• Breakout Character: The top freelancers at least are ridiculously popular, having a couple of scenes and mentions of them even years after they all (Except Carolina and Washington) died.
• The Cameo: They make a surprise post-humorous appearance in Season 13's "Test Your Might" when Carolina enters the alien gateway at the Jungle Temple. Several of them are also seen in Season 15's "Blue vs. Red - Part 2" and Season 17's "The Not So Good Ol' Days."
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Whether as a result of their power armor, or other standard enhancements, all Freelancers seem to possess some level of superhuman abilities. North and South are able to pull off some pretty insane moves when they're introduced in Season 9, and at the end of Season 10 York is able to lift a gym locker over his head and use it as a thrown projectile.
• Competition Freak: This behavior had been enforced by the leaderboard, having them focus on their rankings rather than their cohesion as a unit. The most notable and explicit ones being South Dakota and Carolina, while even the most seemingly laid back ones, North Dakota and York, are occasionally shown to share this sentiment as well.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The use of equipment without proper controls or an A.I to help properly manage them. If used incorrectly, it can kill the user.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: For both the Badass Crew and True Companions. On paper, they were meant to be an invincible group of badasses that were initially friendly and close-knit with each other. But due to the needlessly competitive nature of the Project and the ranking system that was constantly shoved in the faces of the agents, they were prone to jealousy, grudges and bitterness. The scoreboard only served to make the Freelancers complete missions on their own rather than work together. All of this would eventually lead to the team turning on one another (such as a sister trying to kill her brother, a few agents going rogue, friends attacking each other) and the project cannibalizing itself.
• Developing Doomed Characters: Almost all of the agents in the flashback segments of Seasons 9, 10, and 14 are dead long before we get to explore them, so this is to be expected.
• Divided We Fall: The ultimate cause of their end. While they were initially a Badass Crew of elite Agents, the Director's experiment with the leader board creating competition ultimately worked against itself. Agents began competing with one another and growing resentment towards each other, not helped by the Director's experiments with A.I.'s and who they were given to. By the final years of the Project, the Agents were largely divided into various camps, including those who defected upon realizing how horrible the Project was (C.T.), those that defected upon learning of the Alpha's torture (Tex, York, and North), those who remained for their own reasons (Wash, Wyoming, and Florida), or those driven away because of the Project's own actions (Maine/The Meta and Carolina). Agents that were once the best of friends were now fighting each other and burning bridges, and by the present day, only Wash and Carolina managed to survive it all, forced to lament how it all went wrong.
• Faster Than They Look: Don't let the full body armor fool you, they're all considered a ridiculously fast Lightning Bruiser with the exception of Maine.
• The Fellowship Has Ended: They were True Companions, but as the Project fell apart, so did their trust in one another, and by the time the Mother of Intervention crashed, most had gone their own way. Nowadays, the only Freelancers that are known for a fact to be alive are Wash and Carolina.
• Foil: As a whole group, they're one for the Blood Gulch Crew. The Freelancers were a group of allegedly cooperative and badass Super Soldiers meant to be comparable to the Spartans, but who ultimately betrayed and sabotaged each other to their mutual downfall. In contrast, the Blood Gulch Crew are a group of endlessly squabbling and shoddy soldiers originally meant to be used as glorified training dummies for the Freelancers, but who eventually become both True Companions and legendary badasses in their own right.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Subverted, they're occasionally mentioned years after their death, largely by Wash and Carolina as they lament how it all went wrong.
• Informed Attribute: Word of God is that all but one of the Agents had poor childhoods, and that that is why the group is such a Dysfunction Junction, but none of this is really made apparent when they appear. With most of them being dead now, it's highly unlikely said pasts will actually get expounded upon.invoked
• Informed Flaw: Zigzagged. Word of God says that Freelancers are more akin to "wannabe" Spartan IIs than actually comparable, however, given their status as Super Soldiers and considered both in and out of universe to be highly destructive and capable forces, the reason why is largely unseen. It wasn't until some deleted scenes and Season 14 came around that the flaw was shown properly.
• Irony: They are based off of Halo's Spartan II's, a group of Super Soldiers that were initially made to deal with humanity's rising insurrectionists against the UNSC and ended up instead fighting the Covenant. Freelancer Agents are a group of Super Soldiers that were supposed to fight the Covenant and ended up instead fighting the Insurrection.
• Killed Off for Real: They set the trend of this by being the first characters who are not Mooks in the BGC who die for real (contrasting with the Reds and Blues who shake off endless amounts of punishment with no problem) and continue that trend for the rest of the series.
• Location Theme Naming: They're all code named after the various states making up the United States of America. It's likely not a coincidence that their leader is Director Church.^note Though because there was only one Agent Carolina, the fiftieth agent was actually "D.C.".
• Neural Implanting: The process of A.I. distribution uses a form of this, though the Alpha, Beta, Omega, and Epsilon A.I.s can all circumvent it.
• Nom de Guerre: Agent [State Name]. They're almost never called by their real names, to the point where many of their real names are flat out unknown.
• Non-Indicative Name: Just like their Project, these "Freelancer Agents" are all employed by the UNSC, not working for multiple agencies. Though to be fair to them, the term "freelancer" did initially fit when Tex and Wyoming were first portrayed as bounty hunters/mercenaries with no real allegiance to anyone. This is Played for Laughs in Season 11, where Felix initially describes himself as a freelancer,the Red and Blues to raise their weapons, and he hastily explains that he's an actual mercenary.
• Not Enough to Bury: All agents found dead with their armor are blown to smithereens by Recovery agents. Wash does this to York, North, and South.
• One-Man Army: The leaderboard freelancers are all shown to be incredibly efficient during their missions, and when they work together, they can blow past just about anything the enemy throws at them. Notably, when they found the base of the "resistance" which had been opposing them for pressumably years, eight of them tear apart the whole base in no time at all.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: The Freelancers are largely only referred to by the callsigns, or some variation of.^*The Dakota's are usually called "North" and "South", Washington goes by "Wash", New York goes by "York", and Conneticut goes by "C.T." This is Downplayed in regards to certain agents given names^*Washington is David, Wyoming is Reginald, Ohio is Vera, Idaho is Ezra, and Iowa is Mike and Zig Zagged for others.^*It's unclear if C.T.'s name is actually Connie or it's just another nickname, and Carolina's family name is only known by virtue of her parentage The only outright subversions are Agents Texas and Florida.^*Agent Texas is the A.I. Beta and shares her name with her basis, Allison Church. Agent Florida meanwhile is Captain Butch Flowers.
• Quality over Quantity: For all the resources, manpower, and technology at their disposal, the Project only had fifty soldiers that were trained as a way to end the Great War^*To put it in perspective, Halo's Spartan II's were given 102 canidates, while Spartan III's were given 930 canidates. There's no indication that they ever replaced any agent, but it's shown that when the freelancers were in action, they tended to do their jobs incredibly well. They're even explicitly described as this in Season 12.
• The Sneaky Guy: Pretty much all the agents are expected to be this on some level, and those that typically aren't are assisted by those who are.
• Super-Soldier: invoked Generally speaking, they seem to be what a SPARTAN-II can actually be, especially when compared to the Red and Blue simulation troopers (though the series generally implies that the armor given to simulation troopers are essentially dime store MJOLNIR knockoffs). Even Washington, who viewed himself as the worst Freelancer out of his squad, is still enough of a badass to casually take down a Hornet on his own among countless other feats. However, Burnie Burns has stated that the Freelancers are ultimately more akin to "wannabe" Spartans due to their equipment, training, manpower, and A.I. shortcomings, with this being perhaps best shown with the Triplets, Utah, and Georgia.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Both Epsilon and Carolina (And to a lesser degree, Washington) come to feel this way towards the agents and the A.I., as they were all used in some way by the Director, even those who were more malicious like Maine and South Dakota.
• Took a Level in Badass: Compared to how we see them in previous seasons, with the exception of Maine and Wash (both of which had not yet reached the levels of Badass that was seen in the Recollection), this applies to all agents when the prequel segments came around.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: All of the modern day freelancers shown become considerably colder and pricklier towards their former colleagues and are even worse to those they didn't know before, not without reason. The exceptions to this are Florida, who remains the same and York, who became more cynical and self-serving rather than anything else.
• True Companions: In the prequels. However, this is deconstructed, in that no matter how close-knit they were, they did eventually fall apart anyway.
• Uncertain Doom: In season 15, Dylan says that all known freelancers are missing, whether that means they're dead or they've successfully gone into hiding remains unknown.
• Unwitting Pawn: Of the Director, who essentially made them into Villain Protagonists without them even knowing about it for the duration of most of the project.
• Weak, but Skilled: Compared to the Reds and Blues, the Freelancers can't take much punishment with the exception of Maine, but their skills generally far exceed the latter group.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Project is noted to have 50 agents total, one for each of the United States^*With the exception of the Carolina's being represented by a single agent, and the song "On Your Knees" suggesting the fiftieth agent is either D.C. or Puerto Rico. Of those agents however, less than half have been accounted for. Carolina and Wash have joined the Reds and Blues, Carolina's team^*Texas, Maine, York, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, C.T., and Florida all died over the course of the series, and several Agents are confirmed MIA^*Ohio, Iowa, Idaho, and Georgia or KIA^*Illinois, Arizona, Alaska, and Maryland were all killed by Temple, and Alabama and Delaware died in training missions.. Dylan Andrews cross-referencing the UNSC database with the data found on the Mother of Invention had her conclude that most agents are either MIA, or dead, and Temple was shown to have killed six unknown agents in addition to the four identified. The fates of the remaining agents however^*Arkansas, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississipi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennysylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin are unknown outside of six of them being the identities of Temple's other victims.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: The agents seem to not be bothered by the amount of people they have to kill to accomplish a mission. This applies to their own mooks too, as York and Tex kill them without regard during their break in, and both Carolina and Tex demonstrated no concern for the Desert Gulch Crew during their training mission, even after they get Biff killed. This comes back to bite them in the ass when Temple decides to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge because of their poor treatment, and succeeds in killing ten agents, and nearly killed Carolina and Wash were it not for Grif and Locus saving them.

York

Agent New York

^{Click here to see York without his helmet}

"The whole universe is moving too fast, Wash. I think we're just trying to keep up."

Voiced By: Sean Duggan

A tan and white-armored Freelancer agent. His armor enhancement is rapid regeneration, and his AI partner is Delta. In Season 9, York shows off his ability at picking locks, playing the part of The Lancer to Carolina, being the only Freelancer she seems to treat as an equal and friend instead of a subordinate or a burden. The two had some Unresolved Sexual Tension before the project collapsed and Carolina went missing, with York turning to petty burglary. He appears in the "Out of Mind" mini-series, agreeing to help Tex track down Wyoming, but he is killed in a firefight at the end of the series.

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Associated Tropes:

• Back for the Dead: In chronological order he's this: He had survived for several years before agreeing to help Tex out and dies only a couple of episodes later.
• Badass Driver: As Episode 17 of Season 9 shows, he can be badass even when behind the wheel, breaking to fling off the Insurrectionist sleeveless soldier when he was about to shoot Maine and slamming into the truck that a sniper was on so that Maine could punch him. Most notably, this was shortly after York had lost sight in one eye.
• Bad Liar: When he tries to bluff Tex unconvincingly, she tells him he's never been good at lying.
• Beware the Silly Ones: To a lesser extent that Wash, but still present. York on the field has difficulties with locks (his specialty) and is the subject of Amusing Injuries, but he's near the top of the leaderboard for almost two entire seasons, showing that he isn't just all talk.
• Butt-Monkey: Along with Wash, he's often the target of Amusing Injuries.
• Character Development: A rather tragic case. York during his time in Freelancer had been convinced that he was on the side of the "good guys", something that wanes throughout season 9 and 10, and comes to a point when he finds out the truth thanks to Tex, going against the Project to try and right their wrongs. By the time Out of Mind happens, York no longer has any illusion of being a good guy (as he tries to pull a gun on someone he thinks is an officer), and he doesn't have to be convinced to do the right thing as much as he wants to settle a personal vendetta.
• Close-Range Combatant: While he's shown to be able to take out a Mook easily enough with a battle rifle, York seems to excel in close range far better, complimenting this, his weapon is a shotgun. Most prominent examples would be against Tex, where he is her biggest threat throughout the training rounds, and is able to disarm her and momentarily gain an advantage. Also when he's able to quickly deal with the Sleeveless Soldier that was able to toss Maine around like nothing.
• Deader than Dead: His body was blown up in the first episode of Recovery One as Wash's job as a recovery agent.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  York: Maine! Look, I'm gonna move left, you g- (Maine rushes out and is promptly shot with a freezing paint round) ... or you just run out and do whatever you want and then get killed. Ready? Break. Good job everybody.
• Did Not Get the Girl: With Carolina. She didn't believe him about Project Freelancer and he was killed before they met again.
• Doomed by Canon: In Seasons 9 and 10, due to dying much earlier in Out of Mind.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Dies of a battle rifle round in the chest - years before the Freelancer Saga showed he was quite badass (only once the leaderboard has him out of the top 3), and that other agents have survived equal if not greater damage.
• Everybody Has Standards:
  • When Tex starts really delivering a No Holds Barred Beat Down to Wyoming after triggering her temper, York tries to stop her despite the latter not seeing eye to eye with the former.
  • Earlier than that, York was surprised to see Wyoming and Maine try to kill Tex, briefly trying to get them to stop before attempting to help Tex.
• Everyone Can See It: York's feelings for Carolina are painfully obvious with barely any real attempt to conceal it, with Washington, North Dakota and Texas all making comments about it, though Carolina herself either doesn't acknowledge it until some time after his death.
• Eye Scream: Took a grenade to the face when Maine tried to use it to kill Tex in Season 9, Episode 10. From then on, his left eye is heavily implied to be at least partially blind, white with a scar near it, due to the protective paint from the spar not having covered that much of his head before the detonation.
• Failure Hero: Despite all his efforts, York failed to help Tex save the Alpha, failed to save Carolina from the grips of the Project, and failed to get his revenge on Wyoming.
• Foil:
  • Appropriately enough, to Wyoming. They are both Deadpan Snarkers with some of the most healthy relationships with their A.I., unlike Tex with Omega or Maine with Sigma. However, York is a Nice Guy who views himself as a good guy, is openly friendly with his fellow agents, and prefers to do things himself with his weapon being a shotgun. Wyoming on the other hand, is Faux Affably Evil who has no illusions about being a soldier in doing what needs to be done to win The Great War, is rather reserved and attempts to be professional with his allies and prefers to let others do his dirty work for him. His weapon is a sniper rifle.
• For Want Of A Nail: He actually saves Maine from a headshot when the latter was unconscious, which (in addition to his insane durability) contributes in the ultimate path that ends with Sigma being given to Maine to form the Meta.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Played With, Tex briefly mentions York after his death to Church, but doesn't talk about what happened to him. Carolina and Washington subvert this by mentioning him a few times.
• The Gadfly: He likes to make snarky comments and tease his teammates, probably best demonstrated as he attempts to reassure Washington their helmets can dispose of waste when they can not. It gets flipped on his head when he tries to do something similar to Wyoming, at which point York gets annoyed quickly.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He gets a nice scar across his left eye and it apparently made him lose vision partially in one of his eyes.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: He's never seen smoking on screen, but the fact that he has his Iconic Item even before he meets Carolina implies this trope is in effect.
• Groin Attack: Twice, both courtesy of Tex. Notably, York had managed to disarm Tex during one of the sparring rounds, which she responded by kneeing him and unloading an entire clip of armor hardening paint into his crotch area.
• Handicapped Badass: Courtesy of being a bit too close to a grenade explosion. It damages one of his eyes, but he still remains very competent. Competent enough to save Tex's life after her gun jams.
• Healing Factor: His armor ability, not that it helps him survive in the end, though it does help Wash and Caboose later on.
• Hope Spot: In-Universe example. When Project Freelancer starts making reports of a female agent eluding their forces, he thinks for some time that Carolina was still alive (which she was, but nobody knew that at the time), when he finds out they were talking about Tex, he's crushed.
• Iconic Item: His Club Errera lighter. It played a part in him first meeting Carolina, and wanting to be with Carolina is a large facet of York's character. After his death, it's the only memento Carolina has to remember him by.
• Image Song: "Come On Carolina".
• Informed Ability:
  • Zig-Zagged Trope. York is nominally the team's infiltration expert, but we seem to see him having difficulty with, complaining heavily about, or outright failing to crack open the locks he comes across. The one lock we see him pick successfully is the one he picks in Out Of Mind. It more or less directly leads to the firefight where he gets killed.
  • Actually lampshaded by York when his and Tex's break-in starts an alarm, claiming it never happens to him with a bewildered tone of voice.
• In-Series Nickname: He is only ever called York or Agent York, even by the Director.
• Irony: His armor equipment is a Healing Factor, but not only does it not save his life later on, it doesn't heal the wound he obtained much earlier in the series. Furthermore, when it does get used by someone else however, it's shown to be particularly effective in saving Wash's and Caboose's lives. Meaning despite having the equipment assigned to him and therefore best trained with it, it's the least effective with York himself.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Played With. York won't hesitate to say rather mean spirited things to his fellow agents and give biting commentary when he feels the need to, especially to Washington, but his morals are very much in the right place.
• The Lancer: To Carolina. He plays Number 2 to her, seems to be the only one she sees as a friend, and serves as the laid-back snarker to her straight-laced 'get the job done' attitude. Monty has said that York was written to be the Han Solo of the Freelancers, and it shows.
• The Lost Lenore: He thinks Carolina is this to him, but it's later revealed he's this to Carolina.
• Master of Unlocking: He's supposed to be this, and is described by Wash as being "an old locksmith". It's an Informed Ability to just about everyone else, and his frequent failures at lockpicking are Played for Laughs. In the prequel segments of Seasons 9 and 10, his icon on the ranking board is, appropriately enough, a lock.
• Misplaced Retribution: He blames Wyoming, Tex and Omega for his blindness in his left eye. This is despite the fact Tex and Omega legitimately had nothing to do with the loss of his eye, Tex even saved his life after he was disoriented by the rubble that Maine hit him with as collateral. In fact Maine, who is the most directly responsible for the incident, isn't even mentioned.
• Nice Guy: In addition to being a bad liar, compared to most of the other Freelancers we've seen he's genuinely quite friendly and laid-back, tries to encourage teamwork in a group that's usually made of lone wolves, and seems to have a sense of fair play/decency in a group that's often opportunistic. He also seems be the one of the few who had an actual healthy partner/friendship with his AI. He's the snarkiest third of the trio he, Wash, and North seem to have going, though his snark is generally meant to be good-natured. He also seems to have been one of the only Freelancers who didn't Take a Level in Jerkass after Project Freelancer broke up.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The Mean for the trio with Wash and North, being a lot more snarky and generally willing to say mean things more than the other two.
• The Nicknamer: For both Delta and Sigma at least, calling them "D" and "Sig" respectively.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • He tries to switch sides during a training exercise when his partners Wyoming and Maine start using lethal force. He gets berated by Tex for "abandoning his team" in return and got in the blast range of a frag grenade thrown by Maine, causing him to go blind in one eye.
  • Downplayed when he helps Tex in out of Mind as he's admittedly trying to get some Revenge, but his decision to help Tex when she comes for it ultimately ends up with him getting killed by Wyoming.
• Nom de Guerre: Besides being known as "Agent New York", he apparently goes by a callsign "Foxtrot-12", though the significance of the callsign is never elaborated on.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Despite being exasperated with his fellow Freelancer's actions he's often joking around, asking for praise for doing his job and gets distracted when in the middle of a mission.
  • Furthermore, regardless of his rather lackadaisical attitude, he's apparently pretty competitive, being second on the leaderboard, and even once working his way up from sixth to third after he was knocked down to the bottom.
• Odd Name Out: There's no state named just "York", though it's later confirmed short for New York.
• Out-of-Character Moment: York is normally both quick to jump to Carolina's side on things, and is one of the notable freelancers to consider Delta as more than just a machine. Yet when Carolina attempts to reason with South about being without an A.I. he's the one to point out her point falls flat when she gave Sigma away to Maine compared to South (who is vocally being dismissive of Delta and Theta) who never got one.
• Only Sane Man: Among the rest of the Freelancers, he seems to function as this along with North.
• Poor Communication Kills: Instead of trying to explain to Carolina why he's siding with Tex against the Director, he simply asks her to trust him and join him in the rebellion as it's going on. She declines his offer ^note Understandably, as he's expecting her to betray her father she desperately seeks the approval of with very little information given and gets into a brief fight with him. This would then set him up for the series of circumstances that end with him being killed years later, as well as enabling Sigma to extract Carolina's A.I. after the latter's skirmish with Tex.
• Posthumous Character: We only see him alive once in the story's present day, his introduction in Out Of Mind, during which he is killed. Almost everything we know about him we learn in flashbacks.
• Revenge: His stated reason for teaming up with Tex to go after Wyoming.
• Sacrificial Lion: He's introduced as an old buddy of Tex's, and one of the few people she actively gets along with. He's then killed not long after she recruits him to help her.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Tex recruited him into her heist after she's presumably showed him what information she got from C.T., firmly putting him into this category.
• Ship Sinking: In Episode 19 of Season 10, Carolina refuses to participate in the rebellion with York, and the resulting fight ensures that they never get together.
• Ship Tease: Episodes 11 and 12 of Season 10 are pretty much just nothing but two episodes of Ship Tease with Carolina.
• Skewed Priorities: When him and Carolina are about to plummet into the ground at a high speed, he simply asks whatever happened to Maine.
• Small Role, Big Impact: York had been the focus of only two episodes in a mini-series about Tex, and dies in the final episode. This allows Delta to get in the hands of Washington, setting the events of Recovery One, and Season 6-8. Subverted in Seasons 9-10, where York is one of freelancers with the biggest focus of the flashback segments.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Though a Nice Guy nonetheless.
• Took A Level In Cynicism: By the time York meets Tex in out of mind, he's resigned himself to being a thief on the run rather than the optimistic "good guy" he thought he was. Completely justified thanks to what led him to that point.
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • With Tex. The two share their fair share of snark when they interact and talk about each other, but it's shown that they trust each other to have each other's back when the chips are down. He was also the first, and initially only, person she recruited for her heist against Freelancer.
  • York and Delta spend almost all their mutual screentime snarking at each other, but it's clear they're fond of each other especially since Delta is willing to potentially sacrifice his own existence to ensure York dies comfortably.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: On paper, rapid regeneration seems like it'd be a great asset. Unfortunately, the regeneration seems to be rather weak, being unable to heal injuries when in the field effectively, needing much time requiring its user to stay out of any other conflict while the regeneration goes on. When Carolina gets her own version of the equipment, it takes a while to heal up a simple stab wound effectively. Though it could have more mundane use, such as its briefly mentioned pain medication, it's never shown.

Wyoming

Reginald / Agent Wyoming

^{Click here to see Wyoming without his helmet}

"Looks like it's your lucky day, mate. I don't have time to torture you, so I'm just going to have to kill you."

Voiced By: Matt Hullum

Another agent of Project Freelancer, hired by O'Malley to kill Tucker after the latter discovers the secret of Red and Blue Command. Tucker survives his assassination attempt, and Wyoming and Tex end up chasing each other around during the main series, as well as the Out of Mind side series. He eventually eludes her and returns to Blood Gulch alongside O'Malley for the series' explosive finale. Known for uttering insincere apologies to his victims, and being perpetually cool-headed, Wyoming's armor enhancement is a temporal distorter that allows him to manipulate time, slowing it down, or looping it. As shown during the finale, the latter produces a backlog of "spare" Wyomings, making him a literal One-Man Army. Presumed dead during Reconstruction, though the Meta was kind enough to loot his special equipment. Wyoming wears white armor, his real name is Reginald, and he talks with something approaching an imitation of a muddled British/Australian accent.

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Associated Tropes:

• Anti-Villain: While he is an antagonist throughout most of The Blood Gulch Chronicles and who kills without remorse, his last words imply that he was genuinely dedicated to winning the Human-Covenant War for humanity - no matter the cost.
• Arc Villain: Wyoming is the main antagonist of the Out of Mind miniseries, as Tex teams up with York to track him down so she can find out where his employer - O'Malley - is.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He's mostly shown to be a goofy parody of James Bond, but is also a ruthless Hero Killer and professional sniper.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Parodied. Despite having trapped most of Blue team and having them at his disposal, he decides to monologue to explain his plan every time they loop back regardless of his monologue giving Blue team the time they need to disrupt his plans and despite Wyoming being aware what happened in every previous loop.
• Bounty Hunter: His job after Project Freelancer started to collapse. Later seasons seem to imply that he was still working for Freelancer during The Blood Gulch Chronicles, though.
• The Brute: Not as much as Maine, but still present in Season 9. He's shown as noticeably less direct in Season 10 and the present day. Ironically, he's one of the weakest Freelancers in a straight-up fight. He makes up for it with his time mastery... and fighting dirty.
• Catchphrase: Gamma's habit of cracking knock-knock jokes seems to have rubbed off on him.
• Character Death: Most of him by Tucker, which solidified the latter into a Badass Normal. A few were killed by the Reds in the Chupathingy. The final Wyoming was executed by Tex.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: His Establishing Character Moment has him about to do it. He's then interrupted, so he kills the Red Shirt anyway.
• Cold Sniper: In contrast with Friendly Sniper North, Wyoming is significantly less friendly and more of a sociopath.
• Combat Pragmatist: Knows full well that in a straight fight that he is not actually that much better than even sim troopers. He makes up the difference by using stealth, time mastery and sniper skills.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: An army of Wyomings gets massacred by the Reds in "Repent, The End Is Near". Hand Waved as being due to his Temporal Distortion unit being disabled by Tucker and Sheila, which meant he couldn't use his time loop powers to stay on top.
• The Corruptible: Downplayed, especially in comparison to Maine. He was always a Jerkass, but it's heavily implied that Gamma amplified Wyoming's negative qualities until he became the remorseless, ruthless killer he is in The Blood Gulch Chronicles.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Wyoming has arguably the best aim in the series, being able to beat just about anyone in a gun fight (which includes Tex and Washington) but unlike the latter two, Wyoming's close range skills leaves much to be desired. This is most evident in the 3-on-1 fight with Tex, as he manages to do far worse than either of his teammates, which includes the slower and easily telegraphed Maine.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Deals one out to the Sidewinder Reds off-screen, similarly to how Tex had done so to the Sidewinder Blues.
  • Is on the receiving end by Tex in Season 9, along with his fellow agents Maine and York. Notably, unlike the latter two, Wyoming is unable to land a single punch on her before the match ends.
• Dastardly Whiplash: Has some of the mannerisms and, according to Season 10, the mustache, but otherwise subverted, as he does try his best to actually be successful in his missions as a Bounty Hunter.
• Deader than Dead: How he's able to get Killed Off for Real in The Blood Gulch Chronicles - After Tucker stabs the "present" Wyoming and Sheila locks Gary/Gamma behind a firewall on the Pelican, the other Wyomings aren't able to have their Temporal Distortion units work since the A.I. that operates their equipment is missing, and so any deaths they suffer are permanent.
• Deadpan Snarker: Comes with a very dry wit, and it helps that he's an Evil Brit.
• Demoted to Extra: invoked Despite playing a fairly important role in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, his only main contributing factor to Season 9 is participating in the sparring session with Tex and two lines of dialogue. Word of God says that this was due to his Laughably Evil nature contrasting with the more serious prequel segments. However, he gets more spotlight in Season 10, including having his face shown.
• Dirty Coward: Most on display when he's going up against Chain Guy and Chain Girl, he flat out refuses Carolina's orders on the grounds that he's "prefer not to get killed, thank you very much". Though to be fair, she was asking the team's sniper to move forward. He's shown a tendency to hang back and let his teammates take the brunt whenever things look tough or dangerous on a few other occasions as well.
• The Dragon: For O'Malley, but given that he is a Freelancer, he's already one (by proxy) to the Director.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Wyoming had been given a contract to kill anyone who knew that Command is Mission Control for both the Reds and Blues (i.e. Tucker). Explaining that he had purposely misled Omega to go search for Tex at Blood Gulch in the Out Of Mind miniseries, Wyoming hoped that Omega would do the work for him. Naturally, it didn't work out, so he figured that he had to get more hands-on to get the work done.
• Evil Brit: ...Well, he kind of sounds like one; a British/Australian accent was the best Hullum could do for him in the auditioning.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Well, more morally grey than outright evil, but it's still in effect when Wyoming is outright confused when Delta wishes both him and Tex luck, despite the former having fatally wounded his True Companion only moments ago.
• Evil Counterpart: To Tex in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, being a more villainous Bounty Hunter and the only other known Freelancer at the time.
• Evil Gloating:
  • He gloats when Delta (seemingly) dies after killing York, writing it off with a distinct smugness about him. Naturally, Tex decides to try and beat information out of him as a result of his actions.
  • He's a big fan of monologuing as he's often have a small, dramatic speech whenever he's got someone in a trap. Most prevalent in season 5, where he says the same monologue over and over despite having no need to do so. His death is when he ends up being Caught Monologuing by Tucker.
• Face Death with Dignity: After his plans crumble apart and he is thoroughly defeated, Wyoming merely defends why he had done what he's done, and he is killed without a word of protest, surprise, or pleading.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride. His adamant refusal to take the Reds and Blues seriously (especially Tucker) leads to his plans falling apart as well as his death.
• Faux Affably Evil: Tends to speak in a polite tone and give an insincere "sorry" whenever he shoots someone.
• Foil:
  • Appropriately enough, to York. They are both Deadpan Snarkers with some of the most healthy relationships with their A.I., unlike Tex with Omega or Maine with Sigma. However, York is a Nice Guy who views himself as a good guy, is openly friendly with his fellow agents, and prefers to do things himself with his weapon being a shotgun. Wyoming on the other hand, is Faux Affably Evil who has no illusions about being a soldier in doing what needs to be done to win The Great War, is rather reserved and attempts to be professional with his allies and prefers to let others do his dirty work for him. His weapon is a sniper rifle.
  • To Locus, the other Cold Sniper antagonist in the series. Wyoming is Laughably Evil, while Locus is a Knight of Cerebus. Both are soldiers trying to fulfill their orders and play The Dragon to the Big Bad of the season(s). However, Locus is cold, calculating, and to the point while Wyoming is hammy, prideful, and likes to draw things out. Locus constantly makes use of his armor ability, while Wyoming only uses his at the very end. However, Locus is manipulated by his partner, and ultimately strives to redeem himself for what he had done. While Wyoming is a manipulator, attempting to put all the pieces into motion before his (final) death.
• Forgot About His Powers: As Season 6 reveals, temporal distortion includes slowing time down to a near halt, though Wyoming never makes use of this regardless of how it may have helped him.
• Friendly Enemies: Downplayed, but present. Wyoming clearly respects Tex much more than the Reds and Blues, and is much more willing to talk to her whenever the two meet, and Tex returns some measure of civility. Though it's not without its snark and taunts from both ends.
• The Gadfly: Clearly enjoys teasing and annoying those he interacts with, best seen with Tex during the BGC and York during Season 10.
• Hero Killer: He is the one who kills both Agent York and the Alien (though considering how the latter's allegiance is actually still unknown, that's admittedly more debatable). He also killed Caboose in Alternate Timelines before Wyoming was forced to press the Reset Button.
• Hidden Depths: A rather surprising case. According to "Repent, The End Is Near," he is legitimately convinced that he's doing the right thing in helping Omega take over the Covenant and is (implicitly) operating on Freelancer Command's orders to "win the war at any costs."
• I Did What I Had to Do: When the full details of his plan for Junior and Omega are laid out, Church calls the plan insane, Wyoming is quick to defend the idea, saying that it was (the Freelancers) job to win The War no matter the cost.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How Tucker kills the "present" Wyoming - Namely, by playing dumb and then stabbing him from behind with his Sangheili energy sword.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: At one point, he shoots a rocket launcher out of Tucker's hands without hurting him, and is also the only person to land a shot on Tex in her sparring match. Also of note is that until the final episodes of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, he had the upper hand on all of his opponents when in firefights.
• Ink-Suit Actor: The Season 10 extras reveal his face is based on his voice actor, Matt Hullum, only with an added mustache and a different haircut.
• Just Following Orders: With the benefit of hindsight, he, Gamma, and Omega all seem to be following an absurdly convoluted Xanatos Speed Chess gambit implicitly set up by Freelancer Command so as to solve the Great War during The Blood Gulch Chronicles.
• Karmic Death: The "present" Wyoming is killed by Tucker after he told him he was going to kidnap Tucker's son Junior to have him possessed by Omega.
• Killed Off for Real: After spending the entire series up to that point repeatedly cheating death with his time dilation unit and creating a ton of copies of himself, "Repent, the End is Near" has most of his copies killed by the Reds, while the sole surviving Wyoming is executed by Tex.
• Knight of Cerebus: Downplayed. He is still Laughably Evil, but serves as the most effective and competent threat during The Blood Gulch Chronicles, even being the first legitimately antagonistic Freelancer.
• Lack of Empathy: Remorselessly killed a guard even after the man revealed he was a single parent.
• Large Ham: He's unabashedly evil and speaks with a silly accent, so Matt is clearly having fun with the role.
• Laughably Evil: While he's still a legitimate threat, he's also absurdly goofy and pretty hard to take seriously most of the time.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Along with Maine during the three-on-one fight with Tex.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: When Wyoming and Maine start using live ammo during the sparring match against Tex, the former in particular poses a greater threat than he ever did with paint rounds.
• Light Is Not Good: Wears white armour, and suffice to say, he's kind of a dick.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Played for Laughs in Singularity, where he's utterly baffled by Wash (who is using Mental Time Travel to appear around the time of Recovery One) talking about Carolina being alive and Trickster God Genkins causing Temporal Paradoxes.
• Long-Range Fighter: While all the freelancers are shown to be pretty good with a gun, it's Wyoming who's shown to be the most capable with one, especially with a sniper rifle, which contrasts greatly with how poor he is at close range.
• Manipulative Bastard: Best shown when he manipulates the Alien to his own ends. And later when he's aware Tex will go forward with his plan even after he was stopped. He also gets an offscreen moment of this, convincing Omega to possess to new host to go along with the plan to win The War.
• Me's a Crowd: Courtesy of his equipment and the resultant time shenanigans that ensue. More specifically, he's able to pull various versions of himself from alternate timelines who were on the brink of death due to his Time Master powers.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Seems to be one of the few agents with this ideal, considering he is one of the few agents operating under the Project years after most others split off. Notably, he shares this with Tex and Maine.
• Mysterious Mercenary Pursuer: During The Blood Gulch Chronicles.
• Noodle Incident: It is heavily implied that Sigma had Maine attack Wyoming first to attempt to get Gamma and his temporal distortion unit, the details and how he ended up surviving is unknown, but this is presumably why Gamma forcibly ejected himself from his agent.
• Not So Above It All: Despite each of his temporal copies being well aware of what happens when time is reset, he decides to do the same evil monologue, word for word, from the beginning for no other reason than the fact he wanted to.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: As goofy as he is, he's also a ruthless assassin whose ultimate goal would've resulted in the galaxy being ravaged by an evil A.I. with an army of Scary Dogmatic Aliens at its side.
• Out-Gambitted: Due to the fact that Wyoming was unaware that Tucker's sword made him completely immune to Temporal Distortion, he assumes it's a fluke until Tucker pretends he had forgotten it long enough to make his move.
• Pet the Dog: He's shown sitting by Carolina's bedside while she recovers from her surgery in Episode 14 of Season 10.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: His Temporal Distortion Unit lets him loop segments of time ad infinitum until he wins, with the only people able to remember the previous loops being him, Gamma, and anyone holding a Sangheili Laser Blade.
• Save Scumming: He essentially does this in Episode 98 of the Blood Gulch Chronicles, looping time whenever he got killed.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: Seems to be able to find Tex and the Reds and Blues no matter where they are. He demonstrates this skill in season 10, being able to find CT and infiltrate the base without anyone being the wiser.
• Smug Snake: In the prequels, he's shown to be overly cocky without the ability to back it up. He grows out of this trope in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, as he's more savvy, Took a Level in Badass and takes the necessary steps to try and neutralize his enemies without leaving a window open. Though he still makes a couple of mistakes.
• The Sociopath: Kills without remorse or mercy. Even his former colleagues (i.e., York) aren't spared.
• Stealth Expert: Frequently sneaks up on the Blood Gulch Crew and Tex throughout the series. Also somewhat implied during the prequel segments as he and Florida infiltrate the "Resistance" Base while following C.T. and the Insurrection Leader. Ironically, his bright white armor doesn't give him away, with Florida instead (with his darker color scheme) being the one who ends up getting spotted and targeted first.
• Story-Breaker Power: His ability to manipulate time is easily the most powerful armor ability out of all those in the Project, the only way it was beaten was because Tucker could nullify it thanks to his energy sword. It's also the only piece of armor equipment not replicated in season 12 and 13 and for good reason.
• Time Master: His armor enhancement can loop time infinitely if he loses; think of it as pressing the restart button for a video game console every time something goes wrong for you. It can also stop time, but he never makes use of this for unknown reasons.
• Token Evil Teammate: For the Freelancers, along with Maine and Florida. Wyoming is ruthless and cold, and will murder people who pose no real threat to him for any reason, though he does genuinely believe his actions will serve the greater good. By the time of The Blood Gulch Chronicles he's even willing to kill his fellow agents with no hesitation.
• Took a Level in Badass: Apparently did this between the prequel seasons and his time in Blood Gulch. Even when factoring in his time manipulation abilities, he went from nearly ineffectual in the prequel bits to being a pretty successful villain in The Blood Gulch Chronicles (though his success admittedly might've been heightened by him being mostly Surrounded by Idiots in Blood Gulch), the fact he was able to become an actual threat to Tex speaks volumes.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The flashbacks in Season 9 and 10 show that, while he was always a Jerkass, he still cared about his fellow agents and wasn't The Gadfly who enjoyed annoying everyone all the time, just a Deadpan Snarker who would occasionally troll the others. By the time of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, he's just a total Jerkass who remorselessly murders York and tries to do the same to Wash. It's implied that this was a result of Gamma amplifying all of his negative qualities following his implantation.
• Trap Master: While Wyoming may not be nearly as proficient as Tex in combat, he's almost constantly one step ahead of everyone due to his ability to lead others into traps without fail, making him far more of a consistent threat for most of the series.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • Seems to have one with Gamma, if the A.I.'s concern and Wyoming's confidence in him are any indication. Also possibly with Florida, as they frequently share scenes in Season 10.
  • It's hinted that he had this on some level with Maine, as the two seem to be in sync with each other during the sparring match in Season 9, and share multiple scenes in the background with him in Season 10.
• Weak, but Skilled: Well, by Freelancer standards. He's more an assassin than a straight-up combatant, and seems to favor sniping to close combat. Still, he was able to pose a credible threat to Tex throughout The Blood Gulch Chronicles, often getting the better of her with ambushes and traps.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He seems to view his actions throughout The Blood Gulch Chronicles as necessary steps to stop the Great War.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Matt Hullum's decidedly lackluster British accent as Wyoming is generally Played for Laughs, with it even sounding more like an Australian accent at times than anything else.
• The Worf Effect: Despite being established as a dangerous threat with remarkable aim throughout multiple seasons, he is unable to land a single shot on anyone when he has a literal army of himself at his disposal.
• Worf Had the Flu: It's hinted in the previous episode that Gamma forcibly ejected himself out of Wyoming (causing any multitude of psychological effects) nor long before his fight with York in Season 10.
• Would Hurt a Child: Well, more like would let a child get possessed used as a weapon to stop a massive war, but the trope still applies.
• Younger Than They Look: Well, sound. Wyoming sounds like a rather older man, with initial art coming out of him depicting him in his mid-fifties or sixties. Word of God says he's in his mid-thirties and Season 10 later backs up this claim when his face is shown.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Does this to a Red Shirt he comes across in his first appearance, and then to the Alien.

Maine / The Meta

Agent Maine / The Meta

(A low, menacing hiss)

Voiced By: Matt Hullum and Burnie Burns

The former Freelancer Agent Maine, who was The Brute in his team, his armor enhancement was a strength boost. After losing his ability to talk due to throat injuries, Carolina gave Maine Sigma, whose quest to achieve metastability led him to influence Maine. Maine eventually lost his mind and started tracking down and murdering other agents, then stripping them of their combat A.I.s and special equipment, growing in power with each victory, becoming the Meta.

The Arc Villain of the Recovery One and Reconstruction series, the Meta refers to itself as a collective entity due to the number of consciousnesses running around inside its head, and seems to be set on recovering all of the Freelancer A.I.s in order to reconstruct the Alpha from which they were derived. A formidable opponent - Church compares the Meta to the one woman army Tex, but says "this thing's like... eight of her." Its white armor (though it can change color due to a chameleon circuit) is a hodgepodge of parts from a number of designs, and the Meta's voice varies from a Creepy Child hissing whisper to a susurrus of voices talking at once to animalistic snarls, though the former two are likely the voices of the A.I.s in its head. The AI in its head were destroyed by the EMP, thus destroying the Meta.

But the empty shell that was Maine survived, and appears well into Recreation, finding Donut at the Blue base, who mistakes him for a new blue soldier. Simmons is unpleasantly surprised. It turns out he's working with Washington to track down the Epsilon A.I. After being Washington's comedic partner for most of Revelation, Maine eventually betrays him and stabs Tex's robot body in the face with the Capture Unit, trapping her inside it. Washington tries to fight him and is nearly killed. Luckily, the Blood Gulch crew team up to take him down, hooking him to a wrecked warthog's tow cable and sending him off the side of a cliff, into the ocean. Because of the damage his suit sustained during the battle, Maine drowns.

During The Stinger of Season 12, it is revealed that the ship carrying the Reds and Blues that crash-landed on Chorus was carrying a crate that housed the Meta's armor, and Locus has delivered it directly to Malcolm Hargrove, who intended to mass produce the armor to create a new breed of Super-Soldier. At the end of Season 13 Tucker equips himself with the armor while aboard the Staff of Charon and Epsilon fragments himself in order to power the suit in order to give the Reds and Blues the advantage they needed in the coming fight.

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Associated Tropes:

• Arc Villain: The main antagonist of the Recollection trilogy. In an interesting variation, Sigma is The Man Behind the Man and the retroactive Big Bad of Reconstruction, but dies at the end of that season, leaving only the Meta as the Big Bad for Recreation and Revelation.
• The Assimilator: The Meta captures and assimilates the AI fragments so that Sigma can take control of them.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Meta having access to multiple armor abilities at once made him a force that was near unstoppable in a straight up fight, but running all these abilities at once proved to be too much for the suit to handle, and suffered from power failures and a need to seek larger power sources.
• Ax-Crazy: Due to Sigma's machinations. While Maine was brutal and short-tempered before, he generally only used violence when he was ordered to. As the Meta, on the other hand, he slaughters everyone in his way regardless of necessity and whether or not they pose a threat to him.
• Bald of Evil: One of the few aesthetic features shown. Episode 18 shows he had Sigma's Meta symbol tattooed on the back of his head.
• Big Bad: Of The Recollection Trilogy. Sigma is the one calling the shots throughout Reconstruction, but the Meta is the more prominent of the two and even after Sigma is killed the Meta remains the primary threat to the BGC.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Washington in Revelation as they hunt down Epsilon. The pair hold Simmons and Doc hostage at the beginning of the season, the ensuing battle between them and the Red Team plus Epsilon sets Epsilon out to find and revive Tex, and then Tex lures them to Sidewinder for a final battle. Then the Meta betrays Wash towards the end and becomes the single Big Bad before dying.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With "C.T." in Recreation. The Meta repeatedly hunts down and tries to kill Donut, Simmons and Lopez in Valhalla while C.T. tries to salvage a dig site for individual profit and comes into trouble with Tucker, Sarge, Caboose and Grif in a desert.
• Big Damn Heroes: Manages to do this unintentionally. He ends up saving York and Carolina from falling to their deaths at the last possible moment as he's driving out of the collapsing building in Season 9.
• Book Ends: The Meta's rampage begins and ends with someone getting chucked off of a cliff at Sidewinder.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Sigma slowly bent him to his will and broke his mind, which resulted in him becoming nothing more than a vessel for Sigma's will.
• The Brute: During his time as a Freelancer. As Agent Maine, he was noticeably much slower in combat than other Freelancers, but made up for it with brute strength that could even knock Agent Tex off balance with a single punch, or on a much more impressive scale, punch other Freelancers through solid concrete. He subverts the expectation of low intellect by being shown to be just as able as the other Freelancers to think and strategise.
• Burning with Anger: Season 10, Episode 18 has Maine walking into the camera while wreathed in Sigma's holographic flames, to mark the point at which he finally loses it and becomes the Meta.
• Characterization Marches On: Up until the Project Freelancer Saga, the Meta's goal was implied to be just gaining more power and he was just as interested in collecting armor enhancements as he was in artificial intelligences. Season 10 has established him as having tried to complete Sigma's plan of achieving metastability.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To O'Malley. O'Malley was a hilarious Large Ham who constantly made loud threats and proclamations of how evil he was, was prone to Bond Villain Stupidity, and tended to use his abilities as an AI to force others into helping him with his goals. The Meta is silent and is a human reduced to an Empty Shell by an AI, only able to follow the AI’s orders, and just kills anyone in his way, regardless of whether they could actually pose a threat to him. The Meta is also a "calmly insane" Knight of Cerebus in sharp contrast to O'Malley status as a Laughably Evil frothing lunatic.
• The Corruptible: Maine isn't really the Meta, or at least wasn't the one in charge of what happened as the Meta until the end of Reconstruction. Sigma is.
• Crippling Overspecialization: In one-on-one confrontations where his armor enhancements don't provide cover, the Brute Shot is his only defensive measure beyond simply tanking whatever the enemy can throw at him. This generally works against the Insurrection or other members of Project Freelancer, but against an unorthodox team like the Blood Gulch Crew, it's his death sentence; Grif getting the Brute Shot away from him during their final battle gives Tucker an easy opening to stab him, ensuring his death when the Reds throw him over the cliff for him to drown.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Frequently dealt them as the Meta. On the receiving end as Maine a couple times in Season 9, back on the giving end in Season 10.
• Deadpan Snarker: He acts as a Silent Snarker in Revelation while he's partnered up with Washington.
• Death of Personality: While Maine was never much of a talker he did have his own personality, comradery with the other Freelancers, and was committed to helping humanity no matter the cost. After Sigma was implanted into his head he was eventually corrupted into becoming obsessed with collecting power and achieving the AI's dream of Metastability. Even after Sigma and the other AI fragments were destroyed at the end of Relocated the Meta continued to hunt down other AI's in order to achieve Sigma's goals proving that Maine was long dead. The Counselor even lampshades this in Season 13:
  Price: The Meta was the result of the Sigma A.I. manipulating Maine. His sole objective was perfection. When the A.I. fragments were destroyed by Agent Washington, the Meta was destroyed along with them, leaving behind a damaged shell of a man and like Sigma his only remaining goal was to obtain power.
• Death by Irony: He's killed the same way he tried to kill Carolina, in the same place where he stopped being Maine and became the Meta.
• Deflector Shields: In The Recollection Trilogy, the Meta uses an "Overshield" enhancement to enhance his armor's shielding on a single-person level.
• Determinator: As shown in the Season 9 flashbacks, he's the only Freelancer able to take a punch from Tex or even land a good hit on her... he still gets curbstomped, though. Then, during the Sarcophagus operation, he takes several shots to the throat from point-blank range and just gets back up to keep fighting! Shortly after, he is hit by a speeding semi only to end up getting rushed to the hospital, rather than the morgue.
• Disney Villain Death: His final fate is being dragged off a cliff and into the ocean where he drowns. His helmet is shown to have been recovered in The Stinger for Season 12's finale, and Season 13 firmly establishes that he drowned due to the stab wounds Tucker dealt him, the Chairman just had his armor recovered.
• Doomed by Canon: In Seasons 9 and 10, since he died at the end of Revelation.
• The Dragon: As Season 10 reveals, he's actually this to Sigma, who was driving his actions.
• Dragon Ascendant: Though after Sigma was killed, it was the Empty Shell that remained that was in charge.
• Dragon-in-Chief: While Sigma was the one controlling him and not incompetent, it's really the Meta that everyone fears, and Sigma wouldn't get anywhere without Maine.
• The Dreaded: The Meta is pretty much the walking personification of Oh, Crap! among the series' cast of characters. The flashbacks show that even back when he was just Agent Maine, his mere presence was enough to inspire fear in unfortunate Mooks. Furthermore, even Felix seems a little creeped out to discuss him in Season 13, and Donut shows legitimate fear of dealing with him rather than Genkins during the events of Singularity.
• Driven to Madness: Although he wasn't the nicest of the Freelancers to begin with, Maine was driven to being full-on Ax-Crazy by Sigma's plot.
• Drives Like Crazy: As shown when he's briefly driving a warthog, his driving is erratic and he spends all his time on the wrong side of the road.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In his brief appearance at the end of Recovery One, he is kept offscreen, but brief glimpses of him running by the camera show him wearing standard brown MJOLNIR Mark-VI armor. His iconic design wouldn't be shown until Reconstruction. Justified since Recovery One was filmed using Halo 2, and the Meta's two most iconic aspects of his design — his helmet and Brute Shot — both wouldn't become available until Halo 3 (which what the Recollection Trilogy is filmed in).
• Empty Shell: By the time Sigma is through with him, he's nothing but a mindless meat puppet dancing to Sigma's strings. Even after Sigma is dead, Maine has been so thoroughly consumed by his ambitions that he continues to carry them out all the way to the grave.
• Establishing Character Moment: He gets a rare example in Reconstruction where the character isn't actually seen, but Private Henderson's tale of how the Meta killed almost all of the Simulation Troopers at Valhalla just to get to Omega, Gamma, and Tex, and subsequently assimilated them, leaving behind only a mysterious message carved into the walls of the Blues' base: "WE ARE THE META". All this establishes him as The Dreaded, a nigh-unstoppable brute who can and will kill anyone in his way who poses a massive threat to everyone around him and is more dangerous than any of the villains encountered up to this point.
• Eviler than Thou: To Agent Washington, who he betrays. He also does this posthumously to Felix, who is extremely uncomfortable talking about him.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Wash orders the Meta around for most of Revelation, using him a lot like a weapon. He seems to have forgotten how dangerous the Meta is. This really bites him in the ass later on. His comments after the Meta's betrayal imply that the reason for this was his hope that the Meta could be restored to his former personality as Maine.
• Expy: As lampshaded by the hosts of DEATH BATTLE! in Season 14, the Meta is pretty clearly one for the Predator in being a creepy Ambiguously Human mute juggernaut who only communicates in sinister growls and spends his time obsessively hunting professional soldiers and taking trophies from his victims (in this case, their armor enhancements).
• The Faceless: One of the few Freelancers who never has his face shown. The lecture in "What's the 'I' Stand For?" has him unmasked in the background and his face is just barely visible, although Sigma covers it when the camera focuses on him. His unmasked head is also shown from behind in the Lock-and-Load Montage at the beginning of "Change of Plans".
• Foe-Tossing Charge: Charges Tex during their sparring, ramming a cement pillar that Wyoming has been slammed into and sending it flying right at York.
• The Heavy: He drives the plot for most of Reconstruction.
• Hero Killer: His list of kills includes Agent North Dakota, three other unnamed Freelancers, Epsilon-Texas, Recovery 6 and 9, and very nearly Agent Washington and Carolina.
• Hidden Depths: Season 13 reveals a bit more about Maine, specifically that while he held the belief that unpleasant things would have to be done during his career as a soldier, he also believed that if he was a soldier who just simply followed orders without any hesitance no matter what, it would have made him a mindless slave.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In Reconstruction, he tricks Sarge into reforming the Blood Gulch Reds and tried using them to kill Agent Washington. Two seasons later in Revelation, they're the ones to help in permanently killing him. Furthermore, they were able to kill him through taking advantage of the Meta's sadism, with Sarge managing to commune a secret message to Grif and attach the Warthog's tow cable hook to the Meta's torso since the Meta is making sure to strangle Sarge very slowly at the moment.
• Implacable Man: He shrugs off most attacks nonchalantly. Even getting stabbed in the chest with an energy sword barely slows him down.
• Ineffectual Loner: Inverted. As part of a group, Maine is just the Big Guy, but when on its own, the Meta becomes absolutely terrifying.
• Informed Attribute: Several comments are made on his apparent large size (Tucker at one point refers to him as "Gigantor", for example). However, he's animated using a standard Halo character model, and CGI scenes are consistent with this model, so he's only ever shown to be the same height as everybody else.
• Iron Butt Monkey: To an extent in the prequels, as most of the injuries he takes are painful but Played for Laughs. This goes away in the present, where he's simply out and out Made of Iron.
• Irony: The Meta's first victim was thrown from a cliff after having her AI stolen. Later, he's disposed of in the exact same manner, in the exact same place, effectively dying where he was "born". To top it all off, Maine is scared of heights.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: The Meta is often referred to as "it" rather than "him", seemingly to emphasize how far from a human he's actually become.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed. Maine was an amoral and borderline sociopathic brute prone to fits of anger and extreme violence, but he cared about his fellow agents and could be surprisingly kind and protective at some points, even Taking the Bullet for Carolina, and was legitimately dedicated to protecting the human race. This vanished after Sigma took over.
• The Juggernaut: Over the course of the series, he's shrugged off nearly everything imaginable, up to and including several combat knife wounds, an explosion, and many physical beat downs including a backbreaker to name just a few. In the Season 8 finale alone, he takes multiple Battle Rifle shots, his own Brute Shot at close range, a energy sword through the chest, and at least half a dozen shotgun rounds. In Season 9, Episode 17 he takes a sniper round to the chest, several point blank pistol rounds straight to the throat, gets thrown off a flatbed truck that's moving probably well over 75 mph, bounces into an oncoming semi and falls off a bridge. This is without any AI or armor enhancements like he had in previous seasons.
• Karmic Death: The Meta dies the exact same way he tried to kill Carolina: being tossed off of a cliff at Sidewinder, unable to do anything about it but scream.
• Kick the Dog: He elects to strangle Sarge to death very slowly in "N+1".
• Knight of Cerebus: He's quite easily the most serious villain faced on a recurring basis, and his appearance was the one that caused the show to start to consistently undergo Cerebus Syndrome.
• Lack of Empathy: The Meta turned against his fellow Freelancers without remorse, though it's unclear how much of a choice Maine had in doing so, since Sigma seems to be the one in charge by that point. Still, following that point, the Meta kills everyone in his way regardless of how much of a threat they pose and without a hint of regret; the only times he fails to kill someone is the times he has Wash at his mercy.
• The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort: Averted surprisingly, regardless of his ability to take an attack without slowing down he always tries to defend himself. Whenever he takes a severe blow there is always a good reason.
• Leitmotif: "When Your Middle Name is Danger", and "Plagam Extremam Infligere".
• Light Is Not Good: He wears white armor and is one of the most dangerous characters in the entire series.
• Lightning Bruiser: A key difference between Season 9 era Agent Maine and the Meta is speed. While Agent Maine is comparatively sluggish next to other Freelancers, the Meta is shown to be much more agile and mobile, which, added to his phenomenal strength, considerably affects his fight with Epsilon-Tex as compared to Agent Texas.
• Loss of Identity: Sigma essentially killed "Maine" a long time before the Meta dies. However, a very rare instance of Maine ever resurfacing comes when he freezes time in Season 6. Despite having the Recovery Agent dead to rights, he doesn't take the shot despite Washington being the biggest threat at the time and could have easily dealt with Caboose, Church and the wounded South afterwards.
• Made of Iron: With all the crap that happens to him, it's amazing he's as effective as he is. This may actually be his best trait.
  • In "Spiral", which occurs before he gets his AIs, he is sniped in the chest, then shot point blank several times to the face and throat, then hit by a speeding semi that knocks him off a highway. He loses his ability to talk (intelligibly, he still manages to make growling and hissing noises) and that's about it.
  • Another example is his Disney Villain Death, he didn't die from the massive fall into a freezing ocean after being dragged off from an insanely high icy cliff, he drowned due to the stab that Tucker landed in the earlier fight making puncture wounds in his suit.
• Meaningful Name: His Freelancer Agent designation is "Maine"; this serves as an allusion to Lovecraft Country and Cosmic Horror Story fiction, which is quite fitting since he would end up becoming the Mind Raped Empty Shell of a host to a hostile artificial intelligence desiring to ascend to another state of existence.
• Mind Rape: What Sigma had been doing to Maine for some time until he fully shaped the freelancer into his attack dog, the Meta. The experience was so bad that Maine couldn't hope to not think of himself as the Meta, acting as he did while Sigma controlled him, even if Sigma had already died.
• Mighty Glacier: In Season 9, by Freelancer standards. It shows when he tangos with Tex. He's also the only Freelancer heavy enough to serve as a counterweight to the Sarcophagus in the same season.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: While he never explicitly expressed this onscreen, Season 13 revealed that Maine carried this sort of mentality before Sigma turned him into the Meta. This is shared with fellow Agents Texas and Wyoming.
• Not Quite Dead: After the EMP went off at Freelancer HQ, his fate was left ambiguous, but he came back. Seemingly subverted in Season 8's finale, which had him thrown off of a cliff tied to the Reds' Warthog, though the Chairman has his body as of The Stinger of the Season 12 finale. Season 13 however subverts this, by firmly establishing he died after drowning in the ocean below the cliff thanks to the stab wounds Tucker dealt him, the Chairman only recovered his body to get his armor.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Predictably, after spending most of Revelation as a comedic sidekick to Wash, the Meta beats the crap out of Tex, betrays Wash and installs Epsilon-Tex into his own armor to restore his powers and aid in him capturing Epsilon so he can achieve metastability.
• Not So Above It All: A deleted scene from Reconstruction shows him prank calling Wash with an edited recording of Sarge, and in Revelation he refuses to pull Doc out of a wall by the codpiece.
• Odd Friendship: The strong, silent, and nigh-unstoppable Maine and the goofy, lighthearted Washington were actually really good friends before Maine had his mind broken and was turned into the Meta. By Season 8, when they work together again, this is no longer the case and the two clearly hate each other, though Wash appears to be trying to get Meta psychological help from Doc, not that it does anything in the long run.
• One-Man Army: Described by Church to be as strong as eight versions of Agent Tex. Given how he did when fighting against her, it's not hard to understand why.
• Phrase Catcher: Twice, when someone finds out Maine will be doing battle with someone else, you'll hear "I almost feel sorry for them" as a response. However, this is only really seen in Season 9. Whenever he's about to kill someone in a fight, the words "Plagam Extremam Infligere" are often chanted in the background music. This means "Inflicting Extreme Wounds"... or, more roughly, "Bloody Murder".
• Power Copying: As the Meta, he kills other Freelancers for their armor enhancements and the AIs needed to run them.
• Power Parasite: A more mundane variant. The AIs are designed with corresponding abilities, which they share with whomsoever their Freelancer hosts happen to be. The Meta killed those Freelancers, stole their AIs, jammed them into his head and uses those same abilities whenever he desires.
• Pre-Insanity Reveal: While Agent Maine wasn't the nicest person, he was still a loyal teammate. But as time went on, Sigma's ambition for Metastability drove the Maine mad as Sigma corrupted him, and he began killing others under Sigma's control. Even when Sigma and the other AI fragments were destroyed, the Meta was still an Empty Shell bent on carrying out Sigma's goal.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Downplayed, since it only appears in moments where he's Not So Above It All, but he does occasionally demonstrate some childish traits, such as his refusal to pull Doc out of a stone wall by the cod piece and a deleted scene has him childishly prank call Wash with a recording of Sarge.
• Psycho Party Member: He's definitely not at Florida's level of insanity, but Maine definitely had a few screws loose even before getting Sigma implanted in his head.
• The Quiet One: Even during season 9, where he had the ability to talk until midway through episode 17, he only ever says six words in his decent amount of screen time. In Season 10, Simmons calls him "the scariest fucking mute in the galaxy."
• Rasputinian Death: He's punched, caught in a back breaker, blown up, shot, and stabbed repeatedly before the Reds and Blues tied him to a Warthog that was thrown off a cliff ("...That is the most metal thing I've ever heard."). And even then, the Meta only died due to the stabbing, as the holes it created in his armor let in water causing him to drown.
• Sanity Slippage: As shown over the course of Season 10.
• Serial Killer: As "the Meta", he hunts down and assimilates other AI fragments at the behest of Sigma. This is mostly seen in Recovery One and Reconstruction.
• Silent Antagonist: In a massive contrast to the chatty and hammy O'Malley and Wyoming, the Meta can only growl, and is all the more scary for it.
• Silent Snarker: Due to being mute, his snark is mostly in growls or body movements.
• Start of Darkness: Depending on how one looks at it, his was either being shot in the throat by the Sleeveless Insurrectionist or taking on Sigma as a replacement voice as a result. Before the incident on the freeway, he was, while vicious in combat, still kind to his fellow agents, thanking them, Taking the Bullet for Carolina, and even expressing fear due to his acrophobia. Over the course of Season 10, those redeeming qualities disappear, leaving him as little more than an animal until Season 8's temporary personality shift.
• The Stoic: Usually speaks in guttural growls that have been digitally augmented.
• Suddenly Voiced: He finally speaks in Season 9, though he still doesn't say more than six words.
• Super-Strength: He hits hard. He was already incredibly strong as a normal human being, but then they gave him a strength booster as an armor upgrade, at which point he becomes capable of throwing a Warthog through the air. Seemingly as a tradeoff, he's noticeably much slower than other Freelancers before becoming The Meta, and still not quite up to par in that area afterwards. In Season 12, Simmons notes he had the strength of twenty bears.
• Taking the Bullet: Takes a sniper round to the chest for Carolina.
• Taking You with Me: As he's getting dragged over the cliff to his death, he grabs Grif's leg in a last ditch effort to take one of the Blood Gulch Crew with him. Maine ends up falling, but Grif is able to use the Brute Shot to save himself.
• Tattooed Crook: While "crook" puts it pretty mildly, Episode 18 of Season 10 reveals that he had the Meta symbol tattooed on the back of his head.
• Teeth Clenched Team Work: With their shared screentime in Revelation, it's clear that Meta and Washington do not get along, often arguing and refusing to trust one another. When the Meta does finally make his move to betray Wash, he openly declares he's not surprised.
• Terse Talker: When Maine could speak, it was short, stilted sentences which contrasted from the much more wordier agents that he interacted with often.
• Time Master: In The Recollection, after getting Wyoming's time distortion unit. Though thanks to having so many other enhancements his usage of it is severely limited, only able to temporarily stop time at the cost of shutting down all his other enhancements.
• Token Evil Teammate: Along with Florida and Wyoming. He's brutal and perfectly willing to do unpleasant things to get the job done, though unlike them, he can be protective of certain agents. At least, before Sigma started messing around in his head.
• Took a Level in Badass: Takes several in between his time as a Freelancer and becoming the Meta. The first one is shown after he's implanted with Sigma. By the time of Recovery One, he's killed four other Freelancers, all with higher combat ratings than Washington, and by the time of Revelation he's able to take on Tex, without his armor enhancements, with only a little assistance from Washington. In Reconstruction, Church describes the fully-powered Meta as "eight of [Tex]".
• Tragic Villain: While not ever really nice, Maine was a loyal and protective teammate. Then, he gets the artificial intelligence Sigma, originally intended for Carolina. Sigma quickly begins brainwashing Maine to serve his goals, collecting other AI fragments in an attempt to become a full AI himself. Sigma's hold on Maine is so strong that at points Sigma is able to take direct control of Maine's body for short periods of time. By the end of the flashback portions of Season 10, Maine's sense of identity is gone; there's only the Meta. Even when Alpha-Church and Washington destroy the Meta's AI fragments, Maine continues to think of himself as the Meta and to feel compelled to finish Sigma's plans. When the full story behind Maine's descent in villainy is revealed, Epsilon-Church and Carolina consider him just as much a victim of the Director as they are.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Compared to his fellow freelancers, both Maine and Meta were this; while Maine was already strong and Meta would pick up the speed and refine his fighting style, he was still at a disadvantage fighting people who were faster and/or more skilled than him.
• Villainous Friendship: It's hinted that he had this on some level with Wyoming, as the two seem to be in sync with each other during the sparring match in Season 9, and share multiple scenes in the background with him in Season 10.
• Villainous Legacy: Despite having died in Season 8, he is referenced increasingly throughout The Chorus Trilogy, and both Malcolm Hargrove and Locus have become interested in his past.
• Villain Decay: In Revelation, he becomes a beleaguered Silent Snarker sidekick to Wash, who he comedically bickers with. Then it gets averted hard when he betrays Wash the second the opportunity presents itself, with the implication this was just a front he put up to get Wash to let his guard down.
• Voice of the Legion: His growls and other miscellaneous noises are made out of multiple noises at once, perhaps to reflect the numerous AIs in his mind. Before he gets the AIs he has a single, if very gruff, voice in addition to his animalistic noises. Yet he still growls and snarls in fights.
• Weapon-Based Characterisation: The Meta is a brutish fighter who wields a brutish weapon called the Brute Shot, a combination Grenade Launcher/sword taken from the Covenant and subsequently looted from a museum. Given his habit of stealing A.I.s and equipment to make himself more powerful, it's fitting that his weapon is stolen as well by Grif after his death, who renames it the "Grif Shot".
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Described by the Counselor as willing to do the "unpleasant" and "morally questionable" because he knew his actions served the greater good.
• We Used to Be Friends: With both Carolina and Washington, both of which he'd attempt to kill following Sigma transforming him into the Meta.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Season 9 shows he has at least mild acrophobia. Which makes his Disney Villain Death that much worse.
  Maine: Too high.
  Carolina: Oh, don't be a baby.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Having Sigma put into his head allowed Maine to become more powerful, but also drove him insane as the AI formulated his plan to achieve metastability by capturing all of the other Freelancer AIs. By the time he took Eta and Iota into himself, Maine was already the Ax-Crazy Meta.
  Church: Powerful and crazy. What a winning combination.

Connecticut / C.T.

Agent Connecticut / C.T. / "Connie"

^{Click here to see C.T. without her helmet}

"We don't all make mistakes. Some of us very specifically make mistakes, and others don't seem to make any mistakes at all."

Voiced By: Samantha Ireland

Another member of the Freelancer project and a close friend of Wash's. She is suspicious of the Director and despises his ranking system technique. Therefore, she aligns herself with the Insurrection to do... something to counter the Director. Her armor enhancement was holographic projections mixed with an invisibility cloak.

While she allegedly appeared in Recreation as one of the antagonists, she is later killed in the Season 10 flashbacks, and it is revealed that it was actually her boyfriend, the Insurrectionist Leader, who had donned her mask during that time.

---

Associated Tropes:

• Action Girl: Not on Carolina's level but is clearly combat adept and stealthy.
• Adaptational Badass: Not her, but her holograms (which can both be spammed and provides her with stealh at the same time) is far more effective here than in the core series of Halo.
• Battle Couple: With the Insurrectionist Leader.
• The Cassandra: Her warnings about the Director go unheeded or even outright contradicted by fellow Freelancers, despite being completely true.
• Combat Pragmatist: She makes extensive use of holograms in combat. It lets her land a decent hit on Tex and hold her own with Carolina for a short time.
• Commander Contrarian: Her dialogue in Season 9 is coated with bitterness towards The Director and the ranking system.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Downplayed. Her holograms aren't Hard Light constructs, so that means they are only good for disorienting and distraction, something which she puts to good use with her fighting style, but once her opponent adapts to them, she has nothing to ensure her own safety.
• The Cynic: Her whole attitude throughout season 9 is CT having been fed up and pessimistic with the Project as a whole, which eventually leads to her defection.
• Dead All Along: The real C.T. died long before Season 7.
• Dead Man Writing: Thanks to a data unit containing all the dirt on Project Freelancer. The information leads directly to Tex's Tomato in the Mirror moment and Epsilon's reintegration and rebirth as Alpha.
• Devious Daggers: Revealed to be rather proficient in using knives, being able to land a rather powerful blow against Tex, and to take on Carolina in a fight (although admittedly the latter was aiming not to kill.)
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: She dies in the arms of the Insurrection Leader.
• Dies Wide Open: The last shot of her is her dead face with open eyes.
• Didn't See That Coming: She fully admits she didn't expect to be hunted down by Project Freelancer so soon after her defection, which leave the Insurrectionists initially unprepared for the full blown assault.
• Doomed by Canon: Subverted. While it would appear this way, as she apparently died at the end of Season 7, she actually ends up dying during the flashback segments, and the C.T. who appeared and died in Season 7 is revealed to be the Insurrectionist Leader.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": She doesn't like Wash calling her 'Connie' because it makes her sound like a kid. The Insurrectionist Leader is allowed, though, and she calls herself that to Tex in her Dead Man Writing scene. It's possible that she just doesn't like it from full-on "agents of the Director", as Wash was.
• Dramatic Irony: Her defection to the Insurrection was because she truly believed they were the good guys. Unfortunately, she was dead wrong.
• Entertainingly Wrong: She believed that the Insurrection were better people than those in the project and they worked on the right side of the law. Anyone who's seen The Chorus Trilogy knows this can not be further from the truth.
• Failure Hero: Has issues because her skills aren't up to snuff with the rest of the Freelancer Elite, and hates the ranking process.
• Flash Step: Her close combat fighting style appears to use a lot of this, by using her hologram generator ability to make false images of herself.
• Fragile Speedster: CT is very fast even compared to top-board Freelancers like Tex and Carolina, however, she is noticeably staggered more whenever she is hit, and has no defense outside of her armor and ultimately is put down very quickly when decisive blows land on her.
• Hidden Badass: At first, she just seems like a low-level Freelancer who's not even on the leaderboard. Then you see that she has been fighting her allies the whole time, and of course she wouldn't really try to hurt them. In Season 10, she is shown to be nearly as skilled as Carolina and even manages to pin Tex's arm to her back with her knife and set her up for a brutal combo with the Insurrectionist Leader.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: As shown in Episode 17, she didn't actually hate Texas, and considered her a friend and someone she trusted with a copy of all of the dirt she had picked up on the Director.
• Hologram: Her armor ability is to make these of herself, which she uses for distraction both in stealth and close combat situations.
• Informed Flaw: Downplayed. She's mentioned several times to be one of the less capable agents, but at one point was actually on the Leaderboard alongside Wash, South, and Georgia. After she reveals her true colors and returns to the Insurrection though, she demonstrates skills allowing her to fight on par with both Carolina and Tex, all but saying she was hiding her true skill level to maintain her cover.
• Invisibility Cloak: Though not as blatant as Tex's armor ability, her holograms seem to have an integrated one of these, since nobody seems to be able to see the real her at all when the hologram is up. At least, not until the end of her fight with Tex.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed as C.T. isn't as abrasive as her teammates, but she was very openly cynical and skeptical of the Director and the Project itself, which is occasionally directed towards Wash, Tex and Carolina due to their loyalties being to the former at that point in time though she ultimately strives to do what's right. Season 14 sees her being much less cynical and generally happy, being a straight up Nice Girl at the time.
• Legacy Character: The C.T. from Recreation is actually the Insurrectionist Leader, who took on her name and armor when the real Agent Connecticut was killed by Tex.
• Leitmotif: Can't Trust Anybody
• Locked Out of the Loop: Ironically. Despite knowing very early on about the Project's less than savory side of things, she seems to be completely unaware as to what the Insurrection really was, as she explicitly states that they're the ones working inside the law while the Project wasn't. As Season 7 and 12 shows, the Insurrection most certainly not working alongside any UNSC law.
• The Mole: For the Insurrection. While she was a member of the Project for some time before the initial flashbacks as revealed in the "Triplets" arc of Season 14, and did seem to have a genuine friendship with South, Wash, and the Triplets, by the flashback segments of Season 9, she's already actively feeding intel to the Insurrection before flat-out defecting in Season 10.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Zig Zagged. Like the other Freelancers, she's primarily referred to by her codename: Conneticut, though she instead uses the abreviated "C.T.". People close to her however call her "Connie", but it's never revealed if that's her actual name or if it's just a nickname. The Leader and Ohio calling her that imply it's the former, as the Leader has little reason to refer to her by an enemy callsign, while Ohio calls her that while also calling Wash "David", shortly before switching to their codenames and apologizing for calling them otherwise. The official Red vs. Blue guidebook however implies the latter — while characters like Wash and Wyoming have their first names uncensored, C.T.'s name is censored completely. This is also reinforced by her dog tags when they are recovered by Carolina, as they have the initials "RT" on them. Assuming this isn't just a reference to Rooster Teeth, this implies C.T.'s real name begins with an R, not a C.
• Only Sane Woman: She's the only person who realizes how messed up Project Freelancer is, and that the Director is trying to play the agents against each other. Pity she's wrong about the alignment of the Insurrectionists...
• Out of Focus: Due to being one of the freelancers that both defected and died in the past, she gets comparatively little focus compared to the likes of Carolina, York, Texas, or even Washington.
• Posthumous Character: All of her appearances are in the extended flashbacks, and, even then, she greatly influences Tex after her own death.
• Properly Paranoid: She's rightfully suspicious of the Director and Project Freelancer's ranking system & actions. Unfortunately for her, she defected to a side that wasn't exactly any better than Freelancer.
• Samus Is a Girl: She was assumed to be male because of her voice throughout Recreation, but Washington reveals her gender offhandedly in the next season. It's subverted in the end, because the body he was referring to (and the CT from Recreation) was actually the Insurrectionist Leader, a man.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: What she had attempted to do. Unfortunately for her, the Project finds her soon after her defection and Tex mortally wounds her soon after.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Once she gets the opportunity to leave the Project and join the Insurrectionist Leader, she takes the first on-screen opportunity to do so.
• Ship Tease: With Agent Washington, of all people. Just one more thing to add to the tragedy that is Wash's life.
• Small Role, Big Impact: She doesn't get an high amount of focus compared to the other Freelancers, but she's responsible for Tex deciding to become who she is, leading to the attempted heist of the Mother of Intervention and setting up for the Blood Gulch Chronicles, and responsible for giving the Leader vital information and armor both of which he'd use in Season 7.
• Token Good Teammate: It's a stretch to call the Freelancers evil as they were UnwittingPawns with some of them having My Country, Right or Wrong mentalities, but CT is the one who is the most proactive in her attempted take down of the Project, well aware something had to be fixed even before she made her findings known. She also the one who attempts to take things to the UNSC (or what she believed was the UNSC) as soon as she feels she has enough evidence of the Director's wrongdoings, but not before leaving a copy for Tex.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: A lesser degree than others, but CT used to be much less bitter as seen in a brief flashback in season 14, which was set an undetermined time before season 9.
• Unwitting Pawn: Judging from her dialogue, in contrast to what is learned in Season 12, she appears to have believed that the "Resistance" were the good guys. She was wrong.

South Dakota

Agent South Dakota / Recovery Two

"Who's the monster now, bitch?"

^{Click here to see South without her helmet}

"I don't even have one because someone didn't bring enough to share, so why am I sitting through this elementary classroom bullshit?"

Voiced By: Shana Merlin

Another member of the Freelancer project, though she never got an AI due to Wash's breakdown, a fact she still harbored some resentment for him. She was rescued from the Meta by Washington in Recovery One, but was in fact working as "Recovery Two" the entire time. She later betrayed him to obtain Delta and escape the Meta, leaving Washington for dead. A sufferer of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, according to Delta, she betrayed her twin brother North in a similar manner to escape the Meta the first time. It bit her in the ass when Washington shot her in the head for revenge.

Her armor is purple with green trim, her armor enhancement is a domed energy shield like her brothers.

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Associated Tropes:

• Action Girl: One of the best Freelancers in the Project. Before the prequel seasons she was even higher on the leaderboard than her brother.
• All for Nothing: All of her actions post-Freelancer (Betraying North, betraying Wash, stealing Delta) are all in desperation to survive. All it earns her in a few weeks at best before she's hunted down by The Meta and killed by Washington.
• Always Second Best: Has shades of this seeing how she reacts when North: first takes her position despite the success of the mission, is taken on a high priority mission over her, and gets an A.I. before her.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's not know when or how South became instated as a recovery agent especially considering Washington clearly didn't know this, North was traveling with her and yet still had Theta, and Season 10's deleted scene implies they left the Project soon after the Mother of Intervention crashed and their fight came to an end, as such, it's treated as Wham Line moments after The Reveal.
• Asshole Victim: What she was originally depicted as: A selfish, cruel, manipulative person who was caught and executed by the two people she left for dead. However, looks into the past portray her as more of a tragic result of the Project manipulating her worst traits turning her into a cold and self centered pragmatist.
• Bait the Dog: South is initially portrayed as a survivor in an attack she lost her brother in, even giving a eulogy after having some time alone with him. She also seems overwhelmed by Washington and Delta, barely being able to keep up with their schemes. Turns out she's The Sociopath and an Ungrateful Bastard who betrayed her brother and betrays Washington, steals Delta, and goes off on her own to parts unknown.
• Barrier Warrior: She has a domed energy shield armor ability like her brother.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: In Recovery One, she puts up an act of being traumatized by North's deaths and is fairly genial towards Washington and Delta. The second she has an opportunity to turn on them, she takes it and immediately reverts back to her usual abrasive behavior.
• BFG: Briefly uses a Missile Pod launcher against Tex, and later North, during the defection to free the Alpha.
• Boom, Headshot!: Her death in Reconstruction, courtesy of Washington at Delta's suggestion.
• Book Ends: Wash and South begin with brief journey together by Wash faking that he shot her in the head. Flashforward to Season 6, he shoots her for real. This time, it's personal.
• Brother–Sister Team: With North until Cain and Abel kicked in.
• The Bully: Has shades of this towards the Triplets and Washington, though in the latter case, this eventually evolves to an actual friendship with with teasing on both sides.
• Cain and Abel: The Cain to North's Abel. Exploited in-universe by the Project, purposely repeatedly favoring him over her to see what would happen over time.
• Characterization Marches On: South's personality when brought into focus in Reconstruction is one who is extremely self-serving, ungrateful, and somewhat sociopathic with her callous disregard for others. Further details of her personality would be shown in prequel segments, showing while that she always was a Jerkass, she was able to form friendships, cared about the wellbeing of her fellow agents and brother, and well as showing her to be The Gadfly and The Bully.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Typical of Freelancers, she was only in it for herself.
• Dark Action Girl: Even when alongside North, she fit into this rather well.
• Deader than Dead: Her body is maliciously and thoroughly blown up by Washington after he kills her. This is Played for Laughs.
• Disproportionate Retribution: South's grievances with the two people she betrayed are this when you consider the fact that neither had a say when they'd have A.I. implemented. At most, North's decision to fight her during the rebellion is the more legitimate reason for South to hold a grudge, but it's still a weak case.
• The Dog Bites Back: Betraying Wash may have saved her hide, but not for too long. Wash eventually hunts her down and kills her.
• Doomed by Canon: In Season 9, due to already having died in Season 6.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: The main motivation for her Jerkassery is that she is constantly berated for her every failure and has all her accomplishments downplayed and ignored by the Director and the Counselor, while pretty much everyone else is rewarded for whatever they do. Unbeknownst to her, they're doing it intentionally just to see what would happen.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • South does not act familiar with Delta during their meeting in Recovery One, despite the fact she, Delta and York have been in the same squad, and even briefly engaged in conversation, as well as on a couple missions together.
  • When both she and North make their debut in Recovery One, (albeit North's a corpse at the time), South is wearing the darker armor, while he wears the lighter shade. In all of their later appearances, it's the opposite way around. Whether it's this or the twins switched suits of armor at some point is anyone's guess.
• Et Tu, Brute?: She's clearly shocked that North would side with Tex during her defection rather than his own sister.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite her Jerkass behavior, she does have her moments in the prequel segments, albeit sparingly. Most notably her genuine concern with her brother getting shot and her shock when she believed Tex sacrificed York.
• Faking the Dead: Washington is initially supposed to kill South after he finds her and North's corpse. However, he (with the help of Delta) merely fake it due to their previous friendship. After he's betrayed, he makes sure to kill her for real the next time the two see each other.
• Foreshadowing: Part of the reason she betrayed North was because he got an AI before her. When North and Theta both excel in a training exercise, South is unusually quiet, and after the exercise ends, leaves without saying a word.
• Green-Eyed Monster: She doesn't receive an AI, while her twin brother North does. She doesn't take it well. It is revealed by Delta that the Director had purposely made sure she didn't receive an AI as part of an experiment with this trope in effect.
• Hypocrite: It's obvious how South Dakota resents being considered the lesser part of a package with North. And yet, she has no problem lumping Ohio, Iowa, and Idaho into the same category as both the worst Freelancers, and as the Triplets, despite the three not even being related.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: It's shown that South absolutely despises being considered lesser than her brother, her first outburst in the series being due to North overtaking her position as a punishment for rushing the mission. Of course, the ongoing experiment on the twins would only exasperate this as time went on.
• In-Series Nickname: Much more often called "South" than "South Dakota", even by her own brother.
• In the Back: Shoots Washington in the back in a bid to survive against the Meta and because she got her A.I. and she felt it was her best bet to survive.
• Ironic Death: Or rather 'Ironic Injury That Led to Death': One of the biggest backstabbers in Project Freelancer winds up getting shot in the back. By Caboose no less.
• Irony:
  • For all her desire of an A.I. and her actions that lead to her obtaining one, she ultimately is not compatible with Delta, deciding to abandon him the first chance she gets when the Meta tracks them down again.
  • In Season 9 she displays shock when she believes Tex betrayed York and sacrificed him, she later sacrifices Wash to save herself.
  • In season 10 she's very dismissive of Tex for apparently attacking Wyoming for his AI and presumably trying to prevent them from taking Omega. Recovery One would show her attacking Washington to keep the recently acquired Delta for herself.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed in The Project Freelancer Saga. South is vicious, mean-spirited, and very easy to set off, but she does genuinely seem to care about North, Washington, and C.T. She's mostly self-absorbed and wrapped up in her own bitterness, but she does at least make an effort to check up on Wash and CT when they're down.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Despite being rather abrasive in her wording, South does have a point in her class of learning about A.I. was completely useless, seeing how she wasn't given one. Even more so seeing how she was never going to get one, though that was the point of the experiment with the twins.
  • She also has a point that Carolina asking for two A.I. after giving up her assigned one was unfair to the other agents who were due to get them.
  • In a much darker sense, South was absolutely correct in her personal assessment that running from the Meta was smarter than confronting him, as even Tex initially ran from him rather than try to take him on.
• Jerkass: While the flashback segments of The Project Freelancer Saga did show that she once held a degree of care for her brother North and even had a minor friendship with Wash and C.T, by the time she first shows up in the present, those redeeming qualities are gone; fully willing to let her own brother die to save her own skin, and partially out of jealousy as well. Even before this, she was still largely The Bully towards the lower ranked Agents thanks to an Inferiority Superiority Complex, and that any bonds she once had were largely eroded by the present day thanks to the Project, leaving her an extremely callous and self-serving individual. It's because of this that Carolina and Epsilon consider her just as much a victim of the Project as the other Agents.
• Just a Machine: Her opinion of the AIs, which she has no problem expressing even when they are in the same room. Sure, she betrayed North because she didn't get an AI herself, but that doesn't mean she would've bonded with an AI in the same way North did with Theta.
• Karmic Death: After so long treating AIs as Just a Machine, one that she tried to sacrifice to save her own skin ends up giving an implied kill order to someone who she had shot and left to die. Wash then headshots her.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Her treatment of the Triplets during the Project and after they leave easily classify as this.
  • In Recovery One, she takes advantage of Wash's genuine desire to help her to shoot him in the back and leave him for dead without so much as a second thought.
  • Her decision to petition for Carolina's A.I. after she had a major traumatic event and was rendered unconscious for days was definitely this. North and Tex both say she had gone too far with such a gesture.
  • She's eventually on the giving and receiving end when it comes to Wash. She immediately betrays him rather than risking fighting The Meta, and he executes her (at Delta's suggestion) after she's wounded and disarmed. This incident even has Church (who makes it known he does not like or trust freelancers) has him call Wash a "cold motherfucker"
  • After discovering Wash bemoaning his No-Respect Guy status in a corner in Singularity, she calls him a loser.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Said sentence was going to be to the effect of You Wouldn't Shoot Me.
• Know When to Fold Them: She splits at the first possible opportunity when situations with the Meta come up, which is not unreasonable.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After shooting Wash in the back at the end of Recovery One, she gets the exact same injury when Caboose shoots her in Reconstruction.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Exhibits some tendencies early in Season 9.
• Leitmotif: She and her brother share a distinctive theme that plays in some of their scenes. It can best be heard in Extraction and Twins.
• Locked Out of the Loop: South is very much not in the know about Tex's intentions when she starts her raid on the MOI, while North presumably is. The fact that he's shown to side with Tex over her and the project only serves to hurt their relationship even further, culminating in a fight.
• Military Maverick: South often tends to disobey orders and engage in highly risky tactics in combat. Deconstructed, since this results in her dropping in the Freelancer Rankings, and it's heavily implied this behavior comes from the Director and the Counselor deliberately preying on her Inferiority Superiority Complex For Science!.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Heavily implied to be going through this once she wakes up to find North dead, as she's despondent, subdued, and somewhat in shock by what she woke up to.
• Never My Fault: Seems completely unwilling to take any form of responsibility for the multiple deaths she has caused directly or indirectly. Though, unlike most cases of this trope, this tendency hurts South just as much as others, as in Season 9 she seems unable to comprehend that her dropping in the Freelancer Rankings is due to her own impulsive and reckless behavior.
• Noodle Incident: A rare tragic case, Delta informs Wash that South put North in a position to be killed, but the specifics are never given. Seeing how Delta was an Unreliable Narrator who made no effort to hide his distaste of South, it's hard to say just what exactly happened and how much of a role she played.
• Nom de Guerre: Aside from "Agent South Dakota", she's also known as "Recovery Two" during her time as a Recovery agent.
• Odd Friendship: The vitriolic and sarcastic South with the much more passive and naïve (at the time) Washington. They have their moments of snark and teasing on both ends, but their interactions show they were good friends, to the point Washington was willing to fake her death despite the Jade-Colored Glasses he had gained from his experiences. Even more odd considering she was The Bully to the triplets which Washington had notably been friends with.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: South spends most of her screen time being a very loud and opinionated person about most situations she's in and is quick to retort whenever she feels slighted, when Delta brings up how South put her brother in a position to die, she doesn't bother to speak up.
  • She's also deathly silent when North and Theta perform in the training room, leaving without a word or even interacting with anyone else in the room.
• Properly Paranoid: She betrays Wash on the belief it's her best chance to get out alive rather than risk facing the Meta. Judging from what we see in the next season, she was absolutely correct in her assumption.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Her attempt to cheer up Connie when she was being quiet before the start of a mission comes off as this. Not to mention her teasing friendship with CT and Wash before things went sour.
  • A downplayed case due to South's bitterness, but she had gone with North to check on Wash after his catastrophic incident with Epsilon, something he hadn't woken up from in days.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: In addition to her sadistic and aggressive tendencies, she has a tendency to act like a rather bratty child when she is annoyed or doesn't get her way. A direct contrast to her brother's more level-headed and mature demeanor.
• Pushed at the Monster: Up until her death in Season 6, this had basically been her escape tactic when running from the Meta, with two of her victims being Washington and even her own twin brother, North Dakota. She eventually tried to do it to Delta too, until Wash, Church, and Caboose caught up with her while she was in the middle of transferring him to a storage unit to leave behind for the Meta while she escapes. To say Wash and Delta were not happy about South Dakota trying to use them as human shields to save her own skin is a huge understatement.
• Rage Breaking Point: She's already mad when she's ranting about Carolina taking her and Wash's A.I., but when Wash mentions that he's put back on the list for implantation and she's not, she gets so mad she starts kicking over benches and punching lockers.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to North's Blue. Whereas he's cool headed and a Team Dad, South is reckless, abrasive, and impulsive.
• Sadist: Her introduction scene in Season 9 implies this, performing several horribly brutal moves on enemy soldiers that seem to do nothing but put them in horrific agony, rather than professionally dispatching them.
• Sincerity Mode: Her brief eulogy about North in Recovery One. There's nothing shown to say she doesn't truly miss him,^note While she was later shown to be lying about her role in North's death, the decision Wash made to fake her death was clearly before he went back to check on her, meaning it wasn't an attempt to pull on his heartstrings to make her seem pitiful indicating she did still care about her brother on some level.
  South: I always thought, being a twin was, a hard thing. Everyone always finds a way to put you together. It's like you're not considered two people. Even when we were kids, our parents dressed us alike, and when we joined up and got sent to the program, they stuck us together. People thought we were special somehow I suppose. I used to hate that. All I ever wanted was to have my own life. And here I am now, just wondering how I'm gonna live without him.
• Small Role, Big Impact: She's in Season 6 for about an episode and a half. She's responsible for having Delta into the plot, and her betrayal puts Washington in a position to meet the Reds and Blues which furthers his Character Development.
• Smarter Than They Look: Occasionally comes off as a brat with her temper tantrums that she throws and her attitude, but she's smart enough to fool Delta, Wash, and the Meta to escape with her life and an A.I. without a scratch. Too bad she didn't expect her actions to bite her in the ass later on.
• The Sociopath: She's already extremely sadistic, bully-like, and arrogant, and the fact that she cares about exclusively no one but herself (to the point where she's fully capable of letting Wash and her own brother die for her benefit) makes this very likely.
• Start of Darkness: Season 10 casts new light on her betrayal of North and Wash in the present day. Instead of simply being a random sociopath, as she was originally portrayed in Reconstruction, it turns out she actually had legitimate, long-standing grievances against both Wash and North... Wash for having a meltdown that lead to the shutdown of the project, and North for siding with Tex over her. Although the fact she waited several years to get back at them, and did so in the most homicidal manner possible, still doesn't speak all that well of her mental stability.
• Stealth Expert: Her one shown mission implies her to be this kind of operative, but her refusal to turn on her motion tracker makes her not very good in the long run. Better exemplified in Season 6 where she follows Washington around without him being any the wiser, and would have stayed that way if the Meta hadn't happened to finally track her down.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: To say South and Delta didn't get along would be an understatement. For the record, the only pair with worse teammwork would be Omega and Tex, and Omega was literally a personification of anger that wanted nothing but to kill or rule over anyone it saw.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: A retroactive example. While she was never portrayed as nice, South was much less hostile towards her fellow agents in seasons 14 and 17, both of which take place before seasons 9 and 10, which build up her anger and Inferiority Superiority Complex. At worst she was just The Bully to the Triplets and The Gadfly to Wash, but by the time the Project fell apart South became much more volatile and callous, culminating in her becoming the self-serving jerkass she was later revealed to be in Recovery One. This is much more evident with her relationship with Washington and C.T., who she treats like actual friends compared to Delta and Washington in Season 6, who she barely even acknowledges them as people
• Underestimating Badassery: More like "Underestimating Bitterness", South believes that even if she had nearly killed Wash, he wouldn't kill her in turn (as it would be shown the two were friends and Washington was MUCH nicer). She was wrong.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Wash goes through the effort of faking South's death, attempting to get her to safety, and trusting her with Delta, only for her to near immediately shoot him in the back once she gets what she wants.
• The Watson: She's constantly having to have things explained to her, but she is one of the best Freelancers. Funnily enough, she shares this role with Wash, albeit in a more abrasive manner.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Wash before her betrayal and near successful attempt to kill him. While Wash was still willing to help her before despite his new jaded attitude and mindset, any previous kindness is thrown out in favor of revenge.
• What You Are in the Dark: Despite her resentment of North repeatedly getting favoritism over her to the point of growing a deep rooted grudge against him, she very clearly misses him and requests some time to herself to mourn him. That said, she'll ultimately do what she can to survive. When presented with an opportunity to fight back against her brother's killer and team up with her friend, she quickly decides that the best chance is to shoot Wash and use him as bait.
• The Worf Effect: One of the top Freelancers in the Project is easily and comically taken down by Caboose when she attempts to flee from Washington's confrontation with the Meta.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Tries to invoke this on Washington. Unfortunately for her, it's an Averted Trope.

North Dakota

Agent North Dakota

^{Click here to see North without his helmet}

"Stay safe, kiddo."

Voiced By: John Erier

A member of the Freelancer program and South's twin brother. He shows up in the prequels in Seasons 9 and 10 and as a dead body in Recovery One after South sacrifices him to save herself from the Meta. His AI was Theta. His armor enhancement was a domed energy shield, like his sister's, as well as an enhanced motion tracker.

---

Associated Tropes:

• Ambiguous Situation: It's never elaborated on how South put him in a situation to be killed, only that she did so.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When York asks him if they (the Project) were the good guys, North visibly pauses for a few seconds and can't honestly give a definitive answer.
• Barrier Warrior: He has a domed energy shield as his armor ability.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Despite very protective of his fellow agents and overall Nice Guy, North won't hesitate to kill several people for the sake of the mission.
• Big Brother Instinct: North is a very compassionate and caring individual, not just to his biological twin South, but to his A.I. Theta and the other members of Project Freelancer, particularly York and Wash. It's actually because of this trope that he was selected to be the recipient of Theta, as the embodiment of the Alpha's trust would function best with a supportive figure like North.
  North: Stay safe, Kiddo.
• Brother–Sister Team: With South until Cain and Abel kicked in.
• By-the-Book Cop: Is rather adamant on using trackers and taking stealth missions slowly, in contrast with his sister.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to South's Cain, to the point of her being partially responsible for his death.
• Condescending Compassion: While he may be a Nice Guy, North has a habit of this, especially towards Wash and South.
• Cool Big Bro: He takes several bullets for South.
• Deader than Dead: His body is blown up by Washington after his death, as was the regulation for a Recovery Agent.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  North: Well, so much for keeping quiet.
• Doomed by Canon: South wounds him to leave as bait to escape the Meta, making him this in Seasons 9 and 10.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: When both him and South make their debut in Recovery One, (albeit he's a corpse at the time), South is wearing the darker armor, while he wears the lighter shade. In all of their later appearances, it's the opposite way around. Whether it's this or the twins switched suits of armor at some point is anyone's guess.
• Friendly Sniper: While he's a by-the-book, stoic, consummate professional during missions, he's pretty open and cheery off-duty.
• Guns Akimbo: With sniper rifles against South in Episode 19 of Season 10, and with enough precision on both to shoot missiles from a Missile Pod out of the air.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He's easily the nicest and sweetest Freelancer in the group (or at least possibly tied for the spot); even when he's wading into battle he tends to become more professionally stoic than bloodthirsty or malevolent. A very, very sharp contrast from his sister.
• Heel–Face Turn: If he can be called a Villain Protagonist at all in the prequels, he has one when he decides to fight South to let Tex go ahead in the Mother of Invention in Episode 19 of Season 10.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: As mentioned above, he shoots down multiple rockets while dual wielding sniper rifles.
  • It should be noted that the reason he was able to pull the above stunt off was thanks to his A.I., Theta.
• In-Series Nickname: Much more often called "North" than "North Dakota", including by his own sister.
• Leitmotif: He and his sister share a distinctive theme that plays in some of their scenes. It can best be heard in Extraction and Twins.
• Nice Guy: Forms kind of a trio with Wash and York in this regard. He's less snarky than York, and less uptight/dorky than Wash.
  York: (after crashing into hangar from space) What, no 'Welcome back'?
  North: (completely sincerely, while patting York on the back) Alright, welcome back!
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His siding with Tex over his sister during the rebellion with no explanation given only served to fuel the grudge that South already held against him and lead her betrayal of him when the Meta came looking for them.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The Inbetween for the trio with York and Wash, as he was nice was like the latter, but still had his moments of snark and condescension like the former.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Despite his rather relaxed mannerisms, North is more than fine showing off and displaying a teasing commentary every now and then.
  • When Carolina shows up to help assist the twins, it's North who's noticeably upset while South just voices confusion, showing some of his personal status as Competition Freak.
• Out of Focus: Despite being one of the freelancers near the top of the leaderboard, North has much less focus on him due to being one of two freelancers dead by present day.
• Poor Communication Kills: It's highly implied North never told his sister why he went against her and supported Tex the day the latter defected. This would only add to her growing resentment of him and eventually result in his own doom.
• Posthumous Character: His first and only appearance in the present-day storyline is as a dead body. We don't learn anything about what he was like until the prequels.
• Precision F-Strike: After York gets caught in the explosion of a grenade Maine had thrown at Tex.
  North: Shit! What the fuck are they doing?!
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to South's Red, being the more calm, collected and cool headed of the two.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Presumably when he helps Tex over his own sister, it's implied he never elaborated on his reasoning and that only made her resentment towards him grow.
• Standard Bleeding Spots: He gets a nice bloody cut across the cheek in Season 9 Episode 4.
• Stealth Expert: Much like his sister, he was this. His enhanced motion tracker complimented his role to the point Washington has a hard time even the Meta could sneak up on him. He's right.
• Team Dad: Was given Theta because of his "nurturing" nature.
  York: He is used to taking care of people, isn't he?

Butch Flowers / Florida

Captain Butch Flowers / Agent Florida

"Ready for duty, sir. And might I say, pleased as punch you picked me."

Voiced By: Ed Robertson

Blue Team's real leader, who died before the series began, leaving Church in charge (and Tucker in his armor). Unlike everyone else in the canyon, he was quite relaxed, soft-spoken, and even-tempered. The captain was very informal with his teammates, had a Hands-Off Parenting attitude towards his subordinates (maybe a little too much, actually), and called the opposing army "those rascals." Season 3 reveals that he was accidentally killed by Church in a Stable Time Loop, who gave him some aspirin to prevent his death... Only to realize that he is allergic to aspirin. He returns in Season 5, having been raised from the dead by the aliens, only to get possessed by Omega and used as the latest pawn in his evil plan. Omega jumps ship in the finale, and Flowers regains his freedom, only to get sniped from a distance by an unknown entity.

In Season 10, he's revealed to be Agent Florida, a freelancer who wears blue armor who appears in the flashbacks. He appears to be an infiltration specialist, as he is shown working with Wyoming. In Season 10, he goes on the mission to the Insurrection headquarters, and takes a throwing axe to the chest. However, he rips it out, and ends up taking on, and defeating a pair of minigun-wielding Insurrectionists. In the finale, he is chosen by the Director and Counselor to be sent to Blood Gulch to watch over the Alpha as Captain Butch Flowers, the original leader of the Blue Team. In Season 14, it's revealed that he specifically chose which sim troopers to be sent to Blood Gulch, looking for ones that were especially expendable.

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Associated Tropes:

• Accidental Murder: A victim of this when a time-traveling Tucker accidentally sniped him in Season 16, Episode 4.
• Affably Evil: Played With. Manages to be this along with Faux Affably Evil. Florida is polite, cheery and respectful no matter if he's simply having a conversation, or condemning a man to his death. Seeing how he keeps up this attitude no matter who he's talking with, this is likely to be how he is all the time. He gets pushed into his faux affable status with his complete and utter lack of empathy for other people and his ruthlessness.
• Ambiguously Gay: With the way he speaks affectionately toward his underlings, telling them to call him "daddy".
• Ambiguous Situation: invoked Since Church's time travelling in Season 3 has been intentionally left up in the air in regards to whether it actually happened or not, it's completely unknown how he died the first time around.
• Anti-Climax: Killed not long after he is revealed to be alive, after he pauses while talking for some reason. It's eventually given some clarity in The Shisno Paradox.
• Ascended Extra: Of sorts. His only roles in Season 9 are as an extremely brief character in the background, and his largest on-screen contribution is giving another Freelancer a hand onto a Pelican. In Season 10 he finally appears in action alongside the other Freelancers. The final episode of the season reveals that he is extremely important in the overall chronology of the series. He finally gets proper focus in Season 14.
• Asshole Victim: Without hesitation, he not only sacrificed both an entire squad of potential sergeant candidates and his own assistant to Sarge, but also used Pvt. Jimmy as a host to implant the Alpha in, resulting in his demise. However, the reason he dies is because he's given aspirin by someone who doesn't realise he has an allergy to the medicine.
• Back for the Finale: In the Season 10 finale, he returns once more, and his true identity is revealed. This also happens in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, when he was brought back to life (and then killed again) in the final few episodes.
• Back from the Dead: Near the end of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, the Sangheili collaborators working with Project Freelancer revive him and he gets possessed by Omega, only to get killed shortly after in the finale.
• Badass Bandolier: He had this back in his Freelancer days.
• Badass Normal: Was never assigned an A.I., and it's never stated if he even got an armor enhancement.
• Benevolent Boss: Much nicer to his men than Church was during The Blood Gulch Chronicles, cheerfully interacting with them and outright stating he had no intention to let any of his men be killed. Church even tries to save his life when he thinks he's traveled back in time when he was still bitter and cynical. This is retroactively subverted come the Season 14 Origins Episodes; Flowers never actually cared for any of his men in particular, and he only cared that they and the Red Team be in a prolonged and sustained conflict for the express purpose of hiding the Alpha. Outside of that, he had little concern for any of the soldiers under his command dying, outright using Private Jimmy as the Alpha's host body and subjecting him to Death of Personality, and mercilessly watching Sarge kill Lemons despite the latter's cries for help.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • The Season 10 finale reveals that he was Captain Butch Flowers, so despite his easy-going attitude in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, he's a legitimately skilled Freelancer agent, albeit not one of the A-list ones.
  • Season 14 takes this a step further, showing that he was fully in on using the sim troopers as cannon fodder, and was perfectly fine watching a bunch of candidates for Red Team leader slaughter each other.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: He doesn't talk much, but he can take a lot of punishment and dish out some more. Contrast him in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, where he talks a lot more, but doesn't use his Freelancer prowess at all, and is killed before he can do so or say too much about the Red and Blue armies.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The fact that he's a Freelancer aware of the expendable nature of the simulation troopers, yet does nothing to help them, indicates his friendly exterior is a facade. In Season 14, he shows his true ruthless nature, watching with cold amusement as Sarge massacres a bunch of others sim troopers, as well as Flowers's own terrified assistant. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about Flowers, though, is how it's heavily implied that he really doesn't seem to have a friendly façade - Flowers actually is that genuinely nice and civil, it's just that he's also a ruthless sociopath at the same time.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Upon his revival, he was temporarily possessed by Omega, although unlike most, any changes to his personality are completely unknown.
• Camp: Though whether he's Camp Gay or Camp Straight is unknown.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He's only given brief prominence in Church's time travel simulation in Season 3, but he's Omega's new host, and he's also responsible for setting up the entirety of the series.
• Combat Pragmatist: His takedown of the gattling gun twins in Season 10 is less by overpowering them, and more by using distractions and his surroundings to his advantage.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: On initial glance, Florida doesn't look like much. His choice of armor makes him look more an ODST than a Freelancer, he wears little armor, and his only visible weaponry looks like the outdated MA5B Assault Rifle. So when it looks like the Leader successfully killed him with only a single throwing axe, there didn't seem to be any surprise. Beneath his appearance however lies a skilled Freelancer, durable enough to shrug off said throwing axe like it was nothing, able to take out the two Insurrectionists that were giving the others trouble all on his own, and his Assault Rifle actually being a modified variant that functions more as a grenade launcher. So while he may look unassuming, Agent Florida proves to be just as much a threat as the other Freelancers.
• A Day in the Limelight: Florida gets a bit of spotlight in the first set of episodes in Season 14, showing him hand-picking which recruits will populate Blood Gulch ahead of Season 1, and then implementing Church in Jimmy.
• Death by Origin Story: The only times we see him in person (besides in Season 5) are in Season 3 and the Project Freelancer prequel segments, where in the former Church goes back in time and tries to prevent his death, only to end up causing it (though considering later events, it's unknown if Church's time-traveling during Season 3 ever happened).
• Disney Death: Takes a throwing axe to the chest halfway through Season 10, but is shown to have survived it in the following episode and makes up for it with some damn impressive shooting.
• Dissonant Serenity: Florida remains perfectly calm and cheerily thanks Lemons for finding the perfect candidate as the poor man is begging him to save him now that the crazy Sarge is going to execute him on the insane idea he is a Blue spy.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Is rather unceremoniously killed after being brought Back from the Dead and freed from Omega's influence via a sniper headshot, and no one really seems to care or question it after this.
• Entertainingly Wrong: He's confident his plans will go exactly as they should without any hitch, but as The Blood Gulch Chronicles show, he couldn't be any more wrong.
• Evil All Along: Before Season 10, he seemed to be a friendly, if fairly creepy, leader. Then he turned out to be the Freelancer loyalist Agent Florida. Season 14 takes it further, showing that under his smiles and kind words, he's a ruthless, cruel, sociopath.
• A Father to His Men: invoked He insists that Church and Tucker call him "Captain" or "Cappy" and that if he wasn't their commanding officer he'd make them call him "Daddy". However, his behavior in Season 14 establishes this is an act and he only really cares about Church, though he does get into character more.
• Faux Affably Evil: Despite being apparently friendly and nice (perhaps a bit too much in some cases) Florida thinks nothing of throwing away the lives of others for the sake of his mission. However, it's also weirdly subverted in a sense since Flowers is both super civil and ruthlessly efficient at the same time.
• Foreshadowing: Some that dates back all the way to The Blood Gulch Chronicles. Captain Flowers always seems to be in on a lot of secrets, but dies before he can reveal them. This is due to the fact that, being Agent Florida, he knows that the Reds and Blues are simulation soldiers and the significance of Church/the Alpha and Project Freelancer.
• Friendly Enemy: He sees the Red Team as this. Namely because, as a Freelancer and the one in charge of this particular outpost, he's aware the Red vs. Blue war is just a simulation, specifically meant to hide the location of the Alpha in the Blood Gulch Outposts case.
• The Good Captain: He is very good at playing the part, but ultimately is neither good nor a captain. He's actually a sociopathic Freelancer tasked with guarding the existence of the Alpha, and specifically selected the soldiers stationed at Blood Gulch for the sake of a prolonged and sustainable conflict.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Served as one of them for The Blood Gulch Chronicles, since he's the one who initially organized all of the Red and Blue simulation troopers for Blood Gulch.
• Hands-Off Parenting: How he talks to his subordinates.
• Hidden Depths: If Vic is to be believed, Agent Florida was apparently an avid music lover, having loaded his entire music library into Vic's hard drive, which consisted of over 5000 songs. Vic says he was really into the Barenaked Ladies.
• If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: Tucker takes his aqua armor and Church takes his rifle after he initially seems to die.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: To the point of possibly being Camp Gay.
• Karmic Death: Gets unintentionally shot by Tucker from the far future when he screws up with his Sniper Rifle, meaning that he gets permanently killed off by one of the very soldiers he saw as utter Cannon Fodder.
• Lack of Empathy: Flowers isn't going to shed a tear for, or even apologize to, expendable soldiers once he's gotten what he needs from them.
• Laughably Evil: While he might be utterly terrifying, Ed Robertson's absurdly cheery tone as Florida still manages to inject the appropriate amount of Black Comedy into Flowers' character even after the reveal that he's been Evil All Along.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: The very first action we see him take during combat is getting hit with a throwing axe and falling several dozen feet onto his face. Impressively, he manages to recover from this, but then makes the third worst throw ever (of all time). Just when he's looking a bit silly, he suddenly manages to take out the minigun twins that had been giving York, Wash, Wyoming, and even Carolina and Tex trouble by using some impressive trick shooting.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Inverted, as even years after his death, no one seems to have figured out his true identity. Then again, they'd have no real way of knowing.
• Made of Iron: Takes a throwing axe to the chest coupled with a multi-story fall right onto his face, and not only shrugs it off, but casually takes the axe out of his chest, throws it, and proceeds to kill two of the Insurrectionists as if nothing happened.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's very good at manipulating people to get what he wants, and isn't afraid to dispose of them once he's gotten it or simply string them along into believing what he wants them to.
• Meaningful Name: The American state of Florida was named by the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon for the Spanish word florido (meaning "flowery"). How appropriate that the Freelancer Agent assigned the codename of Florida has the last name of "Flowers." Furthermore, his first name being "Butch" might be an allusion to his Ambiguously Gay mannerisms.
• Mirror Character: To Sarge. Unlike the abrasive and hard-nosed Red Team Leader, Captain Flowers is a more passive, gentler sort. And just as Character Development gradually turned Sarge into a truly honorable soldier who genuinely cares for the soldiers under his command along with his friends in a Tough Love sense, the more we learn of Flowers, the more we learn that his gentility was just a mask to the ruthless and terrifying Manipulative Bastard that he always was.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: He has complete and utter loyalty to the Project, but unlike Texas, Maine or even Wyoming, this is seemingly not out of a desire to help humanity, seeing as he was perfectly content to keep the Alpha hidden in a harmless Forever War with the Reds.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: After Season 14, he's easily one of the most terrifying characters in the entire series due to how he's the epitome of an Affably Evil sociopath.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: Even among the Freelancers, his armor is pretty unusual (consisting a blue-visored ODST helmet and light armor).
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: See Unwitting Instigator of Doom.
• Out of Focus: Even with The Reveal of his true identity, Agent Florida receives the least overall focus amidst the Freelancers. Outside of a seeming friendship with Wyoming, nothing is shown of his relationship with the other Freelancers, his ranking is never shown, and he's more often than not completely absent from scenes when the group is supposed to be assembled. His true identity likewise is a result of Death by Origin Story, and even when he's Back from the Dead, he's largely left a puppet of Omega's, and is quickly killed again once Omega leaves him before he can do anything. Carolina does seem to consider him a friend at least, as her vision while taking Santa's test she said was initially the Freelancers dying before her eyes, and Florida can be seen in the group between Maine and C.T.
• Psycho Party Member: Florida is... not right in the head, to say the least. He shows many signs of sociopathy, and displays severe levels of Lack of Empathy, having no issue watching numerous soldiers die before his eyes, instead talking with Dissonant Serenity the entire time.
• Recurring Extra: He spent all of Season 9 as just a guy that showed up during the Freelancer scenes.
• The Reliable One: A villainous example. Out of all the agents, it is both the Counselor and the Director that agree to have Florida be the one to be given command of the Red and Blue operation, and to give him the job of keeping the Alpha a secret and safe, who at the time was one of their most valuable assets. From what we see, they had good reason to, setting up situations that would perfectly prevent him from being found or injured if not for a few minor oversights.
• Retired Badass: Of a sorts in the earlier seasons. While he was still a soldier, working as the captain of a team of simulation troopers just to watch over an A.I. is much less strenuous than his initial job as a Freelancer Agent.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Season 14 revealed that his clumsiness caused a chain reaction that led to Project Freelancer's downfall. Namely, by tripping over the power cable for Vic, Vic gained his erratic personality and replaced the list of Freelancers meant to replace Florida should anything happen to him with a list of Simulation Trooper rookies, including Kaikaina, Donut, and most importantly, Caboose. He was also the one who originally brought the various Blood Gulch simulation troopers together by using the troopers at Desert Gulch as a basis, which directly leads to the final and complete destruction of Project Freelancer as a whole, the defeat of Malcolm Hargrove and his Space Pirates, the end of the Chorus Civil War, and the failure of Mark Temple's attempt to destroy the UNSC.
• The Sociopath: Florida seems to be a high-functioning variant. He manages to get along with the members of Blue Team well enough, but all his affability and social awareness serves a more disturbing indicator of this. He barely bats an eye as Sarge kills Lemons, and also doesn't lose his good cheer as Private Jimmy screams in agony from several Freelancer employees lobotomizing him so he can become an Empty Shell and serve as the Alpha's host body in Blood Gulch.
• Stealth Expert: Implied in the prequel segments where he and Wyoming track C.T. and the Insurrection Leader. Though he's not as good as Wyoming, as he is spotted and gets an axe to the chest for his troubles.
• Token Evil Teammate: Florida will kill or allow the death of anyone so long as it helps his goals, is the only Freelancer agent to be aware of the Alpha's torture and not do anything about it, and Season 14 shows several atrocities he committed, including causing a Death of Personality for Private Jimmy to use him as a host for the Alpha and allowing the death of his loyal subordinate Lemons at the hands of Sarge.
• Un-person: To cover up his disappearance after he was transferred to Blood Gulch to watch over Alpha, the Director and Counselor blew up the entire state of Florida.
• The Unreveal: It's never explicitly addressed how Florida died the first time, as Church's actions in Season 3 are heavily implied to have been a simulation run by Gamma, making it a question how he would overdose on aspirin, something he was allergic to.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Tripping over a wire damaged Vic, which caused Caboose, Donut, and Sister to be sent to Blood Gulch after he died, instead of Freelancer Agents California, Hawaii, and Kansas. This would cause a chain reaction that would lead to the destruction of Project Freelancer (and the Alpha itself), the deaths of his old teammates, and the events of The Chorus Trilogy^note The actual war itself was certainly already happening, but the Reds and Blues were sent to the planet because they were a recurring problem for Charon.
• Villainous Friendship: Possibly with Wyoming, if their cooperation and the latter's comments in scenes in Season 10 are any indication.
• Villain Protagonist: Of Season 14's segments showing how most of the main cast was brought to Blood Gulch, where he gets a or of screentime and drives the plot with his actions.
• Walking Spoiler: You can't talk about his identity other than "a member of Project Freelancer who wears blue" without spoiling a great portion of Season 10, due to him being the mysterious Agent Florida and Captain Butch Flowers.
• Weak, but Skilled: He has a poor throwing arm and isn't one of the Freelancers on the leaderboard, yet he is crafty enough to prove his worth.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He allegedly died from an aspirin allergy (or so it seems). According to a deleted scene, he's also allergic to exotic nuts.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once Lemons has served his purpose, he doesn't even try to save him from Sarge.

The "Triplets" (Ohio, Idaho & Iowa)

Idaho, Ohio, Iowa

Ohio voiced by: Elizabeth Maxwell

Iowa voiced by: Shannon McCormick

Idaho voiced by: Brett Tribe

Ohio (Vera), Iowa (Mike), and Idaho (Ezra), who get their own couple of episodes in Season 14. Ohio is Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life, while her teammates are much less motivated. Despite her best efforts, they're still considered the bottom-tier of the Freelancers, but are also remarkably the most cohesive team. Presumably for both these reasons, they're dropped from the Project and abandoned on an ice world with an isolated base, where a similarly abandoned team from Charon Industries has found themselves. Just like the Reds and Blues, the two teams form a love-hate relationship through a trivial conflict over a meaningless base in the middle of nowhere.

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Associated Tropes (As a whole):

• The Cameo: Once Singularity indulges Mental Time Travel, Wash remembering his Freelancer days includes an appearance by those three.
• Distinguishing Mark: They have very similar armor, but there are small differences to distinguish them from each other. These include the shoulder pads, the color of the stripes on their arms and legs, Ohio's lighter shade of blue, and Iowa's different chest piece.
• From a Certain Point of View: The official story is that they dropped out of the project. What this doesn't tell the other Freelancers is that they were straight up abandoned and left to die on an ice world.
• Irony: Price commented in Season 13 that the Reds and Blues were able to beat the Meta because of their bond, something that Project Freelancer could never achieve: complete and total faith in each other. These guys were the only Freelancers who could properly work together... and yet the project abandoned them to die on an ice world because their friendship flew in the face of the Director's Social Darwinism.
  • Furthermore, they suspected Wash is no longer willing to eat with them while C.T. is, but implied the opposite is true in the very next episode (at least for Wash).
• Mirroring Factions: To the Blood Gulch Crew (and Blue Team in particular). If the Reds and Blues can be considered the best of the worst, the Triplets are the worst of the best. Amazingly, even the Blood Gulch Crew are implied to be more competent than the Triplets are.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Apparently, firing them would have been too much trouble for the Director, so he gave them a fake mission and just had 479er fly away after dropping them off.
• Single-Biome Planet: They were abandoned on a frozen ice world. Most fans seem to believe that they were abandoned on Sidewinder (though there's no real evidence for/against this in the series).
• Small Role, Big Impact: They only appeared in two episodes of Season 14, but they also seem to have been the main inspiration for the Red Team vs. Blue Team simulation conflict.
• Spanner in the Works: Their willingness to work together flies in the face of the Director's ranking system, which is designed to incite rivalry among the Freelancers.
• True Companions: Of all the Freelancers, they're rated the most capable of working together, and they're actually very close friends despite Ohio's easily irritated status. This is part of the reason they are all sent away.
• Uncertain Doom: There has been no proof that the Triplets are dead in the present day, though for their survival they'd have to beat pretty unfavorable odds (they're in an irrelevant and slightly hostile planet with presumably scarce resources, and another group of soldiers wants their blood to boot).

Associated Tropes (Idaho):

• Better as Friends: Realized this concerning Ohio before "The Triplets."
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: His aim isn't exactly on Church's level, but he's still shown to never be able to hit a target when he's firing a gun.
• Incompatible Orientation: Idaho used to have a crush on Ohio, but had to accept that she was gay.
• Mirror Character: To Tucker. Tucker's a sleazy and immature Casanova Wannabe who eventually matured into a friendly Jerk with a Heart of Gold with Improbable Aiming Skills. Idaho is a civil Nice Guy who willingly gave up on his crush on his friend Ohio when he realized that they had an Incompatible Orientation, and also has pretty terrible aim with firearms.
• Nice Guy: He doesn't judge Iowa for his brain damage and he happily dropped his crush on Ohio after he learned she was gay.
• Only Sane Man: What he eventually becomes once Ohio starts a Red vs. Blue-style war with the ex-Charon soldiers.

Associated Tropes (Iowa):

• Cloudcuckoolander: Due to his brain damage. He does his best to stay optimistic despite it.
• The Ditz: As a result of brain damage, he's constantly spewing dumb phrases, with his second line being "Sometimes I forget how to talk with these helmets on."
• Drives Like Crazy: If he gets behind the wheel, he will crash.
• Dumbass Has a Point: For an idiot, Iowa manages to think a simple solution to Wash's time travel problem in Singularity: if past Carolina isn't helping Wash, why not go to the future one who is his friend? Once Wash follows the suggestion and it works, he's understandably enraged at not thinking of that.
• Hypocritical Humor: Chastises Ohio for yelling at him through her helmet despite Iowa himself frequently having No Indoor Voice.
• Nice Guy: Easily the friendliest Freelancer Agent out of the entire series.
• No Indoor Voice: He often forgets that he doesn't have to yell to be heard through the helmet.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Iowa's voice is modelled after the way Bobcat Goldthwait used to speak.
• Simpleton Voice: His somewhat slurred tone of voice makes clear Iowa is a bit of a idiot.
• Suddenly Shouting: Whenever his No Indoor Voice kicks in.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He's even closer to being a Freelancer version of Caboose than Wash originally was. Fittingly, after his introduction, Wash went from being the Caboose of Freelancer, to the Donut of Freelancer (ironically, the Triplets were introduced in an episode Washington's voice actor Shannon McCormick wrote).
• Walking Disaster Area: Iowa once destroyed twelve Mongooses in one training session, six of them by sneezing nearby, and one by looking at it.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He reacts to spiders with gunfire, screaming, and fleeing.

Associated Tropes (Ohio):

• Chekhov's Skill: Ohio mentions that she's "a pretty good shot." She later shoots Sherry in the foot.
• Deadpan Snarker: Full of these moments.
  Ohio: (after Iowa brags about getting the best record for holding his breath among the Freelancers) Congratulations, you're real Freelancer material.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Ohio's biggest desire is to get assigned a mission that she can use to prove herself.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Invoked, she has a moment with Sherry, shoots her in the foot, and then starts the flirtatious dialogue.
• Inelegant Blubbering: When she's forced to come to terms with having been left to die by her bosses.
• Jerkass Realization: Idaho bluntly tells her in "The 'Mission'" that her insensitive nature towards him and Iowa makes them feel like they're just her "temporary friends," and she quickly apologizes after realizing how cruel she's been towards them.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She can be a real hardass at times, but still genuinely cares for her friends.
• Mirror Character:
  • To Church, the Alpha iteration in particular more so than Epsilon. Both are the self-appointed leaders of their teams due to the dubious virtue of being the most competent out of all of them, see themselves as the Only Sane Man (and actually have their own issues and insecurities to deal with), and are massive Deadpan Snarkers who care a lot more about their friends than they'll ever admit. Both are also at least somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum - Ohio is a lesbian, and Epsilon-Church was willing to be with Tex in the Memory Unit even if she was a man in one of the Blood Gulch iterations. However, Church is ultimately pretty lazy and is forced to be active by virtue of being the most competent out of his peers, while Ohio is a workaholic Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life. Additionally, while Church's aim is utterly laughable, Ohio's shown to be a pretty consistently great shot with her Battle Rifle.
  • She's also this in regards with the ex-Charon soldier Sherry. Both lead a trio of incompetent rejects and desire purpose for themselves.
• Only Sane Man: Well, she thinks she's this with Idaho and Iowa.
• Silly Reason for War: She stops looking for a purpose in life and learns to make one for herself ...which is starting a rivalry with the ex-Charon soldiers by purposefully shooting Sherry in the foot. Just so that they have someone to watch.
  Idaho: Seriously!? So you're saying that only reason we need to be here is because they have a base over there and that the only reason they need a base is because we're here!?
  Ohio: (laughs) Yes! We finally have a purpose in life! Isn't it glorious?!
• Squee: Her reaction to getting a mission.
• Straight Gay: Sherry correctly identifies her as such upon meeting her.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Her mission is a farce and an excuse to get rid of her and her friends without telling anyone what really happened to them.

Others

Other Freelancers

Top: Utah and Georgia. Bottom: The victims of Mark Temple.

There are 50 total Freelancers. Most of them apparently did not appear in Seasons 9 and 10, and have only received minor mentions. They are named after the 50 states of the United States.

• Agent Utah was apparently killed or nearly killed in training by using weapons tech without proper controls. A deleted scene on the season 9 DVD showed his accident; a bubble shield formed around his head and he passed out from no oxygen.
• Something happened to Agent Georgia involving a jetpack on a space op. It seems he just lost control and was careening through space until he smacked into a window on a space station, having a brief casual chat with Utah even. Until otherwise is said, he may still be alive. He gets a voice only cameo in Spartan Ops and finally appears in person in Season 14's "The Triplets." Hilariously enough, the latter episode reveals him to be a massive Jerkass who treated the Triplets horribly and more than deserved his (likely horrible) unknown fate. At the time, he was in the top nine in rankings, though his specific number was not given.
• Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, and Virginia are women.
• Montana apparently owns the locker directly next to Washington's.
• Alabama used to spend his time hunting sim troopers on a Mongoose at Rat's Nest, until he drove it right off a cliff and died. Once a year, the Reds and Blues stationed there send a flaming Mongoose soaring into the distance in tribute.
• Delaware died when she blew up the outer wall of High Ground (the place Church was stationed post-Blood Gulch), along with herself.
• California, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, and Oregon were meant to be sent to Blood Gulch if Florida died, and were referred to as "more than capable" by Florida. However, an accident caused Caboose, Donut, and Sister to be sent instead. The next two names were Jacob J. Jenkins (a Blue of questionable canonicity) and Cornelius Thromwell Andersmith (an actually non-existent Blue from Season 9, whose surname was reused for Chorus' Lt. Smith).
• Illinois was apparently a demolitions expert, and York's drinking friend. After his job as a Freelancer, he planned to spend his retirement on a chain of islands in a little hut, with all the booze he could ever need and a small red sailboat. He accomplished his dream... until Mark Temple killed him.
• Temple killed at least 10 Freelancers by luring them into his lair, then locking their armor until they died of malnourishment. Among the agents in his collection are Alaska, Arizona, Maryland, and Illinois. There are 10 bodies in the room, but other than Illinois, it's unclear which ones belong to which agents, and even if the bodies in the respective suits of armor are the actual agents (as their armor could've been stolen/repurposed by outside forces).
• As North and South Carolina were counted as one state, D.C. was the fiftieth member.
• There may or may not be a Puerto Rico. Even "On Your Knees," the song listing off various agents, isn’t sure whether or not it counts.
• Arkansas, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin are the only known states not known among the Freelancers as of yet, but it is widely assumed that they exist (as shown by Vic).

Non-Freelancer Personnel

The Director

Director / Doctor Leonard Church

"I would like to remind the sub-committee members... That anything is possible. Some things are probable. This is what is. And my agency, as it always has, will continue to deal with what is... until it is no more."

Voiced By: John Reed (Seasons 6-10), Charlie Campbell (Season 15)

The ruthless and secretive Director of Project Freelancer, and one of the narrators of the Reconstruction series. He was once a loving father and husband until he lost his wife Allison causing him to hit a breaking point in his life. In an effort to improve the combat effectiveness of soldiers during the war, the "good doctor" had the idea to implant artificial intelligences into the minds of special agents. However, with only one AI, created with his mind as a template, he was forced to fragment it as inspired when a flash clone of the Alpha was formed, one of whom was based on Church's memory of Allison. The results were unstable at best, but he continued in an effort to bring back Allison, and the project collapsed.

Once the Meta started collecting AIs, a UNSC oversight sub-committee begins inquired into the Director's actions and the results of Project Freelancer. The Director resented such intrusions, as he maintained that he only did what had to be done for humanity to win the war (even though it was a complete failure). At the very end of Reconstruction, he's placed under arrest by the UNSC. However, the Director resisted arrest and hid himself in a secret base, where he continued unsuccessfully to try to bring back Allison. However, his daughter, Agent Carolina, found him in Season 10. Realizing what he had done, the Director committed suicide with Carolina's pistol.

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Associated Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: As of Episode 22 of Season 10, his interactions with Carolina are put under this general light.
• Accidental Truth: He accuses Malcolm Hargrove of corruption and self-aggrandizement. He has no idea how right he is.
• Alas, Poor Villain: His final scenes show that while he's committed unspeakable evils, he's reduced to a pitiable, pathetic, and broken old man who just wanted to bring the love of his life back from the dead, with not even his own daughter, who had come to kill him, able to find it in her to keep hating him. He eventually asks Carolina to Leave Behind a Pistol, and shoots himself to end it all.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Vaguely claims to be Jewish in his first meeting with Allison (which is in The Ultimate Fan Guide), and the A.I. Church has a Star of David on his grave(s).
• American Accents: Speaks with a thick Southern Louisiana accent.
• Anti-Villain: He's a colossal Jerkass, but his fanatical devotion to reviving the memory of the woman he loved most makes him immensely pitiable along with his initial desire to safeguard humanity's survival before his own personal demons consumed him.
• Archnemesis Dad: For Carolina in Season 10.
• Bad Boss: Allowed his soldiers to use live ammunition in a training exercise, and praised the guys that did so, regardless of the obvious risks involved. He also had the Mother Of Invention fire a Wave-Motion Gun at an enemy ship with both an agent and Artificial Intelligence inside the room being fired on, without so much as a warning. He also saw virtually all of his agents as expendable, inspired them to compete among each other to their mutual detriment, and essentially sold all of his employees down the river when he went off the radar after his arrest was ordered by the UNSC Oversight Subcommittee. No wonder Connecticut hates him so much.
• Beard of Evil: Seasons 9 and 10 clearly show him to have a goatee. Also something of an Actor Allusion, since John Reed, the voice actor, has a goatee.
• Big Bad:
  • Of the flashback segments of The Project Freelancer Saga, as they take place when he was the leader of the organization. He manipulated his agents to fulfill his goals, and his morally questionable acts lead to C.T. and eventually several other agents, including Texas, turning against him.
  • Of Season 10's present day segments, seeing as the entire point of the plot in the present is Carolina, Washington, and the Reds and Blues trying to track down and kill the Director. In a twist on the trope, the crew is coming after him instead of him sending soldiers after them, and he isn't actively antagonizing them except for the numerous Tex Drones at the end.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Forms one with Sigma and the Insurrectionist Leader - and by extension of the latter's employer, Malcolm Hargrove - during The Project Freelancer Saga.
• Big "NO!": His Pet the Dog moment, when he sees Tex (who he accidentally called "Allison") in an unauthorized sparring match with the doubly-AI-wielding Carolina using lethal weaponry. And it's instantly reversed in the next five seconds, when he coldly leaves Carolina (his own daughter) screaming in pain on the training floor after his outburst caused the A.I.s to go nuts.
• Corrupted Character Copy: invoked In a broader, Shared Universe sense, he is one to Dr. Catherine Halsey. Both are brilliant scientists who run the clandestine military organizations that created their series's protagonists, including the AI characters that are based off of them. Both have done many morally questionable things to ensure humanity's survival, and both lost their significant other to the Human/Covenant War and have a very estranged relationship with their respective daughters. However, while Dr. Halsey managed to keep a clear perspective on events and still deeply cares for her creations, Director Church completely Jumped Off The Slippery Slope, unable to cope with the death of the woman he loved and became obsessed with finding a way to bring her back to the detriment of everyone around him. Ironically, he predates the more amoral Halsey of the Silver timeline by almost two decades.
• Despair Event Horizon: He lost all reason to live when Allison died. By the time Carolina and Epsilon find him, any veneer of a functional human being has rotted away to reveal the broken, pitiful shell of a man he has become.
• Detrimental Determination: He will never stop trying to bring back Allison, no matter how much pain he causes to everyone around him. By the time Carolina and Epsilon find him in Season 10, his obsession has driven him completely insane.
• Diabolical Mastermind: Washington sees him as this.
• Driven to Suicide: After erasing all evidence of Project Freelancer but the last video he ever had of Allison Church, he is implied to shoot himself in the head with Carolina's pistol after shutting off his facility's life support.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • His primary motivation is getting Allison, the love of his life who died in the Great War back, if not literally then at least in spirit.
  • He also loves his daughter, Carolina, but only realizes in his final moments that maybe he should have actually shown her that at some point instead of treating her like just another tool in his quest to recover Allison.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even the Director thinks Gamma impersonating him to tell the Alpha that Tex died and it was all his fault is going too far, ...not that he stops him, knowing they needed "a stronger stimulus".
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He's always called "The Director," never by his name.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To his Alpha/Epsilon counterparts, in that his anger, cynicism, vitriol, underhandedness, irritability, self-loathing and obsession with Tex aren't Played for Laughs or downplayed/moved past via Character Development.
  • He also counts as one to Sarge to a lesser extent, as both share a Southern accent and a penchant for zany schemes. The difference being that Sarge's (ranging from excuses to shoot Grif to deleting all data about the Blues from the Freelancers' database) are generally Played for Laughs while the director's (including implanting two A.I.s in his own daughter, intentionally sowing jealousy between the Freelancers, and getting O'Malley to take control of the aliens in an attempt to win the war) cause almost everything bad in the Red vs. Blue universe to happen.
• Evil Virtues: His determination and dedication.
• Expy: Of Gendo Ikari. They're both ruthless, amoral scientists with Scary Shiny Glasses put in charge of a government project designed to help save humanity from vicious alien foes, and relentlessly manipulate and abuse everyone involved in the project in order to resurrect their late wife. They're also both Abusive Parents who exploit their children's desire for their approval to manipulate them and have a total Lack of Empathy to their resultant suffering.
• The Faceless: Played with. Practically every part of his head is shown (hair, nose to chin, presence of glasses)... except his eyes. This serves to make him seem remarkably sinister even before the majority of Project Freelancer's operatives find out about what he does to the A.I.s. We finally see his full face in the last episode of Season 10, sans Scary Shiny Glasses... to realize his green eyes look just like his daughter Carolina's.
• Foil: The Director is almost exactly like Church, except that Church eventually realizes his flaws and takes strides to improve himself while the Director just falls deeper and deeper into them, leaving him a broken shell of a man.
• For Science!: Even before his Sanity Slippage and refocusing Project Freelancer's efforts on resurrecting his dead wife, several of the programs he helped craft that both the simulation troopers and his Freelancers would be subjected to had rather... debatable useful data to gain compared to the effort expended. It's especially notable in how he had the Freelancers basically wage a private war against Charon Industries just so he could gain and then keep an Engineer to help further his torture of the Alpha A.I. and create the Freelancer A.I. fragments.
• Freudian Excuse: The death of his beloved wife essentially destroyed him mentally speaking. As Carolina bluntly puts it in Singularity when talking to the Labyrinth's version of her past self, "Dad won't love you more if you keep winning. He can't. He died when Mom died."
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: That said, Church angrily points out in "Don't Say It" that this doesn't come close to justifying anything he did, and bitterly notes that he betrayed and screwed over countless other people who depended on and trusted him. Carolina doesn't contest this, instead pointing out that the Director has become a broken man by this point, and continuing to hold onto the past is harmful to Church. Even Genkins is utterly disgusted by the Director's actions, and he points out that the Director's actions are utterly inexcusable, dead wife or not.
• Graceful Loser: When Carolina and Epsilon come to see him personally, he does not resist them, simply speaking calmly with Carolina and the enraged Epsilon. His only "resistance" is to plead with Carolina to have just a little more time to himself, along with asking for her old pistol to kill himself with.
• Greater-Scope Villain: For almost the entire series, with only The Chorus Trilogy, The Shisno Paradox, and Singularity being story arcs/seasons not the direct result of his actions. Plenty of antagonists are working for him (e.g. Omega persuading Vic to hire Wyoming to kill Tucker, the Xanatos Speed Chess orchestrated by Wyoming and Gamma to potentially end the Great War involving Junior, the Director trying to get the Meta to kill Washington at the end of Reconstruction so as to prevent the "emp" from going off). The ones that aren't were undergoing objectives that are heavily against him/the result of his actions (the "Insurrection" led by the eventual second C.T. fights against his Freelancers; Washington struck a deal with the Chairman, who wanted to investigate the Director; the Meta was a rogue operative throughout Reconstruction, and was even working alongside Wash for Recreation and Revelation; and the Blues and Reds led by Mark Temple are dedicated to punishing the UNSC for sending them away to be used as glorified training dummies by the Director's Freelancers).
  Simmons: He's the one who started all of this, y'know? The Freelancers, and the A.I.s, and the Meta. I mean, when you think about it, he's the reason why we're here.
• Hypocrite: For all his blustering to the Chairman over how his project was helping humanity survive against the Covenant's onslaught during the Great War, he seems to have only had them fight against Charon Industries' human mercenaries during The Project Freelancer Saga.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • How he views his unethical experiments, claiming they were necessary to safeguard humanity's survival in the face of the Covenant's genocide.
    Director: I don't give a damn about your committee or its opinions on my work. Have you forgotten, Sir, that we were at war? A fight with an alien race for the very survival of our species? I feel I must remind you that it is an undeniable, and may I say a fundamental quality of man, that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable.
  • It's ultimately subverted, however, when you consider the Freelancers' missions seem to have mostly involved going up against Charon Industries and not actually fighting in the Great War. Furthermore, the entire project was ultimately an excuse he used so he could get his wife back, showing that ultimately he only used this trope as an excuse to get what he wanted.
• Ink-Suit Actor: He bears a surprising resemblance to his original voice actor, John Reed.
• Ironic Name:
  • It's likely unintentional, but still there - "Leonard" is an Old High German name meaning "brave" or "lion-hearted." The Director was a Dirty Coward who went into hiding after he was placed under arrest, refusing to take any responsibility for his own actions.
  • His last name is the same term used for a Christian house of worship, but he's actually Ambiguously Jewish.
• It's All About Me: The Director is too wrapped up in himself and his own issues to actually factor other people's feelings and well being into the equation, and prioritizes his own happiness over others.
• Jerkass: Imagine a Deadpan Snarker without the humor. From time to time, he even acts like a slightly less abrasive Drill Sergeant Nasty.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Played with. The Director can make some pretty genuine points all things considered. It's just his actions tend to be hugely disproportionate, undermining what points he had.
  • While more than overkill for a training exercise, especially considering York lost an eye as a result, he's completely right when he tells Wash that the battlefield is not a place for rules and regulations. He's likewise correct that the Agents should be prepared for the enemies playing dirty, as well as be adaptable when facing an enemy they can't beat normally, hence his praising of Maine and Wyoming for "ingenuity and adaptability" by bringing live ammunition to their match with Tex.
  • While definitely cruel and callous considering Carolina is his daughter, his responses to her obsession with beating Tex aren't unwarranted. Her obsession nearly cost them several mission objectives, she willingly put herself at risk by taking Eta and Iota while still refusing to give them up despite their meltdown in her head, and she began acting more like a child throwing a tantrum. While neglecting her and letting her stew in her own hatred or suffer was too far (and his lecture overlooks the fact that his own failings as a father are why she's acting out), he was not wrong to disapprove of her attitude.
  • While he's highly rude and defensive during his correspondence with Chairman Hargrove his insinuation that Hargrove is nothing more than a power-hungry opportunist using a faux-concern for the law as an excuse to seize the Director's assets turns out to be 100% correct.
• Karma Houdini: Not at all fazed by the prospect of karma finding him, and even when karma finally catches up (e.g. the investigation and arrest), nothing apparently comes out of it. Carolina's looking to change that by the time of the end of Season 9 through Season 10. It is ultimately subverted in that, while he was never directly punished for his actions, he was absolutely miserable in his final moments.
• Kick the Dog: Subjecting his own Virtual Ghost to horrific psychological torture, treating his own daughter horribly^note him coldly leaving her screaming in agony on the training room floor of the Mother of Invention as she's subjected to Mind Rape due to his emotional outburst is worth a special mention, inspiring his very agents to fight amongst each other and treating them as expendable drones, treating simulation troopers as glorified training dummies and not caring at all for them getting murdered in various nightmarish ways, arranging a fight between his own daughter and the Virtual Ghost of his deceased wife For Science!, killing off anyone who has no more potential use to him... Really, it'd be easier to list the moments where the Director isn't doing something utterly horrible.
• Knight of Cerebus: By virtue of being both the Greater-Scope Villain to the entire series and a ruthless Mad Scientist Tragic Villain, the Director is easily one of the darkest characters in all of Red vs. Blue, with the back-and-forth memos between him and the Chairman in Reconstruction serving as a definitive example of the series' Cerebus Syndrome.
• Knight Templar: In his use of Project Freelancer, he seems to have gone from an Anti-Hero leader of Super Soldiers fighting against the Covenant to the villain of a completely new conflict that was both concurrent to the Great War and taking place after its end, if he was ever a hero at all.
• Lack of Empathy: He views his loyal agents, simulation troopers, and even his own daughter as expendable tools that he can experiment on or harm just to satisfy his own curiosity, never even considering them as real people or empathizing with their plights. In his final moments, he seems to have finally snapped out of this state, but by then it's too late for him to actually change anything.
• Large Ham: He's usually pretty subdued, but he does occasionally have his moments of hamminess. "I don't give a damn about your committee!"
• Leave Behind a Pistol: An Invoked Trope. He asks Carolina to do so before leaving.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Retroactively established to be this compared to Malcolm Hargrove, given that he at least has a Freudian Excuse and a few Pet the Dog moments.
• Loophole Abuse: Quite rightfully notes that while his experiment would be a war crime in any other instance, he only tortured a clone of himself, and there are no laws against that. This inspires them to actually make laws prohibiting that, which the Chairman says will be named after the Director himself. Whether due to the legal situation (even with the Chairman making such laws after the fact) or his own personal clout, he's essentially a free man anyway, since the vast majority of the evidence of his actions (except Epsilon) was destroyed by the "emp" in Freelancer Command.
• Mad Scientist: As shown by his cold experimentation on the Alpha A.I.. The "mad" part becomes more apparent in the final few episodes of Season 10, where it becomes apparent that he has lost his mind and has literally gone so far as to Mind Rape Tex.
• The Man Behind the Man: The one that headed Project Freelancer, and the Greater-Scope Villain of the first ten seasons.
• Meaningful Name: A variation, as his name is not that meaningful by itself, but The Reveal that his name is Leonard Church is the primary indicator that he was the template for the Alpha A.I..
• Morality Pet: He may be a complete Jerkass to everyone else, up to and including both the Counselor and his own daughter Carolina, but the Director does prove he cares about Tex, with her being an A.I. form of his lost love Allison - especially when he shows outright fear at seeing her in an unauthorized sparring match complete with live ammunition.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: According to The Ultimate Fan Guide, his doctorate is in A.I. theory. He's decidedly of the Evil variety.
• Mysterious Backer: Connecticut rightfully mistrusts him for it.
• Necromantic: A good chunk of his character revolves around his trying to bring back Allison through various unethical means. It is exactly as unnerving as it sounds.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Episode 17 of Season 10 heavily implies that he never was able to say goodbye to Allison the last time he saw her.
  Counselor: What was that he said about "goodbyes"? Director? ...Director?
• Non-Action Big Bad: While the entirety of Season 10's present day segments have stopping the Director as the group's major goal, he isn't actively fighting the group in the present. It's unknown if he even knew he was being hunted at all until Carolina and Epsilon entered the base he was stationed at, so obsessed as he was with Texas and reviving Allison. This also is a Justified Trope, however, as unlike most other Big Bads in Red vs. Blue, he has had absolutely no actual military experience himself, with him even noting this in Episode 19 of Reconstruction.
  The Director: You see, I never had the chance to serve in battle, nor did fate provide me the opportunity to sacrifice myself for humanity as it did for so many others in the Great War.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: For all his talk about ostensibly protecting humanity from extinction, he and his project didn't really do much to win the Human-Covenant War. In reality, he re-purposed his own project so as to try and bring back his deceased wife - a completely selfish and worthless pursuit.
• Older Than They Look: In his final appearance he has to be at least in his fifties, but shows no physical signs of old age. His hair is not greying, his skin is pretty smooth and he could overall reasonably pass himself off as a 30-year old.
• Pet the Dog: In his final moments, he quietly tells Carolina that she was his "greatest creation." It's not even close to him making up for having been a horribly Abusive Parent towards her, but it's the thought that counts.
• Sanity Slippage: Whether it was the death of Allison herself or the death of the Beta A.I. or even Epsilon-Texas, the Director has definitely gone utterly insane by the time of Episode 20 of Season 10, obsessively making more and more versions of Tex in an attempt to revive the true Allison. According to F.I.L.S.S., he has been listening to Allison's last words nonstop for several days, to the exclusion of everything else. He's even taken to inducing Mind Rape on the version of Texas directing the robot army during the creation process for the Tex Drones (like he did towards the Alpha/Church), but doesn't seem to care.
  Epsilon-Church: [horrified/sickened] He kept trying... He kept trying to get her right.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Wears them to add to the effect.
• So Proud of You: He shares this sentiment at his last moments, claiming Carolina to be "[his] greatest creation" soon after she leaves him.
• Social Darwinist: Implied. The Director's project self-imploded in part due to his implementation of a leaderboard system that incited individual competition at the expense of teamwork. His disapproval for empathy and The Power of Friendship is pretty encompassing, with his use of the A.I.s helping isolate the Freelancers from each other and keeping them dependent on the project, and this is all without even getting into how he had the Triplets be Reassigned to Antarctica because their teamwork flew directly in the head of the leaderboard system. His program was called "Project Freelancer," after all.
• Southern-Fried Genius: He's very smart and came up with A.I. theories, with the addition of a thick Southern drawl.
• Tragic Villain: He wanted his wife back no matter the cost and seemed to sincerely think he was helping safeguard humanity's future with his program, only realizing just before he committed suicide how it had been All for Nothing.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The Director didn't even seem to realize that Sigma and Gamma were undermining his entire project, causing Carolina to want to get two artificial intelligences in her head and for Maine to go insane. He also didn't seem to be intentionally causing all of the Freelancers with A.I.s to fall over in agony when he screamed Allison's name in his Big "NO!" shout.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Both The Ultimate Fan Guide and the last video he has of Allison imply that he used to be a significantly kinder person who genuinely wanted to help humanity and was even incredibly affectionate with both her & their daughter. Unfortunately, the death of Allison, the limits placed upon Project Freelancer, and the spontaneous creation of the Beta A.I. all set him down the path to becoming one of the most notorious war criminals in galactic history.
• Villainous Friendship: Of a sort with F.I.L.S.S., though he doesn't seem to acknowledge it until his final moments.
• Walking Spoiler: The fact that he is the original Leonard Church and the template for the Alpha A.I., the husband of Allison Church (who is the "original" Tex), and Carolina's father are all massive spoilers for the series.
• Wham Line:
  • Episode 19 of Reconstruction:
    "Sincerely yours, the former Director of Project Freelancer, Doctor Leonard Church."
  • Episode 15 of Season 10. This one is less because of the line than because of the effects of said line on those who hear it.
    "NO! ALLISON!"
  • In case the below-mentioned Wham Shot isn't clear enough, he has this exchange with Epsilon as he and Carolina are leaving him to his fate in Episode 22 of Season 10.
    The Director: [quietly, as Carolina walks away] You were my greatest creation...
    Epsilon: [bitterly] ...I don't know what I am, but I know this - I'm more than just a copy of you. I'm better than you.
    The Director: I wasn't speaking to you.
• Wham Shot: In Episode 22 of Season 10, he removes his glasses and looks to Carolina, his full face to the camera... showing that they have the exact same color eyes.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Essentially tells this to Agent Washington when the latter goes AWOL to activate the EMP.

The Counselor

Counselor Aiden Price

"We have safeguards for the unstable emotional patterns of an artificial intelligence. Sometimes these algorithms fail. [...] We prefer to think it's nobody's fault."

Voiced By: Asaf Ronen

The apparent head psychologist of Project Freelancer, who seems to serve as the Director's right-hand man of sorts, and as a liaison between the Director and both the Freelancers and especially non-Freelancer soldiers.

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Associated Tropes:

• Advertised Extra: While his return is probably one of the most unexpected ones out of universe and his pressence is initially considered quite useful in-universe, Price doesn't do a whole lot in Season 13 besides sow seeds of doubt in Locus' beliefs and bring Sharkface to the side of Charon.
• Affably Evil: He speaks in a fairly calm, monotone voice and is rather polite, even to the point of functioning as the Only Sane Man to the Director. However, the Counselor is downright ruthless when need be, such as when addressing Walter and using False Reassurance to disguise what their true plans are, but again, is only direct and callous when he needs to.
• Back for the Dead: His return in Season 13 ends with him being dead by the same season's third-to-last episode.
• The Bus Came Back: He finally reappears in Season 13 for the first time (outside of flashbacks) since Season 7 aboard the UNSC prison ship Tartarus, and deciding to join Charon Industries when they offer him a chance to escape.
• The Comically Serious: He provides the role of a particularly hilarious Straight Man when Donut briefly talks to him during Recreation about his own exploits in Blood Gulch.
• Consummate Liar: Disconcertingly so.
• Creepy Monotone: Talks like this pretty much all the time. It seems to irritate the Director and creep out everyone else.
• Death by Pragmatism: His skill at reading any given situation borders on a superpower and as such he's the first to see that the Chorus campaign has gone south and the best option at that point is to bail. Unfortunately, the Tartarus crew resist and delay long enough that the ship gets caught in a tractor beam and dragged into the planet before he can actually do anything about it.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Blew up the entire Floridan Peninsula as part of Freelancer Agent Florida's cover story for getting sent to Blood Gulch to watch over the Alpha.
• Dissonant Serenity: His expression rarely changes from being bland and calm even when there's a catastrophe going on, and his voice (almost) never does.
• The Dragon: As the Director's right-hand man, he's effectively this.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Even the Director just calls him "Counselor." The first person to call him by his real name is Felix.
• The Evil Genius: He's the psychologist of Project Freelancer and serves as this to the Director as well as being The Dragon. As of Season 13, he's become one to Locus and Felix, sharing his knowledge of Agents Washington and Carolina to help give them an edge in battle.
• Exact Words: Peppers his Blatant Lies with these. For instance, in the first chapter of Reconstruction, after he interrogates the Sole Survivor from Valhalla (Walter Henderson), Price tells him that Project Freelancer will give him "all the help he needs" as he's taken away. Henderson was then Killed Offscreen so as to Leave No Witnesses. After all, Henderson won't need any help if he's dead, right?
• Face Death with Dignity: When it becomes clear that his death is inevitable, he just closes his eyes and calmly mutters "Oh, son of a bitch."
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Joins Charon Industries, the organisation behind the Insurrection (the Freelancers' greatest enemies), in Season 13 when offered the chance to escape from imprisonment. However, it's not quite a Face–Heel Turn, as Project Freelancer wasn't exactly great either.
• The Informant: His role within Charon Industries. He convinces Felix and Locus to let him live because he knows more than anyone left alive about Project Freelancer and can offer them valuable information about the agents. Locus later asks him for more information about Maine.
• It's All About Me: Price truly cares about nothing but having as comfortable as comfortable a life for himself as possible, following others' orders to the letter simply since it'll help better himself and keep his own skin intact.
• Karmic Death: Having become complicit in genocide by assisting the Space Pirates in their war with Chorus, he's killed by the Chorusans (a.k.a. the people he was helping wipe out) when they pull a Colony Drop on the Purge Temple with the Tartarus while he's still aboard the ship.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Him implicitly ordering Henderson's execution in the season premiere of Reconstruction.
  • His decision to destroy the entire state of Florida so as to give an excuse for there supposedly being no Freelancer Agent Florida.
• Knight of Cerebus: His initial appearance in the first chapter of Reconstruction is completely devoid of humor, and him implicitly ordering the execution of a shell-shocked survivor of both Omega and the Meta's rampages helps set the Darker and Edgier tone of the season.
• Manipulative Bastard: Part of his job is putting good spins on the various horrors of Project Freelancer. Best seen when the Director is barking orders through an intercom to a rogue agent. There's the sound of a scuffle and then the Counselor is on the mike, wording the request much more pleasantly.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Likely has a Ph.D., and is quite evil.
• Nerves of Steel: He's not fazed at all when Felix holds him at gun point, and instead reveals information about Wash and Carolina to gain the latter's trust.
• Never My Fault: When explaining why he would join Charon Industries despite being in the rival group years before, Price would claim that he had been manipulated and unfairly suffered because of the actions of The Director. This is very much not true, as he was complicit in many of the Project's wrongdoings as well as being the one to suggest the destruction of Florida to help fake Agent Florida's death.
• No Name Given: His actual name isn't given until Season 13.
• Not So Stoic: The first time he actually loses his calm demeanor is when he realizes that the armies of Chorus are going to take back the Communications Temple. He then tries to leave the planet when things go very south and goes as far as to kill one of the soldiers on the bridge.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • He mutters a horrified "...Oh no." when realizes that the Chorusans have taken back control of Crash Site Alpha's tractor beams and are going to drag the Tartarus into the Purge Temple.
  • Heavily downplayed, but his eyes also subtly widen when Felix casually mentions about possibly telling Sharkface that the Counselor used to work for Project Freelancer when Price was about to tell Locus what Felix is afraid of.
• Only Sane Man:
  • While he's probably the one person who most closely assists the Director with his massively unethical acts, he at least voices objections whenever the Director does something particularly dangerous, cruel, or just plain insane. The Director always overrules him, and ultimately he always goes along with it, though. It's also subverted in that he's clearly not all there upstairs either.
  • In Season 13, he's the only one of the Charon team to see past the Blood Gulch Crew's seemingly goofy and incompetent appearance and realize that they are in fact very capable soldiers, especially given their prior achievements.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He tried to make sure Project Freelancer's Agents were psychologically stable during his time in the organization... because it would've ensured loyalty to both him and the Director along with making sure everything went as smoothly as possible and their horrific experiments could've continued. However, considering how the project cannibalized itself, he clearly didn't do that good of a job.
  • This is perhaps best shown when Carolina is suffering through Mind Rape in Season 10 after the Director accidentally shouts Allison's name in front of the A.I.s, causing them to all go through a collective Freak Out. Price then advises Carolina be sedated and cared for... because she would become a less efficient agent if she were to lose her mind and the A.I.s may also become damaged while in her head.
• Precision F-Strike: Just before the Tartarus crashes.
  Price: Oh, son of a bitch.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He harbors no hard feelings toward the "Insurrection", the Chairman, the Blood Gulch Crew, or the Freelancers. He just wants to get his life back, and he will go as far as to help with genocide to do so.
• Self-Serving Memory: When explaining why he'd work for Charon after previously having been a long time player in Project Freelancer to both the Mercs and Sharkface, he plays the victim card and acts like he had been betrayed like the others who worked with the Director. However, given his highly advanced analytical skills, the fact that he explicitly worked with the Director in many aspect of the less savory parts of the Project, and was the one who suggested destroying the state of Florida to hide the reason behind Agent Florida's reassignment, his claims all hold little weight.
• The Shrink: Of the "Harmful" variety.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Price boasts himself as a vital asset for dealing with Wash and Carolina, his only real contribution is informing the mercs of Carolina's status as a Competition Freak (which Sharkface briefly makes use of), but has no real impact to hindering the duo beyond that brief instance. Ignoring his significant contribution of bringing Sharkface onto the side of the mercenaries, Price's presence among the Space Pirates is ultimately so minor that no one on the surface, including two of the few surviving members of the Project he oversaw, even suspects he's with them.
• The Sociopath: An unnervingly high-functioning example. Despite his Only Sane Man attitude, the Counselor thinks nothing of blowing up the state of Florida and sinking it into the sea just to make Agent Florida an Un-person. When things are looking bad on Chorus, his first reaction is to order the Tartarus to leave the planet, giving no regard to the soldiers they'd be abandoning to certain death. He also is shown to have had no real regard for the Freelancers in the past, only caring about making things run smoothly so the project would be more efficient.
• The Starscream: Attempts to abandon the Space Pirates and escape on the Tartarus. It doesn't work.
• The Stoic: Always speaks in that soothing monotone voice without showing any emotion.
• Take a Third Option: Aboard the Tartarus, Felix and Locus tell the prisoners to grasp the bars of their cell if they agree to joining Charon Industries, and then opens the airlock, killing all those who didn't or who weren't strong enough to hold on. The Counselor avoids doing either by tying his bedsheets around himself, knowing full well what they were about to do.
• There Are No Therapists: Inverted. There is a therapist, but he's there to study and manipulate the Freelancers and AIs into doing what the Director wants, not to make them feel better.
• Villainous Breakdown: When he realizes that the Chorus armies are likely to win, he tries to escape with the Tartarus. When questioned on this decision, he shoots one of his own men, then raises his voice for the first and only time of the series.
  Pilot: W-what're you doing?!
  Price: Surviving! To hell with this mission, and to hell with Chorus! Get us out of here!
• Unknown Rival: Thanks to his involvement with both Project Freelancer and the Space Pirates, Price has been a major adversary for the Blood Gulch Crew since they were first assigned to the canyon, but none of them even know he exists until Donut talks to him in Recreation - and even then, Donut doesn't know his connection to Freelancer. It reaches its peak in Season 13, where he's still trying to kill the Blood Gulch Crew and two of his former agents as part of the Space Pirates, but none of them, including Washington and Carolina, even know that he's there.
• Villain Respect: In Season 13, he's the only member of Charon to not be outright dismissive of the Blood Gulch Crew, seeing them as unorthodox, but still quite capable soldier. He even acknowledges that they achieved something that the Freelancers never fully could: complete and total faith in each other.
• Vocal Evolution: In Season 13, he uses more normal inflection and no longer places the AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He was arrested following the conclusion of Reconstruction, but he is not seen in the present day aside from one conversation with Washington in the climax of Reconstruction and a debriefing with Donut in Episode 4 of Recreation. He finally reappears in Season 13 (see The Bus Came Back).
• Wild Card: As shown in Season 13, he's not on anyone's side aside from his own.

479er

Pilot 479 (Four Seven Niner) / Freelancer & Recovery Command

"Well, that went to hell quicker than we thought."

Voiced By: Lee Eddy

An Ace Pilot who works for Freelancer Command during Season 9 and 10. Singularity also confirms her to be Washington's communications operator during Recovery One and Reconstruction.

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Associated Tropes:

• Ace Pilot: She has, to date on screen, done the following:
  • Hovered feet below and stood off from an oil rig-like structure.
  • Avoided fighter fire by flying through an ice canyon in one of the few justifiable examples of the latter trope.
  • Retrieved a package and two Freelancers in freefall. In a city. While the building they'd just jumped off of was collapsing next to them. UNDER FIRE.
  • Navigated an Asteroid Thicket while evading enemy fire, deploying a Freelancer team, and eventually saving the Mother of Invention from a tactical nuke while outracing the blast radius.
  • Performed a VTOL landing out of freefall from flight altitudes. In seconds. The maneuver was so delicate that she needed an AI to give her the countdown to deceleration burn with her reaction time factored in.
• Ascended Extra: She's the Mission Control for Recovery/Freelancer Command in Recovery One and Reconstruction. In Seasons 9 and 10, she's actually given a decent amount of screentime as the Freelancers' snippy pilot. Lampshaded in Episode 8 of Season 10 where she says she'd hate to have the job of the mission control guy. Her appearance in Singularity when Wash experiences Mental Time Travel confirms that both are one and the same.
• Bad Boss: As Recovery Command, she's ridiculously apathetic and cold towards the agents under her command, as she gives Washington orders to kill South Dakota, and doesn't bat an eye at mention of Washington's alleged death. She doesn't even tell him that South was a recovery agent like him.
• Badass Driver: As a pilot who doesn't take crap from Freelancers and is good at extraction, she certainly fits the bill.
• Call-Forward: Toyed with in Season 10, where she says she'd hate to have a desk job like Command. Assuming they're the same person, it's a straight example. If they're not, it's a meta-example since the voice actress would later play someone with a desk job. Singularity would later confirm that it was a Call Forward.
• Character Development: A pretty dark example - After being a Deadpan Snarker par excellence during The Project Freelancer Saga and being friends with almost everyone that she flew around with, she becomes callous and stoic after being grounded and given the position of Freelancer/Recovery Command, not even batting a metaphorical eyelash when South Dakota shoots their former friend (Wash) in the back.
• Deadpan Snarker: Possibly the best example in the series and that's really saying something.
• Doomed by Canon: Or at least Grounded By Canon. Assuming they're the same character, she's no longer flying by the time the series proper starts, something happens to her at some point. Also after the events of Reconstruction she was probably arrested along with all of the other Freelancer personnel. Singularity confirms that she and "Recovery/Freelancer Command" are the same person.
• The Faceless: We have never seen her face.
• Fantastic Racism: Subverted with the appearance of the Artificial Intelligence Delta in her operations. She only dislikes Delta for a very short time because she thinks Project Freelancer is trying to give her job to a machine, and calms down after Delta acknowledges that an A.I probably couldn't replace her.
• Honorary True Companion: Heavily implied, as she is the only non-freelancer personnel that interacts with the freelancers like they were anyone else, being able to snark at them, joke with them and even carry casual conversation. For their part, they seem to treat her with the same friendliness they give one another.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite her snarky attitude towards the agents, project personnel and A.I. alike, she's a rather decent person who is shown to care about the agents she frequently works with, though she does her best to keep this side of her professional. Best demonstrated in Season 17 where she becomes distraught at Wash's seeming bout of radio silence.
• Mission Control: Forced into this role as Freelancer/Recovery Command some time after the flashback sections of Season 10.
• Nom de Guerre: As a pilot, she's "Four-Seven-Niner". When grounded, she's "Freelancer/Recovery Command".
• Non-Action Snarker: Played with. As a pilot she's definitely involved in the action, but isn't on the ground and has no guns to defend herself with as she's solely meant for transportation. She gets a hell of a lot of snark to make up for it, though.
• No Name Given: So far she's only been identified in series by her callsigns "Four-seven-niner" and "Recovery Command". Although Wash refers to her as "Ash" when he speaks to her in Singularity.
• Not So Stoic: Her status as The Stoic below aside, she can be heard sounding absolutely baffled when she receives the Recovery Beacon for Agent Maine (a.k.a. the Meta) during Reconstruction. She also starts panicking when Wash initially doesn't respond to her in "The Not So Good Ol' Days" during Singularity, even sighing with relief and muttering "Thank God. I thought we'd lost you too..." under her breath when he answers her.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Her real name is never given, only her callsign. We do finally learn her first name in Singularity - It's "Ash."
• Out-of-Character Moment: She sounds like she's almost on the verge of panic when Wash doesn't respond to her in "The Not So Good Ol' Days," which is both a noticeable departure from her stoic mask as Recovery Command and easily the most concerned she's ever sounded when talking to someone in the entire series. This is also notable that this is not terribly long before South betrays Washington, where she doesn't even react upon hearing the news of his alleged death.
• The Stoic: While acting as Freelancer/Recovery Command. She doesn't even miss a beat when ordering around South Dakota during Recovery One after she just shot Wash in the back, and coolly threatens the former Freelancer when South actually goes rogue.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: She used to be on friendly terms with most of the agents she worked with, but as Recovery Command she's anything but. This includes having No Sympathy towards South's situation, a non-reaction upon hearing Wash had been killed, the most emotion she displays is confusion that Maine's recovery beacon went off, seeing how he had become the Meta since then and therefore shouldn't be in a such a state in the first place.
• Walking Spoiler: invoked Downplayed, but while The Reveal that she and Freelancer/Recovery Command are the same person was already assumed to be canon by most fans, it's still a noteworthy spoiler.
• We Used to Be Friends: She briefly freaks out during "The Not So Good Ol' Days" and loses her former calm. Combine that with Wash calling her "Ash," and it's implied that they were much better friends before the very cold and professional "relationship" the two characters were shown to have in Recovery One and Reconstruction (with her even not being that put out by South Dakota shooting Wash in the back and leaving him for dead during the aforementioned miniseries).
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Didn't show up at all for the end of Season 10, with her fate left uncertain (including whether 479er and Freelancer Command were the same person or not). Though she does note when speaking to the (then male) Freelancer Command that she'd hate to have his job, which may have served as Foreshadowing. Singularity would confirm her and Freelancer/Recovery Command as the same person, though it's still unknown what actually happened to her after the events of Reconstruction.

F.I.L.S.S.

Freelancer Integrated Logistics and Security System (F.I.L.S.S.)

I am the Freelancer Integrated Logistics and Security System. You may call me Phyllis. It is a pleasure to meet you. You now have fifteen seconds to live.

Voiced By: Yomary Cruz

An artificial intelligence program that helps to organize Freelancer programs. She has an identical voice to Sheila, and several of her mannerisms, although they are separate characters. Answers to the name "Sheila" due to a request from Epsilon-Church, whom she recognised as the Director, because Caboose kept calling her that anyway. At the end of Season 10, she deletes herself at the Director's request, along with every other Project Freelancer data file.

Along with many other items of Freelancer equipment, she, having somehow survived, is recovered by the Chairman and made to work with Charon Industries during The Chorus Trilogy.

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Associated Tropes:

• Artificial Intelligence: What she is, although she appears to be a "dumb" AI (relatively speaking).
• Back from the Dead: She was recovered by the Chairman, and forced to work for Charon Industries, as revealed in The Stinger of Season 12.
• Badass Decay: In-Universe. She goes from a Spaceship Girl with a Wave-Motion Gun to a program with a terminal in a tree attached to a single ground base. Carolina is shocked by the change.
  Carolina: F.I.L.S.S.? What happened to you?
• Came Back Wrong: Her speech in the present-day storyline of Season 10 is noticeably more stilted and forced (almost dazed-sounding) than her usual mechanical, but still somehow upbeat speaking patterns. Even moreso in Season 12, where her voice makes it sound almost like she's in pain, or at the very least, sleep-deprived. It goes back to normal by the end of Season 13.
• Chekhov's Gunman: After her return in the Season 12 finale, she doesn't make an impact on the plot until the Season 13 finale, where she helps the Reds and Blues take down the Chairman aboard the Staff of Charon.
• The Dog Bites Back: After being treated very poorly by Hargrove throughout Season 13, she finally gets revenge by helping the Reds and Blues in the finale.
• Driven to Suicide: She deletes herself at the Director's orders in the Season 10 finale. Subverted, as she somehow survives, has been reactivated along with the other Freelancer equipment they scavenged by Charon Industries, and is now working for Control, aka Malcolm Hargrove.
• Fun with Acronyms: Her name is pronounced "Phyllis".
• It Has Been an Honour: Her last words to the Director before deleting herself in Season 10.
• Nice Girl: Despite her telling people she's going to kill them, she's surprisingly very polite about it and not malicious.
• Spaceship Girl: When on board the Mother of Invention.
• Undying Loyalty: To the Director.
• Unexplained Recovery: Despite coming back at the end of Season 12 (after being deleted in Season 10), it's not explained how she survived until the Season 13 finale.
• Villainous Friendship: Of a sort with the Director, though he seems to not really acknowledge it until his final moments.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The MAC Gun on the Mother of Invention.
  F.I.L.S.S.: Firing main cannon.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Her whereabouts after Season 13 have not been shown.

Vic

Virtual Intelligence Computer ("Vic")

"Chill dude, take a chill pill. If you don't have a chill pill, take a chill strip - put it on your tongue, it dissolves. Chill."

Voiced By: Randall Glass (first appearance), Burnie Burns (later appearances)

Serving as Mission Control for both the Red and Blue teams (a secret he tries to have Tucker assassinated to protect), Vic is more like an unhelpful tech support guy than an actual asset. Vic's intelligence reports provide helpful information like the location of the enemy team's base (the other side of the canyon), the number of enemies (3 or 4), and the location of the team's own base. His directives usually run along the lines of "try to win extra hard," and he mostly provides just enough help to keep the hijinks in Blood Gulch continuing. When Doc contacts him for assistance, Vic goes off on a long tangent about his vasectomy, and has a habit of being unavailable just when his help would be most useful.

Duplicity and secrets surround Vic - though supposedly sterile, after the "time jump" the two teams meet "Vic Jr.," a "descendant" of Vic's with a suspiciously identical personality and appearance, as well as the same post. During the end of the series, Vic also attempts to get both teams underground so they'll be captured and O'Malley's scheme will succeed - and in one of the endings, expresses anger that the Reds and Blues messed up "the plan".

It is implied - through Simmons interrupting Sarge's and Vic's conversation in the caves, and through the alternate ending of "Why Were We Here?" in which Sarge destroys the computer and damages Vic's heat sink - that the computer console in the cave system is Vic. It is confirmed in both The Ultimate Fan Guide and Season 14 that Vic is some sort of VI - a Virtual Intelligence Computer, as it says at the bottom of the display - designed to watch over the training simulation and generate scenarios and give resources and intel back to Freelancer Command when necessary.

Season 15 has him transferred from his computer onto a portable drive by Dylan Andrews for her usage as part of a deal where Vic will perform three favors in exchange for being taken offline permanently.

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Associated Tropes:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: He was not programmed with his rather odd (and irritating) personality, but gained it when Florida screwed with his wiring. It's likely this that caused him to ally with O'Malley.
• Artificial Intelligence: Heavily implied, and later confirmed to be a "Virtual Intelligence" (a.k.a. a sophisticated "dumb" A.I.).
• Back for the Dead: Outside of his self-admittedly non-canon stint as the Lemony Narrator of Season 14, he hadn't made an appearance for years in real-world time until he returned in Season 15, dying in a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of it.
• The Bus Came Back: He returns in Season 14 as a narrator, and makes his first proper appearance in years in Season 15.
• The Cameo: In the first appearance, he's voiced by Randall Glass, also known as the "Warthog Jump guy" by longtime Halo fans and who popularized the video capture of Halo games.
• Character Development: By Season 15, being left alone in Blood Gulch has given him...rather shocking tendencies from being left running for such a long time, to the point that he's starting to fail and has become even more erratic.
• Deadpan Snarker: At least in his first appearance, being totally deadpan.
  Tucker: I don't know what the technical military term is for it, but, uh, we're pretty fucked up down here. We need men!
  (Beat)
  Vic: Dude. How long have you guys been down there for?
  • Later seasons also had examples even if he became more weird than snarky.
    Doc: Do the aliens have like a home base or something here?
    Vic: I don’t know dude, why don’t I just consult my Extra Terrestrial Travel Guide for ya. Oh look! Got a great series of alien bed and breakfasts there!
• Death Seeker: When Dylan finds him in Blood Gulch in Season 15, he begs her to pull his plug, as he can't do it himself, and shut him down. In exchange for eventually killing him off, he becomes her AI assistant and "grants her three wishes." He gets his wish when he's used to stabilize the Blues and Reds' Machine to save the planet.
• Eccentric A.I.: To say he isn't the most down-to-Earth guy would be putting it very mildly. It later turns out that he used to be a lot saner, until Agent Florida accidentally messed with his wiring and turned V.I.C. into what he is in the present day. By Season 15, V.I.C has become even more insane due to deterioration of his systems and is openly looking for someone to finally put him out of his misery when Dylan Andrews meets him.
• Electronic Speech Impediment:
  • He had one after Captain Flowers accidentally tampered with his wiring, further demonstrating how much this messed him up.
  • He's developed another one by Season 15, highlighting how much he's gone insane by that point.
• The Fog of Ages: By Season 15, he's been around for so long that his memory is failing. Dylan uses this to her advantage during their deal involving Vic "granting her three wishes" in exchange for her killing him afterward and she needs his help for a third time, with him having so much trouble remembering things by this point that she's able to trick him into thinking it's the second time.
• Fun with Acronyms: "Virtual Intelligence Computer".
• Gratuitous Spanish: He tends to throw a Spanish word into every other sentence.
• He Knows Too Much: The reason why he kept trying to get Tucker assassinated once he found out that Vic is a VI and that he acts as Mission Control for both teams. Naturally, Vic always failed at it, while Tucker always got harmed in some form anyway.
• Heroic Sacrifice: His last wish is spent stabilizing the Blues and Reds' time machine-laser drill before it creates a black hole and destroys the Solar System. The characters even refer to this trope by name as he does it.
• Identical Grandson: Allegedly has a "descendant", despite supposedly being sterile. Absolutely nothing is different between Vic Junior and Vic Senior, right down to the voice, appearance and post, so chances are that it was the same guy trying to maintain credibility to both teams by disguising himself as a relative. Still seems as genuinely incompetent as any other Red or Blue simulation soldier out there. Subverted in Revelation with The Reveal that the whole time-travel thing was a training scenario by Freelancer, confirming that Vic was posing as his own descendant, and double-confirmed when it's revealed that he is a computer program.
• Large Ham: He's so quirky that it's pretty clear Burnie Burns is enjoying himself profusely while recording. Vic's most over the top moments come in Season 15, where he's fed up and prone to yell stuff like this:
  Vic: I’d do it myself, but I ain’t got no hands! No hands! NO HANDS!!!
• Lemony Narrator: He returns in Season 14 as a narrator, with all of his quirks intact.
• The Man Behind the Man: Subverted. Although he's presumably a VI designed to oversee the training simulation on Blood Gulch, generate combat scenarios, and selectively give out resources, supplies and intel for the crews, his selective competence and willful demeanor make him seem like he's just another rather ineffective cohort for O'Malley, and that he joined likely because he found it fun to work with a rogue AI.
• Manipulative Bastard: His apparent job seems solely to drag out the simulation training for as long as possible, hence at least part of the reason why he never helps when needed (the other being his rather willful persona). Being the tech assistant to both teams, Vic attempts to get the protagonists underground so they'll be captured, allowing O'Malley's scheme to succeed. Didn't work out as accurately as they planned and things only got worse for Vic as time went on. See Death Seeker.
• Mission Control: He serves as one for both the Red and Blue teams, which is kept secret from them both.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Not all (by which we mean hardly any) of his advice is useful. The instruction that Lopez possesses (but is translated into Spanish) is to "eliminate the enemy." That's it. It's implied in Season 14 that he was not always this way, and was genuinely competent until Agent Florida accidentally screwed up his wiring.
• Motor Mouth: One of the reasons he annoys people so much is because he can keep talking long after he's made his point. His high-pitched voice just adds more fuel to the fire.
• Mysterious Backer: Even more so than the Director, since we still don't have solid facts about him - just presumptions based on conjecture. Season 14 finally gives some real information on him. He's a VI that oversees Blood Gulch, but he was screwed up by Agent Florida tripping over some wires, resulting in his unique quirks and him sending Caboose, Donut, and Sister to Blood Gulch.
• Sanity Slippage: He definitely suffered this by the time Season 15 rolls around due to his systems having deteriorated from operating for so long.
• Totally Radical: Says "cool" words like "dude" and "chill" a lot. Heavily implied to be a result of Florida screwing up his wiring.
• Troll: On reflection upon The Reveal that he's actually an A.I., several actions that were thought to be previously due to him being a human (i.e., putting Church on hold for an automated voicemail box in Season 5) were just him playing pranks on the simulation troopers.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Freelancer Command by proxy, since O'Malley's Evil Plan during The Blood Gulch Chronicles is heavily implied to have been developed by them so as to solve the Great War.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He isn't seen after Season 5. While he returns to act as the narrator for Season 14, the Ultimate Fan Guide says that after the Blood Gulch crew were transferred to different posts, his terminal was shut down. Or not. He's still around in season 15, but has since degraded to the point that he's a Death Seeker and is being used by Dylan for assistance in exchange for finally being taken offline when she's finished.