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For the version of the Devil in the remake Syfy series, see Lucifer
5x6 CaptainHatch2
The Devil/Captain Hatch
Biographical information
Born

Before humanity

Alias

Satan
The Antichrist
Old Nick
Azazel
Old Scratch
Woland
The Stranger

Physical description
Species

Demon

Gender

Male

Hair colour

N/A (natural form)
White (in madman vessel)
Blonde (in Dominic Rook)

Eye colour

N/A (natural form)
Blue (in vessels)
Red (in vessels, when using abilities)

Skin colour

N/A (natural form)
Caucasian (in vessels)

Family information
Family members

God (creator)

Affiliation
Infectees

Vampire Brothers

Television Portrayal
First appearance The Trinity
Last appearance The Last Broadcast
Actor Phil Davis (main)
Steven Robertson
.
"You see, ever since you crawled out from the primordial soup and flopped onto the beach, I thought I was the one holding you back; distracting you with shiny stuff and gunpowder. And then I was... put on the reserves bench, shall we say. And I thought, 'Oh, well, that's that. Without me whispering in their ears, they'll build utopia!' Well dearie me, I got that wrong! He made you so He could retire, did you know that? You were meant to be the pinnacle of evolution; a creature so sophisticated and powerful you wouldn't need Him. And He could go back to His gardening and His wordsearch puzzles. But what do you do? You elect leaders that despise you, and rob you of your freedom and dignity; you pollute and devour your Eden; you know beauty to be false, but you prostrate yourselves before it; you think to be a philistine is honest, to be educated is cunning; you find the lowest common denominator and then you dig deeper! I was supposed to be the lesson. I was the warning. I was the villain. And you all became my tribute act! There is nothing I can do. Nothing in all the palaces of the imagination worse than what you do to each other! You dragged the world to the brink of the abyss! Well done! And now I'm just going to give it that final nudge!"
―Captain Hatch to humanity on how he sees them.[src]

Captain Hatch was the latest and last known name used by the Devil, a powerful, evil, ancient supernatural entity, which fed on conflict between vampires and werewolves and existed solely to create chaos, death, and destruction. Other, earlier names that the Devil went by included Satan, Old Nick, Old Scratch, Azazel, Woland, and the Stranger. He is the main antagonist of Series 5 and the last antagonist of the series.

History

Pre-1910s

The Devil claimed to have been created by God solely to create destruction, chaos, death and corruption as part of the natural order, and he indicated that ever since humanity first evolved, he was responsible for influencing them to corrupt them into causing war and destruction among themselves. (The Last Broadcast)

It is known that circa 1000 BC or earlier, two Asian brothers made a pact with the Devil (they would have eternal life and in exchange they would drink blood), and the Devil then turned them into the first vampires. (Eve of the War) According to Hal Yorke, the Devil is likewise the originator of lycanthropy and ghosts. (The Last Broadcast)

1910s

In 1911, the Devil sparked a full-scale war between vampires and werewolves to feed on the energy this created. In 1918, Emil Parsons summoned the Devil to an old castle in France by lying to the Devil that the werewolves and vampires were battling there, and the Devil then came and possessed a French madman present at the castle. Before the Devil could escape upon seeing he had been tricked, Emil, Hal Yorke, and Catherine Glass used a supernatural trinity blood ritual to bind him to his current vessel and try to kill him.

However, as it was not a true trinity due to an error on Hal's part; the Devil wasn't destroyed but merely trapped in the madman's body and unable to reach vampire-werewolf conflict across great distances as he had previously been. The Devil then managed to telekinetically unlock his vessel's harness and escape while the members of the blood trinity died. (The Trinity, The Last Broadcast)

Between 1920 and 2013

Sometime in the 1920s, the Devil trapped in mortal form came to the Barry Grand Hotel as an indefinite resident, using the alias Captain Hatch and posing as a retired Army captain. Over the years, Hatch would occasionally use his abilities to force other people at the hotel to commit suicide, and became bitter and angered over his binding to his current vessel when his vessel's body began to come close to failing and dying. (The Trinity, No Care, All Responsibility) Hatch also claimed that across the years, he suffered from poor sleep and aches due to his vessel's age, and that it was his desire to one day see Hal again and take revenge on him for his binding that brought Hatch to bear this. (The Last Broadcast)

2010s

In the early 2010s, one day Hal, Thomas McNair, and Alex Millar came to the hotel, with Hal and Tom looking for a job. Captain Hatch then saw that if he could manipulate Tom and Hal into fighting, then the conflict between a vampire and werewolf within such close proximity of him could release enough energy to restore him to power.

Hatch2

Captain Hatch in the 2010s as a Barry Grand Hotel resident.

On the same day, when at one point Hatch's assistant Sophie accidentally spilled milk on him, Captain Hatch used his powers to make her write a warning on the wall of Hatch's hotel suite that he would rise, then kill herself by jumping from the suite window. (The Trinity) Hatch subsequently partially wiped the warning off the wall before the police arrived. (No Care, All Responsibility)

A day or more after Sophie's death, Captain Hatch convinced Patsy to hold an employee of the month competition among the hotel's staff, as part of his plan to manipulate Tom and Hal into squabbling and fighting. Later, while Tom was changing Captain Hatch's colostomy bag, Hatch appeared as a sympathetic ear to Tom, manipulating the latter into rebelling against higher-up employees such as Hal by convincing Tom that they regarded people like Hatch and Tom as beneath them. Hatch then visited and manipulated Hal in a similar way, convincing Hal that he was better than the bad luck he'd been getting recently.

Hal and Tom subsequently began squabbling and fighting as a result of Captain Hatch's influence and manipulation, and the fighting seemed to minorly replenish Hatch's power. Captain Hatch also had the Men with Sticks and Rope force Oliver Fitzwilliam Pryor to trick Alex into coming with the Men to the Other Side (so that the trinity would be broken and Hal and Tom would be easier to manipulate), and seemed to control the Men with Sticks and Rope as they went after Alex, until Alex defeated the Men by marooning them on the physical plane to die.

After Patsy fired Hal and Tom, Captain Hatch used his powers to force the former to rehire them so that Hatch could cause enough further fighting among the two to further restore his power. Hatch then began tormenting Patsy by biokinetically causing her great blood loss before making her drown herself in the sea outside the hotel. Captain Hatch then vowed to himself that he would reduce the Earth to ruin after returning to full power. (Sticks and Rope)

When Bobby was brought by Tom to the Barry Grand Hotel as a temporary new employee, Captain Hatch scared and unnerved Bobby. When Dominic Rook came to the Hotel to pick up Bobby before finally deciding that the Department of Domestic Defence wasn't needed anymore, Captain Hatch pretended to Rook to be a survivor of a vampire attack who had been saved by the Department in the past. Hatch manipulated Rook into releasing Bobby in his wolf form onto the hotel during the full moon the following night by convincing Rook that they had to cause supernatural chaos in order to get his Department reactivated to prevent worse supernatural chaos from erupting. Hatch hoped that the conflict between Hal and Bobby as the former tried to keep Bobby's wolf contained would further replenish Hatch's power.

DevilDirectingMenWithSticksAndRope

Captain Hatch using his powers to control the Men with Sticks and Rope.

Rook and Captain Hatch played cards in Hatch's hotel suite that night while Bobby's wolf attacked the hotel, until Hatch sensed Hal, Tom, and Alex foil their plot without either werewolves fighting Hal; thus Hatch did not gain any new energy. Captain Hatch then momentarily lost his composure and convinced Rook that Tom and Hal were a threat to Rook's goal of reinstating his Department. The following morning, Captain Hatch visited Bobby while the latter was alone and used his powers to force Bobby to hang himself. After Rook had Bobby's body taken away, Hatch watched Alex while she was in Bobby's apartment, in the process giving away to Alex that he was not human and was involved in Bobby's death. (The Greater Good)

Shortly after Bobby's death, Captain Hatch's vessel began to get sicker and closer to failing, forcing him to speed up his and Rook's plans. Rook and Hatch came up with a plan to have Natasha dangerously drive a wedge between Tom and Hal by seducing Tom and secretly feeding Hal her blood, then telling Tom that Hal had forced her to feed him blood. In the meantime, Captain Hatch had to put up with Alex's attempts to prove him to be a supernatural by pretending to be unable to see her and at one point even allowing her to throw him out of his wheelchair in front of Hal.

The following night, when Natasha realised that Tom and Hal weren't truly monsters and tried to back out of the plan, Captain Hatch tricked her into coming close enough to him to use his powers to control her. Hatch then forced Natasha to go to Honolulu Heights and to kill herself there and frame Hal by freeing Hal from his bonds and then slitting her throat with a knife. Shortly afterwards, when Tom began attacking Hal in rage over Natasha's death, Captain Hatch fed on the energy released and his power began to replenish to full capacity. Alex subsequently confronted Hatch in his hotel suite about Sophie's, Bobby's, and Natasha's deaths, and Hatch, having been restored to full power by Hal and Tom's scuffle and thus no longer wheelchair-bound, then told Alex what he was before imprisoning her in her grave. (No Care, All Responsibility)

The following morning, the restored Captain Hatch used his powers to force everyone else in the Barry Grand Hotel to gruesomely kill themselves, then left the hotel and set about starting the Apocalypse; planning to first wipe out the majority of the British populace by broadcasting his suicide-inducing powers to them, then afterwards dividing the world into four kingdoms, each representing one of the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (with Europe as the Kingdom of the Dead, Russia and Asia as the Kingdom of Disease, Africa as the Kingdom of Famine, and the Americas serving as the Kingdom of War). Hatch first used his abilities to force hundreds of people across Cardiff to kill themselves, then met with Rook at the Archive. There, Hatch revealed who he really was and forced Rook to give him the emergency broadcast codes before heading to a TV station and taking control over the crew. Captain Hatch then used the emergency codes to broadcast from the station on all channels to the entire UK, planning to use his powers to force the majority of the nation to kill themselves.

5x6 DevilPossessingRook

The Devil possessing Rook in a dream reality.

Hatch first expressed scorn and admiration across the TV at how humanity had become worse rather than better over the century while he was incapacitated and thus unable to influence and corrupt them. He was then about to use his powers on them when Hal, Tom, and Alex arrived. But before the trio could use the same trinity blood ritual used by Hal, Emil, and Catherine in 1918 to stop Hatch, the latter sent each of them into a virtual dream reality where they each had or could have the happy human lives that they wanted. Captain Hatch then used his 'multitasking' presence to simultaneously visit Hal, Tom, and Alex in each of their respective alternate worlds and tried to tempt them into staying and living their lives there as humans. However, all three of them refused and seemingly returned to the real world.

Captain Hatch was then about to resume his plan, but just before he could use his abilities on the people of the UK watching him on television, Mr. Rook arrived and attempted to kill Hatch by shooting him. This prompted the Devil to flee his madman vessel and possess Rook just before the latter shot and killed the former's previous vessel. The Devil, now possessing Rook as a new vessel, later visited Hal, Tom, and Alex at Honolulu Heights. He initially pretended to be Rook, but Hal realised that it was the Devil possessing Rook when he automatically responded to Alex, and the Devil then began unleashing his powers. Hal, Alex, and Tom then performed the trinity blood ritual with a true trinity between them, and the Devil then left Rook's body but was kept trapped in the house by the ritual. With no other human vessels in the vicinity, the Devil then re-possessed Rook, and Hal almost immediately staked and killed him, seemingly destroying the Devil forever. (The Last Broadcast)

At some point between this and when Captain Hatch offered Hal, Tom, and Alex the virtual realities where they had what they wanted, he'd sent them into another dream reality where they believed that they defeated and destroyed the Devil and became human. However, after some time, the trinity learned it was in fact another dream reality and set about escaping back to the real world and stopping Hatch.[1]

Personality

Little is known of the Devil's personality prior to being bound in mortal form, though he was quite cunning, able to manipulate and intensify the conflict between werewolves and vampires. When bound, he at first appeared to lack the ability to speak and expressed himself with savage snarls when he realised he had been tricked. The Devil also expressed sadism, laughing as those responsible for binding him in mortal form died as part of the trinity blood ritual.

After almost a century bound and trapped in mortal form, Captain Hatch became bitter, angry, and resentful over it, appearing on the surface as a typical angry pensioner who was quick to bouts of anger and frustration before being calmed by the Barry Grand Hotel staff. After Hal and Tom came to the hotel and thus Hatch had a new chance of rising again, though he remained quick to anger, he soon became able to easily regain his composure and gradually became much calmer. Captain Hatch usually hid his true nature behind a demeanour which switched between that of an angry pensioner and a warm and kind old man; but occasionally when Hatch became frustrated enough, his true persona could momentarily bleed through in fits of anger. Beneath his kind old man/angry pensioner demeanour, Captain Hatch was shown to be sinister, sadistic, cunning, and cruel. Hatch also once claimed that as he was created to cause chaos, death, and corruption, he was incapable of changing his ways or his purpose to bring the Apocalypse.

Hatch was still prone to bouts of anger after Hal and Tom came to the hotel and was resentful over his binding, but also became patient and cunning following Hal and Tom's arrival. Hatch also had a vengeful streak, as he claimed that during the 95 years when he was bound to his madman vessel, the thought of one day taking gruesome revenge on Hal for the 1918 trinity ritual was the one thing that kept him going through all the pain of his mortal form. When attempting to return to power, Hatch preferred to manipulate actions from behind the scenes, pretending to people to be a warm, welcoming friend and/or someone who only wanted to help them, and playing on their faults and insecurities to get them to do what he wanted. He also at at least one point expressed admiration and/or respect at how Alex had managed to defeat the Men with Sticks and Rope.

After returning to full power, Captain Hatch's personality became more confident, happy, and slightly laid-back and carefree, showing and expressing a casual, happy, and eccentric disposition as he revealed his evil intentions to others around him and exercised his suicide-inducing powers.

Characteristics

Appearance

5x1 DevilTrueForm

The Devil's natural form on the physical plane.

The Devil had no true form of his own, but when outside a vessel on the physical plane, he appeared as a swarm of blackness. When inside a vessel, the Devil would sometimes at first cause the host's body to gruesomely twist and contort, although this and all visible evidence of it would disappear after a short amount of time. When Hatch was expressing rage or excitement or using his abilities or feeding, his vessel's eyes would change colour; the irises turning a glowing red and the rest of the eyes becoming black.

Abilities

  • Possession - The Devil lacked a form of his own, and thus could only gain corporeal form on the physical plane by possessing a vessel. He apparently could not possess supernaturals and would therefore possess the nearest human in the current vicinity.
  • Longevity - Captain Hatch can extend his vessel's lifespan to approximately twice that of a normal human's even without any energy from vampire-werewolf conflict to feed on. The vessel's health is apparently also affected by how strong Hatch is at the time, becoming younger and stronger as Hatch's powers replenish.
  • Mind control - Captain Hatch was able to manipulate humans and werewolves through the use of whispers, and also commands once an individual was under his control. He could also force people to speak the truth just by telling them to.
  • Telekinesis - Hatch could telekinetically unscrew the bolts on his madman vessel's harness during the 1918 ritual.
  • Biokenisis - Captain Hatch could cause people's blood pressure to massively increase to the point of heavy bleeding from the eyes, nose, and mouth. He could also cause vampires to suffer crippling internal pain.
  • Rot - Captain Hatch once caused a vase of flowers to wither and die just by passing by them.
  • Reality warping - Captain Hatch could manipulate time and space so that other beings such as ghosts couldn't escape from an interior space, just coming back in through an entrance whenever they went through an exit. He could also transport ghosts through mirrors to other locations, and could create alternative virtual dream realities based on people's longings and desires.
  • Door opening - Captain Hatch could open doors to the Other Side.
  • Control over the Men with Sticks and Rope - The Devil could apparently control the Men with Sticks and Rope and even allow them to manifest on the physical plane in their true form.
  • Multitasking presence - While not omnipresent, the Devil was capable of simultaneously existing in and interacting in more than one of his virtual dream realities. He described doing this as "multitasking."
  • Binding - Captain Hatch could banish ghosts and inhibit their teleporting abilities.
  • Extra-sensory awareness - Captain Hatch could almost instantly sense when his and Mr. Rook's plot to use Bobby had failed, despite the fact that they were in another part of the hotel at the time.
  • Soul reading - Hatch at one point claimed to Rook that the latter was already damned due to his actions.
  • Emotion-sensing - Hatch could sense with no effort the negative emotions that Hal, Tom, and Alex were directing at each other after Natasha's death and Hal's reversion.
  • Necromancy - After Natasha killed herself while under the influence of Captain Hatch's powers, her corpse kept saying "He will rise" as Hatch's power was replenished by the energy from Hal and Tom's fighting.
  • Curse creation - The Devil could, at least through a pact, curse humans and turn them into a new supernatural species; this is how he created vampirism. He is also responsible for creating lycanthropy and for causing dead humans to become ghosts.
  • Liquikinesis - Captain Hatch indicated that he could transform liquids such as water into other kinds of liquids, at one point stating that he would prove he was the Devil by turning water into wine, were that miracle not "copyrighted."
  • Supernatural concealment - Captain Hatch was capable of concealing his demonic true nature from werewolves, ghosts, and vampires so that he could pass as human. However, supernaturals with an abnormally innocent and childlike mindset and perception could see right through Hatch.

Weaknesses

  • Supernatural trinity - It is possible to trap the Devil using a ritual in which a ghost drinks the blood of a vampire and werewolf. If the ritual is proper (if the vampire, werewolf, and ghost participants are all part of one trinity, with the vampire and werewolf that donated their blood being present) then the Devil's powers will be destroyed and he will be unable to leave the current location and can be destroyed if his vessel is fatally injured. But if the trinity is somehow flawed—such as if the blood of an unrelated vampire instead of that of the vampire part of the trinity is used—then the Devil will merely be weakened and bound to his current vessel, unable to reach energy from distant vampire and werewolf conflicts to feed on, unless and until he can find conflict within close proximity upon which to return to full power.
  • Death of vessel - It appears that when the Devil was bound to a vessel, if the host body dies while the Devil is still in it, then he would either be destroyed as well or return to the atmosphere as a bodiless spirit, depending on whether or not a trinity blood ritual was first used to make him vulnerable to destruction.
  • Vessel's mortality - It is apparent that without energy from conflict between vampires and werewolves over long periods of time, the Devil could not indefinitely extend his vessel's lifespan.

Quotes

Captain Hatch: I'm getting stronger every day. And when the time is right, I will rise! And then, I'm going to drain the world dry. I'm going to lap up every drop of hope and love and feel it run down my chin! I'm going to turn men into beasts and ruin their women and spit poison into their children! I'm going to scorch the earth with proper, Old Testament despair and teach them that the gods are there to be feared, and everything you love will die and everything you're scared of will come true!!

Captain Hatch: [Tom and Bobby walk into the hotel] It's like Battersea bleeding Dogs Home in here.

Alex: What are you?
Captain Hatch: I'm only the fucking Devil, sweetheart!

Captain Hatch: I've never understood why you lot are so proud of being human. A monkey falls out of a tree and invents the digital watch. That's basically it, isn't it?

Captain Hatch: [To Rook] I'd do a trick for you. I'd turn water into wine but it's been copyrighted.

Captain Hatch: [To Hal] A hundred years, trapped in this broken body. A hundred years of aching bones, and skin like dust and getting up five times in the night to pee, and you know what kept me going? Knowing I'd see you again and pull out your hearts! And then one day, you stroll into the hotel with a werewolf. Talk about a get-out-of-jail card! All I needed to do was pour a little pestilence into your ears, and here we are!

Alex: Why are you here? What are you gonna do?
Captain Hatch: Well, I'll talk you through it, but I'm on a bit of a tight schedule. I'm gonna carve the world into four kingdoms. Here, the north will be the Kingdom of the Dead. In the east, Russia and Asia; the Kingdom of Disease. In the south, Africa; the Kingdom of Famine. And in the west, the Americas; the Kingdom of War. Can anyone see where this is going? No? Does nobody go to Sunday school anymore?! It's basically a Four-Horsemen-of-the-Apocalypse thing, but I'm doing it on my own; cutbacks.

Alex: Why? Why are you doing this?!
Captain Hatch: It's what I was made for. God knows why. Literally! Grand scheme of things, circle of life, all that. I don't really get a say in it. I just have one purpose: chaos.

Notes

  • The secret that Hatch told people to cause them to fall under his control has been speculated by some fans to have possibly been the same secret of the dead that Annie Sawyer told Owen Norayan in Where The Wild Things Are to drive him insane. This is reinforced by the fact that Natasha, who was subjected to the secret when alive, appeared to be mentally stable again after its effects caused her to kill herself and become a ghost. However, some have argued that the secret Hatch used to control others probably isn't the same one Annie told Owen, due to differences in the effects on people: the secret Annie told Owen caused him to become constantly terrified of any form of exposure to the outside world, whereas the secret Hatch used to control his victims caused them to lose their free will over their actions and obey Hatch's every command before killing themselves.
  • A supernatural trinity of a vampire, werewolf, and ghost is capable of defeating the Devil. This is ironic as, according to Hal, the respective curses that create all three supernatural species originally come from the Devil.
  • The appearance of an origami wolf model at the end of The Last Broadcast, identical to the one Hatch made in Tom's virtual reality to symbolise the dream reality's difference from the real world, is believed to have been a hint that Captain Hatch may have actually defeated Hal, Tom, and Alex, and sent them into a virtual reality where they believed they stopped Hatch. A bonus scene confirmed this to be true.
  • Captain Hatch seems to share several behavioral traits in common with the vampire race in particular: he enjoys killing people in creative ways, he's motivated by hunger (for negative energy created by vampire-werewolf conflict rather than blood), and he derides werewolves by comparing them to household dogs whilst treating ghosts with a level of fascination and respectfulness.

References

Being Human BBC Characters

Main: Annie SawyerGeorge SandsJohn MitchellNina PickeringThomas McNairHal YorkeAlex MillarMr. Rook

Villains: HerrickKempLucy JaggatThe Old OnesMr. SnowCaptain HatchCrumb

Recurring: Lauren DrakeSethCaraOwenJosie HunterIvanDaisyLloydSamMollySaulHughSykesLiaAnthony McNairAdam JacobsNancy ReidEveNick Cutler

Secondary: Lee TullyGilbertJaney HarrisBernieAlan CortezSashaGrahamGeorge Sands Snr.Edgar WyndhamGriffinDewiRegusLeoPearlFergusMichaela ThompsonKirbyYvonneAllison LarkinEmrysGoldaKaneMiloArthurLady CatherineEmil ParsonsOliverAlbertPatsySophieAlanKathleenRufusLady MaryLarry ChryslerBobbyNatashaQuinn

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