Rex Matheson
Rex Matheson was a CIA agent and a member of the Torchwood team.
Saved from death by the Miracle, Rex extradited Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper to investigate the phenomenon and was forced to join them and Esther Drummond in going on the run, eventually clearing his name and helping end the Miracle at the cost of Esther's life. Rex found that he had become immortal after feeding the Blessing Jack's transfused blood and went on to become Deputy Director of the CIA, working to clear up after the Miracle and hunt down the Three Families.
Biography
Early life
Rex Matheson was the son of Maurice Matheson, who lived in a "dump" in Los Angeles and believed that Rex never cared for anybody but himself. He left his father circa 1996 and joined the Central Intelligence Agency, an organisation which his father did not trust. He had no contact with his father and told people that he had no family and was from New York. (TV: Escape to LA)
Early career
Rex worked in Clandestine and once spent eighteen months working out routes in Maracaibo. (TV: The New World) He had a relationship with Lyn Peterfield which ended because they irritated one another (TV: Rendition) and, according to Allen Shapiro, women whom he had sex with ended up bitter afterwards. (TV: End of the Road) He worked closely with Esther Drummond. (TV: The New World)
Teaming up with Glen Shaeffer, Rex tracked a group who were supposed to be transporting weapons from the Hub to the United States and caused destruction in South America and Colorado which seriously jeopardised his position and reputation. However, the pair continued the search without CIA support. Mr Wynter used an Ytraxorian Reality Rifle to rewrite history so that Rex and Glen prevented the assassination of the president because he admired the spark of idealism he saw in Matheson, but he promised that he would kill him if he ever saw him again. (PROSE: The Men Who Sold the World)
The Miracle
Joining Torchwood
Whilst informing Esther of his inevitable promotion following Steve Reynolds's wife's diagnosis over the telephone, Rex was impaled by several poles carried by a braking lorry and operated on by Vera Juarez at City General Hospital. He survived thanks to the Miracle and decided to extradite Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper after learning that an email containing Torchwood's name was sent to the CIA at the same time as the last recorded death, flying to Heathrow Airport and driving to Gwen's home in Wales. Thanks to Andy Davidson and South Wales Police, he was able to capture Jack and Gwen as well as Rhys and Anwen Williams. (TV: The New World)
Rex had Rhys and Anwen returned home whilst Jack and Gwen were forced on an aeroplane to the United States and contacted Vera to supply him with painkillers once he arrived in return for the chance to examine the mortal Jack. He handcuffed Lyn, who joined him in the rendition, to a seat after she poisoned Jack and got Vera's help to create EDTA to cure him. When the aeroplane landed, Rex was informed by Esther that the CIA was framing the two of them and he went on the run with her, Jack and Gwen. (TV: Rendition)
Rex threatened Brian Friedkin into revealing who paid him to frame him and Esther and got his hands on a mobile phone which Friedkin's paymasters contacted him on. The team learnt that PhiCorp had a stockpile of painkillers which Friedkin was keeping secret and Rex tried to expose the company by getting in contact with his senior instructor at Langley, but his instructor called the police and Rex left the others rather than join them in trying to take down PhiCorp themselves. After visiting Vera, having sex with her and convincing her to help infiltrate PhiCorp, he returned to the others and was forced to leave Washington DC with them when Friedkin's phone was traced. (TV: Dead of Night)
Exposing the camps
Fleeing to Los Angeles to steal a secure server from PhiCorp's headquarters, Rex visited his father, who was selling stolen painkillers and showed no interest in him despite his near-death experience. He came up with a strategy to get Nicolas Frumkin's biometrics to access the IT centre and led the mission from the group's temporary base, becoming angry with Esther upon realising that she had been followed after visiting her sister's home. He saved Jack and Gwen by shooting the Gentleman and gave Esther one final warning before she accessed the server and uncovered the construction of overflow camps. (TV: Escape to LA)
Vera told Torchwood about the categories of life and joined them, but Rex forbade her from investigating the module at the San Pedro Overflow Camp as an observer and had himself taken to the camp as a wounded man. With Esther's help, he was classified Category 1 and sent to the module where he used a video camera to expose what was being done with those who would otherwise be dead. He found that Vera had been put into one of the modules and, after failing to get her out as she started to burn, he recorded her incineration as evidence (TV: The Categories of Life) and disavowed any association with the CIA, identifying himself as Torchwood.
Rex was determined to make the footage he had captured public and disguised himself as a guard to get out of the camp when it came under lockdown, but he was almost immediately captured and tried to get Colin Maloney to let him go by telling him about Vera's death, unaware that Maloney was the one who killed her. Esther and Ralph Coltrane stopped Maloney from silencing Rex and he and Esther escaped, allowing them to expose the overflow camps. Despite this, they were not immediately shut down (TV: The Middle Men) and were merely "paused", an outcome which Rex was unhappy with. (TV: Immortal Sins)
Return to the CIA
Although he insisted that he had not known Vera very well, Rex refused to talk about her following her death. He and Esther learnt from the Eye-5 cache that Gwen had been blackmailed into kidnapping Jack and ensured that Andy saved Rhys, Anwen and Mary Cooper whilst they followed the two of them and forced Olivia Colasanto's bodyguards to drop their weapons. Despite this, Olivia remained certain that Jack would go with her to see Angelo Colasanto. (TV: Immortal Sins) Rex made a phone call to Vera's brother so that he would be traced by the CIA as part of his plan to expose Friedkin and clear his name.
As Rex predicted, Friedkin arrived at the Colasanto estate and he was able to use the Eye-5s to expose his connection to the Three Families, leading to Friedkin being arrested by Allen Shapiro and Rex and Esther's names being cleared. He was initially able to keep Shapiro from deporting Gwen, but Shapiro had her sent back to Wales to force Jack into examining the null field generator which allowed Angelo to die and which Rex recognised would be used just like the modules. Accordingly, he helped Jack and Esther escape with the generator's alpha panel whilst he remained with the CIA, believing that they now had a chance to put an end to the Miracle and that he was needed. (TV: End of the Road)
Rex spent two months trying to track down the Three Families, but he made little progress because of Charlotte Wills sabotaging the investigation until he deduced that Victor Podesta's family married into one of them and that he moved to Argentina under a different name. He was contacted by Esther to provide translation services for a news report which led Torchwood to discover the existence of the Blessing in both Buenos Aires and Shanghai. With Shapiro's permission, he went off the grid and met Esther in Buenos Aires (TV: The Gathering) where she transfused his blood with Jack's to keep it from being lost if the blood bags which she took with her were destroyed.
Rex got the CIA's help to locate the Blessing and he and Esther were joined by Argentinean soldiers, one of whom used a bomb to destroy the blood bags and unwittingly gave Rex and Esther the opportunity to fake their deaths in the explosion. At the site of the Blessing, they were confronted by the Cousin, who threatened to shoot Esther and eventually did so in an attempt to keep Rex and Jack from feeding their blood to the Blessing simultaneously. Gwen persuaded Rex to end the Miracle despite his concern for Esther and he kissed her goodbye before releasing his blood and throwing the Cousin to his death, after which he collapsed and was treated by paramedics. (TV: The Blood Line)
After the Miracle
Having made a recovery and returned to the US, Rex attended Esther's funeral with Jack, Gwen, Rhys and Charlotte and wanted to know if Torchwood was being reformed or not. He learnt that Noah Vickers had identified Charlotte as the Families' agent in the CIA and went to confront her, but she shot him dead and he was surprised to find that he had become immortal like Jack. (TV: The Blood Line) Jack left Earth shortly afterwards. (PROSE: Exodus Code)
Rex got a telephone call from Lucas Avery of Homeland Security and informed him of all the good things that Gwen had done after he took her, Rhys and Anwen into his custody. (AUDIO: Army of One)
By 2012, Rex had been appointed Deputy Director of the CIA and was determined to track down the Three Families. He was impressed by Darren Crowder's journalism following the Miracle and hired him as an analyst in the newly-created Office of Geo-Global Affairs, referred to behind Rex's back as "the Morgue". He stepped in to lead the mission in Peru to capture Olivares Donoso, who had connections to the Families, when Donoso escaped and Isela Castenado, whom he ordered to be captured because of her attempt to kidnap Donoso, got away with Jack's help. (PROSE: Exodus Code)
Personality
Matheson was a determined, persevering, and competently serious man who had a no-nonsense attitude, but also a deep amount of compassion, albeit peppered with a dry wit. He was capable of great kindness and love for those he held close, including romantic and sexual relationships. In this respect, he was deeply hurt by the loss of his lover, Vera Juarez. (TV: The Categories of Life) Matheson also had a deeply ingrained attitude, and would frequently say "what the hell" or "shit" when frustrated. (TV: The New World, et al.) He preferred CIA professionalism over the haphazard operations of Torchwood, and valued the principles he was taught to follow. When he extradited Torchwood to the U.S., they had a passive-aggressive relationship with one another, especially Gwen Cooper, after Matheson separated her from her child. He justified this by telling Cooper that it would be unwise to let her baby get caught up in the violence connected to the investigation of the Miracle. (TV: The Gathering)
Jack Harkness tended to agitate him with his tendency to make jokes instead of maintaining a professional work ethic. The flippant gay jokes he made were not a pet peeve, but Matheson did not like being the butt of them. To this extent, Rex thought of him as a man in his forties acting like a twenty-year-old, and nicknamed him "World War II" for his flying ace period dress. Despite the rocky start, Rex eventually reached friendly terms with Harkness and Cooper until he was at last considered one of the team. (TV: The Categories of Life)
Quite protective, Matheson kept close watch on the secret operations he undertook, and if he noticed even the slightest risk of a breach, he would quickly put an end to it. His experience, however, made him initially unfair on the rather green Esther Drummond, who made a few mistakes because she was not fully acclimated to the atmosphere of clandestine operations. (TV: Dead of Night) When she nearly instigated the demise of Torchwood by visiting her distraught sister out in the open, he gave her a final warning not to risk blowing their cover again. Matheson warmed up to Esther as she grew more comfortable with her undercover duties. (TV: Escape to LA) Although he had been hard on her at first, Rex gave her kindness and sympathy when she needed it. He encouraged her with the occasional kiss on the forehead, and reacted strongly after she was murdered by the Cousin. He was still in deep sorrow at the time of her funeral. (TV: The Blood Line)
As a trained CIA agent, Matheson was trained to kill if necessary by administering neck snaps or lethal gunshot wounds. (TV: Rendition) He would take lives in hot-blooded self-defence, with the exception of personal injustice to himself or his teammates, leading him to kill for revenge. (TV: The Blood Line) However, his survival instincts were so overwhelming under duress that he would resort to deadly force first, without thinking a culprit might have vital information to divulge. As such, he shot a trained assassin in the throat under the impression he would shoot Cooper, which left him unable to get a lead on The Three Families. (TV: Escape to LA)
Skills and abilities
Having been trained by the CIA, he was skilled with several firearms, ranging from handguns to assault rifles, (TV: The New World) and even a double barrelled shotgun. (TV: Escape to LA) He could also use a sniper rifle, maintaining his aim directly at a target's head. (TV: Immortal Sins)
Rex was also, in Esther's own words, the "best strategist of [the group]", proven when he orchestrated the plan to get Nicholas Frumkin's biometrics and knew how to gain entry in to Phicorp's headquarters. He was also very serious during the missions, viewing saying "good luck" as "kid's stuff" as well as the use of mobile phones to contact people while undercover as "dangerous". (TV: Escape to LA)
Rex was also skilled in fisticuffs, displayed when he overpowered a CIA body guard without assistance, managed to break a woman's neck despite her initially having the upper-hand (TV: Rendition) and knocked out a U.S. Ranger with a single punch to the jaw. (TV: The Middle Men) He also disarmed his father of his shotgun in seconds (TV: Escape to LA) and managed to toss the Cousin over a set of rails despite his chest wound weakening him. (TV: The Bloodline) He was also quite stealthy, sneaking up on a CIA agent and knocking them out with a blow to the back of their head. (TV: End of the Road)
During the "Miracle day" phenomenon, he couldn't die, proven when he was impaled through the chest by a metal rod yet survived long enough to be treated. (TV: The New World) This later persisted when he was stabbed through his ruptured chest with a pen but did not die from the blood loss or trauma. (TV: The Middle Men)
For the first few days after being impaled, Rex struggled to even move, but his resilience improved; managing to walk, drive and eventually run despite the damage to his chest and leg. (TV: The New World) Rex even managed to run up thirty flights of stairs despite the extreme strain it imposed on his body. (TV: Escape to LA) He didn't always maintain this pain tolerance, however, screaming in agony when stabbed. (TV: The Middle Men)
After receiving a transfusion of Jack Harkness's mortal blood and feeding it to the Blessing, Matheson resurrected in a manner similar to Harkness's immortality. However, the extent of his ability to resurrect was unknown, and it was unclear if he was a fixed point in time like Harkness. (TV: The Blood Line)
Deaths
Matheson recovered or was resurrected from the following fatal injuries:
- Impaled through the chest by a metal pole as a result of a car crash soon after the Miracle had occurred. (TV: The New World)
- Stabbed in his ruptured chest with a pen. (TV: The Middle Men)
- Drained of his blood by the Blessing. (TV: The Blood Line)
- Shot by Charlotte Wills. (TV: The Blood Line)
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