Jonathan Krantz

"Your father was a brilliant man.... but he never could have defeated the Company."

-Krantz to Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows

Jonathan Krantz is the primary antagonist of the critically acclaimed television series Prison Break, and is portrayed by ''Leon Russom. Although he does not appear in the first season, Krantz makes his onscreen debut in the season 2 episode The Killing Box'', and appears in every subsequent season, gradually evolving into the series principal antagonist and the archenemy of protagonists Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows.

Referred to as the general by his minions, Krantz serves as the head operative of The Company, a secret evil corporation that consists of corrupt and rogue government officials that use their political power to rise through the ranks of the business and criminal underworlds for the purpose of world domination and creating a new world order. Krantz has servants and operatives within every major agency, business, and organization in the world, including the CIA, the FBI, LAPD, and the military. Many prominent worldwide scientists, politicians, and law enforcement agents are secretly Company operatives and work for Krantz. Krantz proves to be an incredibly ruthless leader, ordering his operatives to murder anyone seen as a risk to keeping The Company's existence secret from the public.

Early in his life, Krantz became close friends with a fellow Company operative named Aldo Burrows. However, Burrows began to lose faith in the company upon realizing the effects his work had on innocent civilians murdered in The Company's quest for power. Burrows later went rogue, swearing that he would expose Krantz and his fellow operatives for their crimes and bring down The Company. In retaliation, The Company faked the death of Terrence Steadman, the brother of Vice President Caroline Reynolds (who is also a Company operative), framing Burrows' eldest son, Lincoln Burrows, in the process. Lincoln Burrows is sent to prison with a death sentence via the electric chair on trumped up charges based on false evidence fabricated by The Company, in an elaborate attempt to lure his father out of hiding. This operation occurred during the first season of Prison Break, and although Krantz was not seen on-screen at the time, it was later revealed that he was the true mastermind behind the company framing Lincoln in the first season and murdering Aldo in the second season.

In addition to being grumpy and cruel, General Krantz is implied to have had a sexually active life at one point, as he fathered two illegitimate children. The first one was a daughter named Lisa Tabak that he conceived with an unnamed woman, the second was a little girl named Emily whose biological mother was Gretchen Morgan. Krantz would raise his first daughter, Lisa, as a Company operative, but he never revealed to her the true effects The Company had on innocent civilians and he true intentions really were.

Season 2
After Lincoln Burrows and 7 other convicts escape from prison, (one of them being his brother Michael, who knew Lincoln was innocent and planned to break him out and bring down the company to avenge Aldo's death) Krantz immediately uses his authority to order company operatives who work in law enforcement to kill any one of the escaped convicts in fear of their knowledge of the company. He does so by blackmailing a reluctant Alexander Mahone into killing all 8 of the escapees, using the company's knowledge that Mahone had secretly killed a serial killer he had been pursuing a few years earlier as leverage to force the FBI agent and former company operative to agree to his terms. Krantz never realized how unnecessary this was, due to the fact that Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scofield were the only ones who were actually aware of the company's existence due to information that had been provided and confirmed by their father. Under Krantz's orders, several of the escaped convicts are captured and killed, including John Abruzzi, but Scofield and Burrows manage to successfully elude recapture. Throughout the season, Krantz is seen sitting in the office of Bill Kim, one of his operatives as Kim makes the calls and arrangements needed to get the escapees killed. At the end of the season after Kim's death, Krantz is seen working in restricted facility on Long Island, where he is approached by a man in a white lab coat who informs him that Michael Scofield has been apprehended and thrown in prison down in Panama, much to his satisfaction.

Season 3
After Michael Scofield is thrown in Sona, a prison in Panama notorious for it's violent riots and prisoner misconduct, Krantz arranges the kidnapping of Scofield's girlfriend Sara Tancredi and his nephew, Lincoln Burrows Jr. (a.k.a LJ) Under orders from Krantz, Gretchen Morgan confronts Lincoln Burrows in a restaurant and informs him that he and Michael must break out an inmate from Sona named James Whistler and rendezvous with Gretchen in a specified location, where the brothers will exchange Whistler for LJ and Sara. They have to agree to participate in the company's plot or else Sara and LJ will be killed if they fail to break Whistler out. When Krantz becomes dissatisfied with the progress of the operation, he flies down to Panama himself and threatens Gretchen unless she revises the plot. In an attempt to break the deal with Scofield, Krantz orders Gretchen make an attempt to evacuate Whistler from Sona by helicopter, but Scofield puts the pieces of the puzzle together and foils the attempt. At the end of the season, the original escape attempt works and Scofield is successfully able to escape with Whistler and Mahone, who much to Krantz's dissatisfaction, has changed alliances and teamed up with the brothers. The exchange goes as planned and Scofield and Burrows are reunited with LJ. However, Krantz and his cronies are still at large, secretly and elaborately planning the next stage of their plan for world domination.

Season 4
Note: Krantz's role as the series antagonist is most prominent during the 4th and final season of the show.

Unbeknownst to Krantz, Gretchen and Whistler had been planning the escape attempt so that the pair could steal Scylla, a hard drive owned by the company that contained lists of operatives, operations, and information and plans about the company's demands, so they could sell it a high bidder for profit. When Krantz learns of this, he hires an assassin named Wyatt to kill Whistler and kidnap Gretchen.

When Gretchen escapes company custody, Scofield, Burrows, and their friends also learn of Scylla from Homeland Security agent Don Self, who offers them full exoneration under the law if they are able to retrieve Scylla. The group agrees to Self's terms and they form an A-Team to expose and destroy the company once and for all. They are successful in making digital copies of cards that serve as keys to the facility in which Scylla is stored. When Krantz sends Wyatt to kill the group, they capture the assassin and Mahone kills Wyatt in revenge for the murder of his son, Cameron, which had been also ordered by Krantz. When Krantz receives a fake automated message that Self had made that falsely informs him of that the Scylla team had been killed, he assumes that Scofield and his crew are all dead, and he cancels the arrangement to transport Scylla to a more secure facility. So when the group breaks into the company headquarters in Los Angeles, Krantz is taken aback as the he is held hostage in his own office. Krantz desperately attempts to reason and negotiate with members of the group by offering them excessive bribes that the company can provide. (Such as prepaid vacations, college tuition for children of members of the group, etc.) But the group members all refuse, and Scofield reminds him of all the people who have been killed at the hands of the company, telling Krantz that what they all want is see the company burnt to the ground and Krantz in prison. Just when Krantz is about to call his security guards into the office to kill the group, he receives a call from his daughter Lisa Tabak, who is being held hostage by Sara Tancredi and will be killed if he does not the group go. Angry but not in the position to make more demands or extraneous offers, Krantz is forced to comply and reluctantly orders his security guards to release Scofield and the group from the building.

Immediately after losing Scylla, Krantz immediately starts making plans with his colleagues to recover it, unaware of the fact that the brothers have been betrayed by Don Self and are no longer in position of Scylla. Krantz's operatives and Michael and Lincoln cross paths once again when both forces try to recover Scylla in the same place. Self and Gretchen are able to escape, but Scofield is kidnapped and brought back to company headquarters, where Krantz learns that Scofield is dying of a brain tumor. Hatching a plan, Krantz gives Burrows a deal: If Burrows agrees to team up with the company to recover Scylla, Scofield will receive advanced medical treatment for his condition. When Burrows brings Scylla back to Krantz, he will allow the brothers to walk free. Burrows agrees, and Krantz sends him to Miami, where he teams up with Self, Gretchen, Mahone, and Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell

The group learns that Scylla has ended up in the hands of Christina Scofield, the late Aldo Burrows' ex-wife and mother of Scofield and Burrows. T-Bag calls the Krantz and provides him with this information, and Krantz immediately flies to Miami in his private jet. T-Bag is promised a high position in the company, while Krantz sends the rest of the group to recover Scylla from Christina.

Unfortunately, Christina has a secret plan of her own, which involves making deal to sell Scylla to a diplomat from India, and then assassinating the diplomat and framing the Chinese, therefore make a huge profit and re-igniting border tensions between China and India. Burrows is framed for the diplomat's murder and Christina escapes with Scylla. Krantz realizes that Christina is aiming for success by bringing countries on the verge of war and watching the world destroy each other with advanced weapon technology that she has secretly and anonymously provided, making a profit in the process and watching it all happen from a safe distance. He comments that him and Christina never really got along, revealing that she held a grudge against him for not allowing her to be a Scylla cardholder.

Scofield, who has escaped from company custody and traveled to Miami with Sara to find Burrows, comes once again face to face with the Krantz, who kidnaps Sara and forces him to get Scylla back. Scofield, along with Burrows and Mahone, is able to find Christina and steal Scylla back. With Krantz holding Sara prisoner in an apartment with T-Bag guarding her, Michael is able to overpower T-Bag and rescue Sara. The group handcuffs Krantz to the couch in the apartment and leaves to debate what to do with Scylla. They are contacted by Kellerman, who has turned against the company and become a U.N representative. Kellerman instructs Scofield and the group to give him Scylla, and they will all be exonerated. The group agrees to do so, and a short time later, police arrive the apartment and catch Krantz just as he is trying to escape. He immediately surrenders to the police, only requesting that the authorities address him as "General." Krantz is subsequently taken into custody. The company is destroyed at last.

The Final Break
General Jonathan Krantz makes his final appearance as the series antagonist in the TV movie The Final Break, in which he tries to hatch a plot of revenge against Scofield and Burrows from prison.

Set a few weeks after the series finale, the film reveals that Krantz has been found guilty of his crimes and is in prison on death row. Ironically, he has been sentenced to meet the same fate which he incriminated an innocent man for. When Sara Tancredi is sent to prison too, he decides to have one of his operatives in the women's prison kill Sara by slipping rat poison into her food in the prison cafeteria. When the attempt fails, Krantz uses his lawyer to hire an assassin to carry out the plot, this plot is also foiled. Even T-Bag, who initially attempts to form an alliance with Krantz inside prison, ultimately betrays him for a higher pay, resulting in Krantz angrily telling T-bag to go to hell.

In the end, Krantz's last operation fails once Michael Scofield and his team engineer another daring plot to break Sara out of prison, leaving Krantz a bitter, angry man spending the last few years of his life incarcerated in a prison in Florida as a death row inmate. As he is strapped up in the electric chair on the day of his execution, a priest leans over to him and whispers, "Are you ready, my son?" To which Krantz utters his last words in Latin, replying "Semper paratus" (Always ready) moments before the switch is thrown and he is executed.

Personality and traits
"I didn't pay you to be my advisor. You're my operative. Get it done. Because if you don't, I'll make what happened to you in Mosul, feel like a massage."

- General Krantz, threatening Gretchen Morgan when he has become dissatisfied with her progress in breaking Whistler out of Sona

Krantz is probably the most evil character in the series, along with T-Bag and Christina Scofield, who both have also worked for the company at one point t or another. He serves as a stereotypical business owner, wanting only what is best for him and his company. Despite his close friendship with some of his operatives, he cares little for their safety and does not care if they are killed, provided that the company stays safe. After Scylla is stolen by Michael Scofield and his A-Team, Krantz becomes angry, frustrated and paranoid about the imminent danger, and he deals with this stress by shooting and killing Howard Scuderi, one of his closest friends and colleagues when Scuderi asks him a simple question.

"The allies spent over two years planning the invasion of Normandy. But on D-day it came to a handful of men on a strip of beach, to decide the fate of the world. What I'm getting at, is that a plan is only as good as the moving parts operating it."

Krantz expressing his frustration to one of his operatives after a failed mission.

The General is highly intelligent and should not be underestimated. He is incredibly skilled at devising elaborate, complicated missions using legal loopholes to throw the police off the trail and make sure that the existence of The Company remains a secret. When the safety of the company is at risk, Krantz will not hesitate to do whatever he needs to do, no matter what happens or how many people are killed as a result. When looking for Michael Scofield and his group, Krantz and Wyatt are contacted by Roland Glenn, a mole within the Scylla Team who will turn in the other members for 1 million dollars. Krantz instructs Wyatt to "Bait the hook. See if he bites." As a result, Wyatt shoots and kills Roland without any intention of paying him the money he promised. Krantz remains remorseless and unaffected by ordering Roland's death.