Dean Armitage

"I'm a traveler, and I can't help but... I keep bringing souvenirs back. It's such a privilege to be able to experience another person's culture, you know what I'm saying?"

- Dean

Dean Armitage is the secondary antagonist of the 2017 horror movie Get Out. He is the leader of the secretive Order of the Coagula and the living patriarch of the Armitage Family.

He was portrayed by Bradley Whitford.

Past
Dean is the husband of Missy Armitage and the father of Rose Armitage and Jeremy Armitage. He described himself as a traveler and has been to Bali.

Together with his family, Dean eventually perfected a process his father started - kidnapping black people in order to brainwash them and to implant the brains of old relatives and friends into the bodies of the far younger and fitter black people. After his parents were old and weak, Dean implanted their brains into two younger black people. To avoid suspicion, the two were publicly acting as if they were the Armitage's servants.

Meeting Chris
When the movie's protagonist Chris and his girlfriend Rose visit Dean and Armitage in their estate in the country, Chris is afraid because Rose's parents don't know that he is black. However, Rose reassures him that her parents are not biased and are not racist. Indeed, when they arrive Dean jovially welcomes the two and hugs Chris. However, he seems to be in high spirits and even Rose and Missy are a little embarrassed by Dean's behavior. While Rose is unpacking, Dean gives Chris a tour through the house, showing him some artifacts he collected during his travels. He also shows Chris a photo of his own father, who was participating in the Olympics in 1936 but was defeated by a black man. Dean claims that it is great that a black man won the race right in front of Hitler and all his "perfect Aryan race bullshit", however, he adds that his father never got over the defeat.

During the tour, Dean also introduces Chris to their cook Rosita, who is black. Chris soon realizes that all servants in the house are black. Dean realizes what Chris is thinking and in a friendly manner reveals that they hired the servants to take care of Dean's parents when they were old and sick and that Dean couldn't bear to fire them after his parents died. He also adds that he would have voted for Obama a third time if he could. In the evening, the four of them sit down together in the garden. Dean shrewdly realizes that Chris is a smoker. Chris replies that he is quitting and Dean states that Missy, who is a psychiatrist, could help him with hypnosis. He reveals that he himself smoked for fourteen years but that Missy's hypnosis helped him get off the cigarettes. Chris respectfully declines. Their dinner is interrupted when Jeremy arrives in the garden, having returned for the annual Armitage family meeting. Later that night, Rose apologizes for her family's behavior because despite their insistence that they have no problems with Rose's boyfriend being black, Chris' skin color nonetheless becomes part of the conversation all the time.

During the course of his presence at the Armitage house, Chris becomes extremely suspicious about the Armitage's. This gets even worse when the rest of the family and close friends turn up for the annual party. Eventually, Chris takes a photo of the only other black man present, but forgets that the flash is still on. The man seems to snap out of something and suddenly attacks Chris while also screaming at him to "Get Out!". The man is held back by several guests and is brought to Missy, who presumably hypnotizes him. After the chaos, Missy tells Dean to get the party "back on track". Dean rounds up all the relatives and friends, claiming that they will play bingo. However, in fact a sinister scene happens in which Dean uses sign language to sell Chris to his fellows, offering them youth by transplanting the brain of one of them into Chris' body.

Truth Revealed
Eventually, Chris is too freaked out by the weird things happening and he convinces Rose to leave in the middle of the night. However, they are confronted by Missy and Jeremy. Rose tells them that Chris' dog has died and that they need to be with the vet the next morning. Eventually, Dean joins the two as well. He sinisterly asks Chris what he believes to be his purpose in life. He does not wait for an answer but states that fire is just a reflection of humanity's mortality. He claims that even the sun will die some day but that humans are divine, gods trapped in cocoons. Realizing that the entire family Armitage, including Rose, is working against him, Chris attempts to flee but Missy once more uses her teacup to hypnotize him, causing him to fall to the ground.

Jeremy and Dean then carry Chris' body into the basement where they tie him to a chair. They start a video tape in which Roman Armitage, Dean's father, explains the brain transplant procedure developed by his family. Chris realizes that Rose deliberately lured him into the home of her family so that Dean and Missy can capture him and to "sell" his body to one of their elder friends whose mind will be transplanted into Chris. Through the TV and the microphones in the room, Chris is also able to have a conversation with the man who will soon inherit the body and Chris recognizes him as an art dealer he briefly met at the Armitage party. Chris is informed that a part of his consciousness will remain in the body and he will be able to see and hear. However, he will only ever be a passenger in his own body. Chris realizes that all the black people he saw at the Armitage estate are actually white people who have taken over the bodies of the black people.

When the time for the transplant has come, Missy uses the TV to hypnotize Chris so he cannot resist. Meanwhile, the art dealer is brought to a makeshift operation room in the Armitage basement where Dean is mentally preparing himself for the operation. Eventually, he is ready for the deed and he starts cutting open the head of the dealer. Meanwhile, Jeremy is supposed to deliver Chris to him. Dean waits for Jeremy to arrive, unaware that Jeremy has already been eliminated by Chris. When he heads out into the hallway to find out where Jeremy is, Chris suddenly ambushes him and rams the antlers of a hunting trophy that was hanging in the hallway through Dean's throat. Suffocating on his own blood, Dean stumbles backwards, knocking over a candle. Dean perishes of his wounds while the candle results in a fire which burns the art dealer to death.