Administrator (Team Fortress 2)

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Evil-doer
Full Name	Unknown
Alias	Helen Elizabeth Emily (false identities) The Admin The Administrator The TF Announcer The Announcer
Origin	Team Fortress 2
Occupation	CEO of TF Industries Handler and host of the affairs between RED and BLU
Powers / Skills	Intelligence Intimidation Manipulation Weapon ownership of Heavy's and Pyro's weapons Immortality(via Australium, formerly)
Goals	Artificially extend the battle between RED and BLU forever. Obtain the entire world's supply of Australium (all failed). Ruin Zepheniah Mann's legacy and make him watch. (succeeded)
Crimes	Abuse of power Mass murder by proxy War crimes Torture Slavery Coercion Grand theft
Type of Villain	Immortal Mastermind

“	It saddens me that despite my best efforts to instruct and better you, some of you insist on finding new ways to fail.	„
	~ The Administrator.

“	"Elizabeth": I lied. Zepheniah Mann: About what? "Elizabeth": About everything. All of this - The land, the Americas, all of it. Your sons are going to fight forever, Zepheniah. There will be no end to this. You will never have a worthy heir. I guarantee it. I will be right here. Watching them fight until they die.	„
	~ The Administrator revealing her true intentions to a moribund Zepheniah Mann.

The Administrator, also known by her aliases Helen and Elizabeth, is the overarching protagonist of the Team Fortress franchise.

She is the CEO of both RED and BLU, as well as the TF Industries. She is also the former employer of Miss Pauling and the archenemy of Zepheniah Mann.

She is the source of the mysterious, disembodied voice that issues commands and announces vital events during matches. An aged and thoroughly evil mastermind of a woman, the Administrator possesses both a piercing gaze and the sort of voice that commands total and unwavering obedience, or something else. Her general demeanor tends towards either slight anger or various stages of bitter disappointment.

She is voiced by Ellen McLain, who also played GLaDOS from Portal franchise and The Witch in the Left 4 Dead game series. She was also voiced by MªRosa Guillén in the Spanish version.

Biography

The Announcer wields considerable influence and power. Once thought to be the owner of both the RED and BLU Corporations, it has since revealed that Blutarch and Redmond Mann are both still alive by Radigan Conagher's Life extender machines.

Despite their continued existence, neither of Mann brothers seem capable of handling the affairs of their respective companies; so for all intents and purposes the Announcer can be said to control them. By extension, this grants her control over every major government on the planet.

She tends to keep her operations top secret, manipulating events from behind the scenes. Any development that may chance unwanted attention is swiftly terminated with extreme prejudice.

In the penultimate main comic produced, The Naked and The Dead, the end shows that the engineer, Dell Conagher, was maintaining the Administrator's Life extender all along. When informing her that there is no more Australium and gives her the last dose, she is first in denial. She then decides to inject the entire vial of liquified Australium into herself, causing her to revert to a middle age woman. This even shocks engineer, as he says that she injected "6 months" worth of Australium and that she only has approximately one hour left to live. The Administrator remarks that it's "More than enough time. Let's end this. Once and for all," as she leaves the room, ending the comic in a cliffhanger, implying that she is about to confront something/someone.

In "The Days Have Worn Away," the seventh and final main comic in the series, we get a look into the backstory behind the Administrator and her relationship with the Mann family. She originally met Zepheniah Mann when she showed up to his mansion to take the role as "Governess" of the house. Her job was to help raise and teach Zephenias children, Blutarch and Redmond, into "champions" who would eventually give into their hereditary instincts and try to kill each other with the victor becoming the worthy heir to the Mann family fortune. This is done to uphold the family tradition where siblings born into the Mann family eventually fight to the death over the family fortune.

Due to some personal vendetta to which the details behind it go unexplained (though the comics' cover imply that Zepheniah may have killed her parents), the Administrator purposely made it so that the brothers would fight forever while their father watched, with there never being one true winner in the end. Twenty seven years after Blutarch and Redmond were born, the Administrator finally admitted her intentions to keep up this eternal squabble to Zepheniah right before he died in New Mexico.

After inheriting Zepheniah's mansion and his gold (believed by the Administrator to be "Fool's Gold"), the Administrator grew depressed as her main goal in life has been accomplished. Right as she is about to commit suicide via noose, she is interrupted by Gray Mann. She goes through with the act anyway but is revived by Gray using an Australium device. Gray explains that the false gold the Administrator inherited was actually Australium and that it had the power to revive someone even if they are dead, proven by the demonstration Gray performed on the Administrator herself. Gray simply asks that the Administrator hand over the gold she inherited and then afterwards she would be free to hang herself in peace. She agrees, but says it will take a few days for her to acquire it all. Once Gray leaves, it's shown that all of the Australium was already stored within the house and that the Administrator had a new plan for it now that she knew what it really was.

Cut to present time, it is finally revealed that the person the Administrator went to confront in comic #6 is none other than Zepheniah Mann. The Administrator dug him out of his grave and revived him using an Australium machine so he can watch the never ending turf war between the RED and BLU mercenaries with no true winner ever emerging. The Administrator confesses that she no longer recalls what Zepheniah did to her to make her go through this one hundred year plan, and after Ms. Pauling lies to her about not having found any more Australium the Administrator tells Zepheniah that she doesn't regret a thing, and that all the time spent on this vendetta was worth it. Due to how long both Zepheniah and the Administrators life have been extended, they both finally run out of Australium and turn to dust, unable to be revived ever again.

Personality

The Administrator in game is of a strict and bitter through her voice lines. Even when the team captures an objective, she shows mild amounts of anger when announcing so. However, she sounds excited, if not euphoric when remarking about an explosive payload almost reaching its destination, or if the enemy team is completely massacred. She also won't stand for friendships developing across the RED/BLU teams, as shown in the WAR! Update comic when she planned to have the friendships of RED Demoman and BLU Soldier broken apart and mentioned from One of Miss Pauling's audio logs that she once invited her secretary where she planned an attempt on assassinate her, until she escaped.

In the comics, it's revealed that she discovered the Australium Life Extending machines and uses them to fulfill a mysterious debt she needs to pay. Dependent upon Australium to preserve her life, she has also shown desperation on occasion, especially when discussing it. Even shortly going into denial when being given the last amount. Though in her dying moments, she seemingly reconciles, and takes the last dose to finally confront her debtor, presumably.

Quotes

“	AUSTRALIUM!	„
	~ One of her quotes in Special Delivery mode

“	OVERTIME!	„
	~ Her iconic shout

“	YOU KILLED THEM ALL!	„
	~ The Administrator if everyone on the opposing team is dead at once.

“	It's been a hundred years, hasn't it? Making you watch your sons fail. Again and again. All that... wasted time... It was worth it.	„
	~ The Administrator's spiteful last words to Zepheniah before she turns to dust.

Gallery

Images

Young Administrator

The Administrator incognito.

The Administrator as a little girl.

Administrator's old concept design

Videos

All The Announcer sound clips - TF2

Trivia

• Her appearance and personality are a reference to Cruella De Vil from Disney's 101 Dalmations.
• Ellen McLain is married to John Lowrie, the voice actor of The Sniper.
• She has her own card in Poker Night at the Inventory.
• As seen in the comics, she is the actual main antagonist of the series itself (outranking Gray Mann and the TFC Mercs).
• As mentioned by Gray Mann, she already has all of the remaining Australium on Earth. This is proven false in the final comic however, as Soldier apparently lives in a cave completely coated in the element.
• The Administrator's appearance started off as a fan rendition by an artist by the name of Makani. The art of the Announcer spread around the internet and proved rather popular, with Makani eventually being invited to Valve where they purchased the design. In December 9, 2009, the Administrator's look was finally unveiled using his design, albeit some modifications such as her clothing.
• Even though she is fine with murder and deception, she really hates cheating.
• In Ring of Fired, it is revealed that she stole all of Saxton Hale's Australium just in case Gray Mann won.
• On Nov 8, 2008, she used to have a uniform that was part red and part blue. However, her design would later change to being a purple uniform that we see today.
• Although it is unclear what her main motive is for, Gray Mann mentions that her motive is much worse than he could ever think of.
• In the comic "A Cold Day In Hell", Charles Darling has mentioned that above mystery that the Administrator has been amassing the largest collection of Australium outside of Australia itself for years in secret.
• In the comic "Blood in the Water", it seemed to look like she wants to power yet another Australium life-extender machine, but it's made clear that it won't save her life for more than a few years, enough to settle some "final debts".
• She has admitted that she likes ignoring the cries of a litter of famished puppies.
• She tends to control people through revenge and fear. Inciting conflict amongst former friends could only distract the team from thinking about who was calling the shots for so long. The Administrator’s threats of the people and the things most precious to the team are enough to let the Team know what's in store if they ever make a move against her.
  • According to The Showdown, she can also control the Heavy and the Pyro through weapon ownership.
• The comic The Naked and the Dead shows that when she temporarily dies during the period of her life extender's inactivity, the place she goes to is much like the control room she commands the world from, except the multiple screens that all show her face instead of monitoring all the places she usually watches.
• She also has eyes and ears in every major government, for as of yet-unknown reasons.
• Despite being old and skinny in "The Naked and the Dead", she's strong enough to punch a thick window so hard that it cracks.
• She has only one hour off work every year.
• When she is forced to accept that there is no more Australium left in the world, she uses the very last vial of it to transform into a much younger-looking woman with glowing yellow eyes.
  • Even before she does this, her elderly appearance is very deceiving. When she briefly loses her temper and punches a window, she manages to actually crack it with a single strike, despite looking so old and feeble that she could crumble into dust at any moment, and is dropping in and out of death.
• If you get an A+ credit rating in Mann Vs. Machine, she'll give the winning team a bonus.
  • In "Blood in the Water", she admits to Miss Pauling that she is proud of her and apologizes for snapping at her moments beforehand.
  • In the same comic, she gives a veiled "thank you" to the Engineer and his family for giving her more time than she believes she deserves.
• She does show to have briefly lost her composure when she realized that all of the Australium is gone, yelling at the Engineer to shut up before punching a window and using the remaining Australium to reverse her age with Australium in order to "settle some debts".
• She did briefly plan to blow up her base when Heavy shows up rather violently, only to stop when it turns out he came to ask for more weapons.
• The Administrator is so old that her nerves have decayed to the point that she, by her own admission, doesn't feel anything anymore. It's implicitly demonstrated by getting her old Life Extender - which was sunken bone-deep into her arm - torn out and replaced without any anesthetic.
• While her motive for the elaborate revenge scheme against Zephaniah Mann was never explicitly revealed, the cover art for "The Days Have Worn Away" depicts what appears to be the Administrator as a child sobbing over the corpses of a man and woman, presumably her parents. This implies that the cause of her grudge is that Zephaniah Mann had her parents killed (directly or otherwise) for reasons unknown.
  • Interestingly, the comic depicts three variants of the cover- first, with her (presumed) parents having been bludgeoned at the foot of a staircase, then with them having been drowned in a frozen lake, and finally having been poisoned. In each variant, the child Administrator is unchanged, but her parents change outfits and poses, even apparent occupations- the first two variants depict wealthy parents, while the third depicts them as working-class engineers with blueprints strewn around them.
    • This could be a nod to her later admission of being unable to remember the cause of her grudge, her memories clouded so much that she can't even remember what her parents were like.