| “ | There is no Tuttle, Chuck. I am Alexei Volkoff! I believe you were looking for me! | „ |
| ~ Volkoff revealing his true identity. |
Alexei Volkoff is the overarching antagonist of the TV series Chuck. He is the founder of Volkoff Industries, an international arms concern which is based in Moscow, Russia.
He was played by Timothy Dalton, who also played Rassilon in Doctor Who and Simon Skinner in Hot Fuzz.
Personality[]
Volkoff spoke Russian, German, and English, and was indicted in New York for his involvement in arms trafficking, and was wanted for "Conspiracy to kill United States nationals, to murder, to destroy buildings and property of the United States, and to destroy the national defense utilities of the United States". Alexei Volkoff, however, was only ever supposed to be the cover identity for MI6 scientist, Hartley Winterbottom. When Winterbottom went into the field during an undercover mission when was working with Stephen Bartowski on the Intersect project, he took the cover of an international arms dealer, Alexei Volkoff. His cover was created by Stephen who uploaded an Intersect based identity into Winterbottom's brain in an attempt to enhance his cover, since Hartley was not a field agent.
Biography[]
Past[]
Hartley Winterbottom was born in Somerset, England. He worked as a scientist with the CIA representative, Stephan J. Bartowski in creating an Intersect that could upload a new identity. Hartley convinced Stephen to let him use the Intersect for a mission. The version of Intersect uploaded in Hartley was only meant to temporarily suppress his real identity and replace it with his false identity, and it was supposed to last for only a set time. The effort, code named "Agent X" had Hartley implanted with the first Intersect program so that he could work undercover among a group of Bulgarian arms dealers. This early Intersect malfunctioned, however, and his cover identity of Volkoff took over his mind entirely, so that he actually became Alexei Volkoff. Volkoff went on to become the world's most dangerous man.Stephan's wife, Mary , a CIA agent spends years undercover in Volkoff Industries trying to bring it down and correct past mistakes. Volkoff becomes romantically obsessed with her.
Eventually, he had a daughter he named Vivian, who lived under the surname "MacArthur" in a manor in England which he paid for.
Chuck[]
Alexei Volkoff first appears in the episode "Chuck Versus the First Fight" where he poses as an ineffectual MI6 agent, Gregory Tuttle, who Mary Bartowski claims as her handler. Her son, Chuck, meets with him to clear his mother's name. Chuck and "Tuttle" are drugged by Volkoff agent, Dasha, and wake up on a plane. After Chuck defeats Dash in a fight, they manage to escape by parachute and hitch a ride on a truck heading back to Los Angeles. They reunite with Mary and Sarah Walker at a bank where pertinent information is supposedly stored. "Tuttle" appears to take a bullet for Chuck before giving him a floppy disk that will supposedly clear Mary's name. When they repair to Orion's base, however, the disk proves blank and Tuttle reveals himself as Alexei Volkoff. The entire mission was a ruse to find and destroy Orion's base. He ties up Chuck and Sarah and leaves them to die, unaware that Mary secretly left Sarah the means to escape.
In "Chuck Versus the Leftovers", Volkoff discovers that Chuck survived the explosion, and sends tasks Mary with dispatching his best assassins to kill him. When Mary then kills the assassins and winds up in CIA custody, he takes over the Buy More while Mary, Chuck, and Sarah are trapped in Castle below, even threatening to drop a thermite bomb down there that will kill them all unless they hand Mary over him. Chuck and Sarah do so, but Volkoff reneges and decides to kill Chuck anyway, forcing Mary to confess that Chuck is her son.
Volkoff, in a violent mood swing, seems delighted and invites himself over to Ellie and Devon's house for Thanksgiving to meet the family. As they are about to leave, Volkoff tells them he knows they alerted the authorities, and once again tries to kill Chuck, but Mary threatens him, saying she would never stay with a man who hurt her family. Mary then leaves with Volkoff. In order to get Chuck's mom back from Volkoff, Sarah infiltrates Volkoff Industries and convinces Volkoff that she betrayed the CIA in order to finance an escape for her and Chuck. Volkoff assigns Sarah to find a prisoner named Yuri Gobrienko to get from him a Hydra network device. After Sarah breaks Yuri out of prison, with help from her teammates, and brings him to Volkoff Industries, Volkoff summarily kills him, and takes the Hydra device from his artificial eye. He then lures Casey into an abandoned building and assigns Sarah to kill him. Casey and Sarah stage a fake fight to fool Volkoff and Sarah pushes Casey out of the window at his suggestion, the resultant injuries, however, send him into a coma.
Chuck works on Volkoff's paranoia, determined to rescue his mother and Sarah from him. Volkoff walks into his ofice to find his computer spelling out "Hello, Alexei. This is Orion" and is convinced that Stephan is still alive. When he eventually goes to Stephan's old base to capture him, he finds that Chuck planted that message to lure him in. Chuck ties up Alexei and tricks him into using the words necessary to record his voice key password to access Hydra. Volkoff believes he has Chuck surrounded, but Chuck's plan included General Beckman and military elements for arresting Volkoff.
Two months following Volkoff's arrest, General Beckman informs the team that Volkoff has left a successor to his company, Vivian MacArthur. The team attend a masquerade party in Vivian's manor where she reveals herself to be Volkoff's daughter, and knew nothing of her father's life as an international arms dealer. Volkoff's attorney later reads her a letter from her father, offering her his company, but Vivian declines. She is eventually coaxed into changing her mind, after she is told Chuck is the one who arrested her father. She becomes the new head of Volkoff Industries.
Vivian gives Chuck and Sarah a component of a doomsday device called the Norseman as a false act of kindness. General Beckman temporarily allows Volkoff out of prison to find the other two components. This is revealed to be a trap set up by Vivian who wanted nothing to do with Chuck or her father whom she thinks betrayed her, she only needed Volkoff's DNA sample to access the elements to steal the Norseman for herself. Vivian betrays her father and leaves him and the team in the base set with explosives. Volkoff shuts off the bombs with a portable EMP device, and is sent back to prison.
When Sarah is poisoned by Vivian on the eve of her wedding to Chuck, Chuck heads out to break Volkoff from prison since he is the only one who knows the antidote. Volkoff is gone when Chuck and Casey arrive, however, being transferred to a different prison. En route, rogue CIA agent, Clyde Decker places Intersect suppression glasses on Volkoff, removing the faulty Intersect and restoring his old identity as Hartley Winterbottom.
After Chuck finally reaches the truck and brings Hartley back to Burbank, the team tell Hartley of the man he had become over the past thirty years. Hartley creates an antidote, Irridium-5 to slow down the poison, but needs the Irridium-6 to heal it completely. Chuck and Hartley go to Volkoff Industries to get the Irridium-6 from Vivian, but Hartley cannot comprehend his life as Volkoff and runs, leaving Chuck to face Vivian alone. When he finally decides to follow, he gains access very easily since his former employees are still afraid of him. He apologizes to Vivian for Volkoff. He begs Vivian not to lose herself like he did, and convinces her to give them the Irridium-6 to save Sarah, and in return Chuck gives Hartley and Vivian new identities to start a new life.
While Chuck and Sarah are heading for their honeymoon, Hartley calls Chuck, and tells him to look under the seat of the limo where he finds the documents transferring all the assets of Volkoff Industries, $877 million dollars as a wedding present, for the son of his best friend and his wife.
Trivia[]
- In "Chuck Versus the First Fight", he takes on the alias of Gregory Tuttle. This profile is very similar to his real identity which was suppressed by his intersect identity at the time. He wore a similar outfit, sported a similar personality while in the staged airplane fight, and claimed to work at MI6, where Hartley worked.
- Alexei Volkoff is "The Heavy" for Chuck since his actions led to the disappearance of Chuck's parents and all successive spy related difficulties experienced by Chuck Bartowski.