- For other uses of "Legion", see Legion.
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| “ | No. You can't understand. Because you're reading the last chapter of something, without having read the first chapters. You're a little guy, Bode. Kids always think they're coming into a story at the beginning, when usually they're coming in at the end. | „ |
| ~ Dodge |
Dodge, also known as the Lady in the Well, the Legion, and Zack Wells, is the leader of the Children of Leng and the main antagonist of the Locke & Key graphic novels.
Biography[]
Dwelling with entities[]
A demon from the spawn known as the Children of Leng, Legion, as she referred to herself, was born in a hellish dimension accessible from Earth only through what would have become, after 1775, the Black Door, a dimensional opening located beneath the town of Lovecraft, Massachusetts. In her home dimension, Legion was one of several dozens of children of a she-devil, that devoured half of her clutch, only to be later devoured by her spouse in turn. While many of her siblings perished before growing up, Legion got of age. Unwilling to watch more of her kin die, in a purely feral act, she devoured Leng, establishing control over what remained of her family.
Experiences on Earth[]
Departing from the Black Door[]
She lived in this hellish dimension for an unspecified time (it is unclear even if times existed, in this particular kind of Multiversal plane), until in 1988 someone opened the Black Door in Lovecraft: drawn to Earth like a moth to the flame, Legion went to the portal, and from the other side a young man did the same. The two met at the door, and Legion attached himself to the soul of Lucas Caravaggio, absorbing all his memories, controlling his body, becoming a permanent symbiosis that now forcibly shared the boy’s life, appearance and identity.
At first, Legion managed to disguise herself as Lucas, convincing the boy’s friends that he was always the same; that same night, as he came to Keyhouse to threaten and kill Rendell Locke, he was exposed by the other Tamers of the Tempest, and restrained. Legion, who had by then adopted the moniker of her host, Dodge, mocked them, as it was impossible to detach a demon from a human soul, but that wasn’t their intention: Rendell, instead, used the Head Key to remove all of Lucas’ memories, leaving the demon without a clue on what she really was, on the magic keys and on the Black Door she had come from. She lived this way for a while, until at school a girl mentioned she had been with Ellie Whedon, one of the Tamers, for all the year: the demon realized something was amiss, and she followed Ellie to the Wellhouse, where her memories had been kept and stored. She successfully manipulated Ellie in getting rid of the echo of Rendell’s mother, who guarded the memories, then she knocked the girl out and put all her memories back in her head, regaining full conscience of who she was and of what she had to do: she had to open the Black Door again and allow as many of her brothers and sisters as she could to access this new, wonderful world ripen for the righteousness of conquest.
Dodge knew that the other Tamers would have soon come to face her, and that all of them wielded a different magic key to defend themselves: taking countermeasures, she used the Gender Key to assume her true colors as a woman, so when the shy Mark Cho came to her wielding the Shadow Key he found a beautiful, naked brunette waiting for him. Dodge used Cho’s distraction to kill him, and left for the Black Door, dragging along Duncan Locke, Rendell’s little brother, to make him the first host for the newcomers. She did not, however, do so prior to devising a failsafe: she removed part of her personality with the Head Key and put it, along with the Echo Key, in a jar, that a fellow shadow hid in Ellie’s house. Down in the Drowning Cave, Dodge faced the Tamers of the Tempest, demanding the Omega Key to open the Black Door, but they inevitably resisted: during the fight, she killed Kim Topher with the other shadows, and then used the Head Key to remove all of Erin Voss' memories and personality, reducing her to a drooling human vegetable.
At the end, however, Ellie surprised her reaching her through the secret ladder, she used the Owl Key to take the Shadow Key away from her, and let Rendell use the Hercules Key to make part of the cave collapse over Dodge, killing her. Her failsafe, however, worked perfectly: it broke out of the jar, and entered Ellie’s mind, controlling her from within and luring her to the Wellhouse, where she summoned Dodge’s echo, her spirit back from the dead.
The Wellhouse[]
Trying to convince Ellie to find the Everywhere Key to allow her to leave the Wellhouse, that was otherwise her inescapable prison, Dodge killed her loathed mother, Candice, avenging her for decades of abuses, and tried to talk her into helping her, but she escaped, ashamed of what she had done. Dodge spent years inside the well, and during this time she thought again about her goal: if she brought all her siblings to Earth, this new world would have become like the other one, a hellish wasteland in which she would have had to fight constantly for predominance over the others; if she only brought a few of the ones she got along with and trusted, on the other hand, she could form a family to control as the head, and she could use the Head Key on humans to make them slaves; she would also lure some other demons to the Black Door without providing a host, so that they died on the spot turning into Whispering Iron, and use their corpses to build more magic keys to strengthen her dominion. What she needed to accomplish all that was a weak mind susceptible to her influence, someone who would have helped her believing to be helping himself. Ideally, this would be someone like Sam Lesser, a disturbed student of the now adult Rendell Locke.
Dodge during her first interaction with Bode Locke.
Dodge communed with Sam Lesser and promised to him a new, better home, in return for retrieving certain keys from Rendell Locke. He brought Al Grubb for the mission at hand, but their exploit led to the deaths of both Rendell and Al, and the Locke family being moved to their ancestral home of Keyhouse Manor in the aftermath.
Dodge being watched by the ghost of Bode Locke.
Shortly after the move, Bode explored the wellhouse, and Dodge called to him, claiming to be his echo, and told him about the magical keys. Bode, believing Dodge to be a friend, gave her a mirror and scissors, which she secretly sent to Sam Lesser in prison, to help break him out. She also told Sam to go to Keyhouse to get the Anywhere Key and the Omega Key. Bode, after having a dream about his father, began to become suspicious of the Well Lady, and he told her he did not intend to visit her again. Before he could leave, Dodge grabbed Bode, and waited for Sam to arrive at Keyhouse. Once she was sure he arrived, she promised Bode she could stop Sam, but she needed the Anywhere Key, and advised Bode to find the key while he was a ghost. Bode did so, discovering the key was on Kinsey's bracelet, and delivered the bracelet to Dodge. Dodge took the key off the bracelet and used the key on the door to the storage closet to escape the wellhouse.
Impersonating Zack Wells[]
Dodge unleashing a small winged creature.
The Lady in the Well, still projecting the visage of Lucas Caravaggio, used the Gender Key to become the original male form of Lucas. She locates Sam Lesser, now injured by Kinsey, and she furiously snaps Sam's neck, paralyzing him and throws Sam out through the active Ghost Door, closing the door and taking the key, thus trapping the boy on the grounds in astral form.
Dodge later arrives at Ellie Whedon's house, assumes the name Zack Wells and poses as Ellie's nephew. As Zack, "he" befriends the Locke family, hoping to gain access to more keys.
As she befriends the Lockes, she has to also hide her former identity from people who could recognize her as Lucas. Hence, she kills Joe Ridgeway when he becomes immoderately intrigued by her (as Zack), covering it up by sending an email suicide note from Joe's computer in which Callie's death was given as his reason for killing himself; and she uses the Head Key shortly thereaftter against Duncan to take from him the memory of Lucas. She then begins using various keys against the Lockes, trying to force them to reveal the location of the Omega Key.
The last dance and the Alpha Key[]
Eventually, possessing Bode Locke, Dodge reveals that his intention is only to summon demons to Earth to get the Whispering Iron that he needs to create new keys to make himself the ruler of the world. Hit by inspiration, Tyler Locke creates the Alpha Key, a key that unlocks demons from the human soul that they're attached to, killing the demon. However, the side effect of this is that the demon turns into Whispering Iron which also kills their host. During a final battle with Tyler, the memories of Erin Voss reveal themselves and remove the Crown of Shadows, rendering Dodge vulnerable and forcing him to flee.
As Tyler deals with the other demons and rescues the surviving students, Dodge escapes to the surface where he is grabbed by Rufus Wheadon. Having learned from Sam Lasser that Dodge is only an Echo, Rufus drags the demon across the threshold of the Wellhouse after opening it with the Echo Key. Dodge is exorcised from Bode by crossing the threshold and killed like all Echoes that cross the threshold, but Bode's body is left lifeless as he is still trapped as a ghost.
Final fate[]
Days later, after Bode's funeral, Tyler returns to the Wellhouse and uses the Echo Key to summon Lucas. Still attached to Lucas' soul, Dodge is returned to life once again. However, Tyler's intention is to separate Dodge from Lucas' soul and give Lucas peace. Struggling in the flooded well, Tyler manages to use the Alpha Key on Dodge, reverting the demon to a bolt of Whispering Iron and freeing Lucas who is left suffering from the effects of Dodge's defeat. Tyler carries Lucas across the threshold, causing his Echo to dissipate and with him, the remains of Dodge. Subsequently, Tyler recollects Erin's memories and returns them to her while Bode's ghost is able to figure out a way to resurrect himself, undoing some of the damage that Dodge had caused.
Appearance[]
In her raw spiritual form, Dodge's appearance perceived by other demons is a mystery, and she alternatively manifests to temporal eyes as a black and ornate liquid-metallic creature with yellow eyes and slits for pupils. That said, it is not entirely clear what she actually looks like, as she is usually either a chillingly beautiful young brunette, or slightly less often a burly yet handsome male teenager in her Zack Wells persona. Her primary image is tall, slender, healthy, and extremely beautiful; she has lovely brown eyes and hair and excellent posture. Apparently, Dodge's appearance was perfectly capable of catching attention from Mark Cho, and there were likely others.
Personality[]
Dodge was a strong, charismatic, and sophisticated demonic entity with uncertain motives and ambitions. It does seem fact that she did not enjoy life behind the Black Door at all and wanted her siblings to come to Earth, believing it would, in her own words, "be suitable after a thorough cleanse". Even so, she still treated some of her fellow Children of Leng with disdain, most notably those who she did not trust could function on Earth, as she had no desire to turn it into a hellish wasteland like the one she had just departed from. She was vastly intelligent, but this also caused her to be somewhat callous as she had few qualms about manipulating others.
Powers and abilities[]
- Demoness/Echo Physiology
- Expert tactician
- Expert manipulator
Name[]
While her birthname is implied to be rather esoteric, the Legion is so named because her identity refers to any large number of beings; a multitude, a large number of unorthodox astral beings. He is also known as his hated enemy's nickname, which is Dodge. "Dodge" had once been the nickname of Ellie Whedon's lover, Lucas Caravaggio, as he had been on a fencing team. After summoning the Legion as a metaphysical echo of her own consciousness, she began calling him "Dodge" as well. The Legion also went by his alternate persona, which is Zack Wells. He referred to himself as such when befriending the Lockes.
Victims[]
| Name | Cause of death |
|---|---|
| Mark Cho | Stabbed |
| Kim Topher | Crushed using Shadow Key |
| Candice Whedon | Neck broken |
| Joe Ridgeway | Gunned down |
| Ellie Whedon | Stabbed |
| Jason Bird | Pushed in front of a bus |
| Mandy Sawyer | Killed by shadow demons |
| Student | |
| Daniel Mutuku | |
| Police officer |
Dodge has also killed two orderlies tending to Erin Voss by slitting one's throat and stabbing the other.
Netflix Adaptation[]
- Main article: Dodge
Dodge appears in the Netflix adaptation, played by Laysla de Oliveira. In this extremely iconic incarnation, Dodge's final demise is similar to her comic counterpart with one major difference being that Lucas is unharmed by Dodge's presumed destruction and is set free to continue living as an Echo rather than dying once again.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Dodge is often associated with a wolf. Examples include when he uses the Animal Key to turn into one and his shadow becomes a wolf with the Crown of Shadows.
- In the Netflix adaptation, the second episode verifies that the keys belong to Dodge and she is innocently moving to retake her rightful property; and the eighth, fourteenth, and seventeenth episodes all provide reminders of this. It is unclear whether or not she owns the keys in the comics as well.
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 Villains
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Demons Redcoats Juvenile Delinquents Others | ||