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| “ | Hamegh votk'er. | „ |
| ~ Margos tells Danny she has "delicious feet" in Armenian, and one of his only lines. |
Margos Dezerian is the main antagonist of Season 3 of the television series The Shield.
He was portrayed by Kurt Sutter, who was one of the show's main writers.
Biography[]
Past[]
Nothing is known about Margos' past other than at some point, he became a hitman for the Armenian Mob. It is unknown if he was born in Armenia or the United States, but it is likely he is from Armenia given his thick accent and how the Strike Team calls him "old school". Margos has a foot fetish, which he indulges in by chopping off the feet of the people he kills. This later became his calling card whenever he killed someone.
Margos had links to multiple drug cartels in several countries, had been questioned in places like Kosovo, Bogotá, and Sri Lanka and was also wanted in Paraguay and Belgium, among other countries. It was mentioned that he was wanted by Interpol for numerous crimes in several countries.
Season 1[]
Margos ominously stares at the interrogation room security camera while in police custody.
Margos is first seen snorting cocaine, and then shooting one of the drug deal associates with a suppressed pistol, for which he is arrested.
Margos had just returned from Peru, where he had picked up the cocaine. He was brought to the station for questioning and refused to say a single word to detectives. Despite his silence, he does tell Danny that she has "delicious feet" in Armenian. One of the other prisoners in the cage makes a disparaging remark about Margos's silence, calling him a "f****t".
A few minutes later, Margos brutally murders the man with his bare hands, presumably breaking his neck. A fellow prisoner is huddled in the corner in terror, having wet his pants. This incident prompted Captain David Aceveda to have him transferred. However, he escaped by jumping out of a moving prison van. During transfer, Dezerian managed to trick the door to the van open and jumped out, all while still handcuffed. Claudette is concerned about his wherabouts, saying he is "a special kind of crazy".
Season 2[]
Margos is does not appear this season. However, during the events of season 2, Margos had fled to Chile. In Chile, killed three coca farmers and chopped off their feet. He later went to Greece and lived under the alias of "Marcus Dreliozis". Little did Margos know, back in Los Angeles, Vic Mackey and the Strike Team were preparing to rob the Armenian Mob's money train before the money could be sent overseas to be laundered.
Season 3[]
The plot of this season surrounds the aftermath of the Strike Team stealing $2,000,000 from the Armenians' money train. This is later confirmed by Diro Kesakian to be six months of earning for the Armenian Mafia. Margos' bosses (likely Diro or her father) instructed Margos to get to the bottom of it, and Margos instructed one of his soldiers, Lyor Slavok, to start working on it. On Margos's orders, Lyor murdered two Armenian suspects, he attempted to ship their feet to Margos back in Greece, however the package was intercepted by the police. Frustrated by the lack of progress, the bosses of the Armenian mob ordered Margos to return to Los Angeles to personally find and murder the people responsible for the heist.
Margos left a trail of grisly murders in search of it, amputating the feet of every victim, frightening citizens and police alike in the Farmington district. Margos killed two more Armenians, Byz Lats leader Diagur Leyva, as well as his brother Aramis, who he also tortured, and later Irish thief Neil O'Brien, who was found spending some of the marked money train cash. After ultimately killing and mutilating five people in his search for the missing money, he also kidnapped a young girl named Sosi as insurance, as well as to force her sister to handle the gang's bookkeeping. The Strike Team learns that Margos is the one looking for them, since the Armenians contacted the police department and asked for detailed information on the Strike Team, including their families and addresses.
They decide to find Margos before he finds them, as his actions threaten to implicate the team in a double homicide that occurred during the robbery. They tear the city apart looking for Margos, breaking into Margos's heroin operation, intending to kill Margos before any cops take him in alive. The team is nervous, as another cop could foil the plan, but Vic is adamant that Margos must die before he is in police custody, as he could still have them killed by the Armenian mafia from a jail cell, but not from his grave. The police confiscate Margos's drugs, but Margos is nowhere to be found. Eventually, they trail Armenian Might associate Kail Saffian, who gives up Margos's location after Vic dunks him in a used oil drum. Unbeknownst to them, Margos watched the whole thing from only a block away and prepared to escape.
He warmly called Sosi over before the group broke in, and then stabbed the frightened girl in the back of the neck. He then propped her body up against the door and left her for dead. Margos escaped when the Strike Team rushed to save Sosi, but she died on the way to the hospital. Vic made the decision to murder Margos. Vic raided a house that the Armenian Mob used for their heroin operation, but failed to find any drugs. Goma Magar, one of Margos's men, told Vic that Margos would be willing to bury the hatchet if they came to work for them and guarded their heroin smuggling operation. Vic correctly deduced this was a trap to get the Strike Team alone and then ambush them. Vic went to the Armenian Might associate Goma put him in contact with and forced him to write a suicide note before attempting to throw him out a window. The man admitted Goma had been ordered by Margos to trick the Strike Team.
Margos moments before he is killed by Vic Mackey.
Back at the precinct, Vic loudly thanked Goma for being a police informant in front of the other Armenians. This enraged Goma, who had done no such thing. Vic told Goma to go somewhere Margos could not find him, because the Armenians in custody were going to call Margos from jail to inform him of this. Vic went to Margos's travel agent, Mihalis, who assisted him in creating fake passports and fleeing various countries. Vic beat Mihalis and forced him to place a call to Margos stating that Goma had become an informant. Vic asked him where someone would go to hide from Margos and Mihalis sarcasitcally replied: "Hell?" only for Vic to threaten to beat him further. Mihalis placed the call and tricked Margos into going to Goma's house to kill him before he could flee to leave for Venezuela. When Margos arrived, he was ambushed at gunpoint by Vic. Margos attempted to surrender and dropped his gun, but Vic shot him twice in the chest anyway, killing him. Vic then made it look like self-defense.
Seasons 4 & 5[]
While Margos is never mentioned in either of these seasons, there are several references to the Armenian train robbery.
Season 6[]
| “ | Look, the last time there was an Armenian jump-off, that old-world hitman Margos crawled out of the woodwork. Now a nice, quiet girl like you... you don't want any part of that bloodbath! | „ |
| ~ Shane Vendrell talks to Diro Kesakian about Margos's actions during the events of Season 3. |
Margos is briefly mentioned by Shane in Season 6 when he uses his murder, alongside those of Rondell Robinson and Terry Crowley, to create a list of blackmail against Vic in case Mackey tried to double-cross him.
Shane later works with the Armenian mafia boss Diro Kesakian to get some more income for his family since Vic has kicked him out of the Strike Team upon learning that he was responsible for the murder of Lem. Shane talks to Diro and references his history with the Armenians, particularly Margos, several times. At one point, Shane alludes to Margos by saying "Just because people haven't been getting their feet chopped off lately doesn't get the Armenian Mob into the Chamber of Commerce!"
Shane later lets it slip that Vic was the one who robbed the money train. Diro puts contracts out on Ronnie and Vic's families as revenge for the heist, as her father lost six months of earning in the robbery and the mob was still out for blood after Margos had failed to find the ones responsible. A hitman for the Armenian Might named Ari Zadofian attempts to kill Vic's family, but is shot by Shane.
Season 7[]
| “ | The Armenians didn't like getting ripped off, so they sent an old-school goon to find it. Margos. He hacked off half the feet in Farmington looking for it. | „ |
| ~ Vic Mackey talks about Margos in Season 7. |
In Season 7, the conflict with the Armenians continues to escalate. Zadofian, recuperating from his gunshot wound, is hiding in a motel. Vic and Ronnie find him and tie him to the bed, where they interrogate him. Ronnie ordered Zadofian to place a call to Diro to call off the hit, but before Zadofian could answer, Ronnie shot him twice in the chest, killing him.
Shane would eventually enter the motel and find Zadofian's corpse. In order to make it look like the Armenians did it, Shane cut off Zadofian's feet and fled the scene. Vic later admitted to the murder of Margos Dezerian, among the rest of his crimes, in order to obtain immunity from prosecution.
The Shield (video game)[]
| “ | Go on, arrest me! Imagine the questions your captain will have about the money you stole from us! | „ |
| ~ Margos taunts Vic before his death in the video game. |
Margos appears briefly at the beginning of the officially licensed 2007 PS2 video game The Shield: The Game, where he is again voiced by Kurt Sutter. The game takes place in between seasons 3 and 4 but opens with the ending of season 3. Margos can be seen entering Goma's house before he is ambushed by Vic Mackey. However, his role is different. In the show, Margos silently accepts his fate, and in the game, Margos taunts Vic, telling him that if he arrests him the cops will find out about the money train robbery. Vic angrily then murders Margos. The game tells the player that their objective is to kill Margos, saying: "Margos Dezerian's death is the only way to keep the money train deal a secret."
Personality[]
Margos was an emotionless, deranged and sadomasochistic sociopath. He is frequently referred to by both Shane and Vic as an "old school goon". In his first appearance in season 1, Claudette Wyms said he was "a special kind of crazy" when she learned that he escaped from custody. In season 3, he had no qualms about killing whomever the Armenian mafia told him to and had zero empathy for his victims, as he left a long trail of bodies while searching for the Strike Team. He had a disgusting foot fetish, which is why he chops off his victims' feet.
Margos also had no qualms about brutal torture, shown by him cutting off Aramis's fingers for information, and Rex's corpse having a pained facial expression and gag in his mouth, suggesting Margos cut off his feet while he was still alive. In possibly his most heinous act, he even killed an innocent young girl just as a distraction so he could escape. As he was the face of the Armenian mob's warpath and had at least fourteen victims who he brutally killed and then mutilated, it's entirely possible that Margos was the one to have killed the most people than any other character in The Shield. Margos is also one if not the most mysterious antagonist on The Shield, and is also considered by many the most dangerous and frightening antagonist on the show, aside from Armadillo Quintero.
Victims[]
- Drug deal associate
- Lucky
- Three Chilean coca farmers
- Two Armenians (murdered by Lyor Slavok on Margos's orders)
- Two Armenian mobsters
- Diagur Leyva
- Aramis Leyva (also tortured)
- Neil O'Brien
- Rex
- Sosi
- Numerous other people
Trivia[]
- Margos is incredibly quiet, so much so that he is almost mute. He only has a couple of lines in the entire series (all of which are in Armenian), despite being the main antagonist of Season 3.
- Margos carries a two-tone Jericho 941 pistol in Season 3.
- The music Margos is listening to in his warehouse before he murders Sosi is Tamam Ashkharh by Nune Yesayan.
- Margos is Vic's second on-screen murder, after Terry Crowley and before Guardo Lima.
- Some have even questioned if Margos can speak English, but despite having no lines in English, it is fair to assume that he can since he knew when he had been insulted by another prisoner in the cage. He is also shown speaking English in the video game, however it is unclear if the game is considered canon, especially since the scene in the game is a different version of the scene in the show.
- Margos is highly literate, having more than a hundred maps and six dictionaries in five languages.
- It is never confirmed which languages Margos speaks, but it is likely that, in addition to Armenian and English, he speaks Greek, Spanish and possibly French, given his years living in Greece, South America and Belgium.
[]
 Villains
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Main Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Season 4 Season 5 Season 6 Season 7 The Game See Also | ||