William "Will" Harangue is a supporting antagonist in Cartoon Network's Ben 10 franchise.
He is an antipathetic news reporter who served as the host of both Harangue Nation and The Harangue Show. After Ben's secret identity was revealed to the world, Will made it his mission to make the world see him as a menace to society, regardless of who gets hurt in the process. He even allied with some of Ben's enemies while doing so to further increase public knowledge.
He is voiced by John DiMaggio.
Biography[]
Ben 10: Ultimate Alien[]
Will originally appeared as a newscaster during the episode Fame. Here he tries to convince everyone that Ben 10 is either a threat or a menace, based on a poll.
Harangue's first major act of villainy is during the episode Video Games, where he had his assistant Oliver trick Ben into revealing his aliens' abilities by claiming to be from a game studio to make a Ben 10 video game. Instead, it was to download the necessary data to create the Stalker Robot, a machine with countermeasures for every form Ben had at the time. After a defeat, Harangue would directly attack, controlling the Stalker. Ben would be able to land a critical hit on the machine by mimicking an attack from one of his games. This had the side effect of causing the machine to go haywire, and attack randomly. Ben was able to defeat the Stalker as Nanomech, the only alien Oliver deemed too useless to be used. Afterwards, Ben turned into Way Big, crushed the Stalker, and dropped the remains on Harangue's car.
Harangue would next appear in the episode Hero Time, as an ally to struggling veteran Captain Nemesis, who he saw as a real hero. Nemesis would free Computron from his prison in order to appear as the hero, with Harangue promised an exclusive. Unfortunately for Nemesis, another channel had seen this and set up live footage, letting Ben know what was happening. While Captain Nemesis would defeat Computron himself, Ben as Armodrillo defeated multiple members of Computron's goons. Harangue would attempt to spin this making it to look like Ben was disrespecting Nemesis, only for the veteran to suggest a friendly competition to decide who was the better hero. Nemesis lost, and then decided to attack Ben through Jullie and Jennifer. This caused Harangue to declare Ben as a continuing threat.
Ben 10: Omniverse[]
Harangue wouldn't reappear until the events of The Frogs of War, a two-part event where the Incursean Army attacked and banished Ben from Earth. Harangue would betray the planet claiming the Incurseans were the greatest thing to the planet. After their defeat, Harangue's popularity took a massive hit, as aliens had become common knowledge. He decided to back the latest incarnation of the Forever Knights, in modifying a pulse generator. The present leader, Joseph Chadwick, claimed it would turn the aliens of Earth into humans, when in actuality it would kill them. Ben would attempt to tell Harangue the truth, only for it to fall on deaf ears. Ben would reprogram the generator as Jury Rigg, which permanently spliced Harangue's DNA with multiple aliens, converting him into a multi-eyed squid like alien. While Harangue was horrified, this ironically had the unintended side effect of boosting his ratings even higher.
Harangue would later make an arrangement with Billy Billions as he created The Vengers. To the public, it was a team of four consisting of himself, Captain Kangaroo, Captain Nemesis, and Mazuma to save the world from villains better than Ben ever could. In actuality, every battle they won was staged with Harangue occasionally doctoring the footage to suit their needs. Ben was ambushed in an alley where he defeated them as Brainstorm. Billy rudely claimed that The Vengers were better, leading Ben to apparently quit. In actuality, Brainstorm's heightened intellect came up with the plan to discredit The Vengers, without Ben to get in their way, the team's collective ego would cause massive infighting to the point where they started a full-on brawl at Billions Towers by the end of the day. Ben arrived to stop them, revealing the plan and laughing that he thought it would take longer than this for them to fight. Harangue arrived on the scene to report Ben's supposed attack, only for Billy to angrily reveal his deception at Ben while on camera live.
During the episode End of An Era, which takes place decades later, Harangue now works for Jimmy Jones as his incompetent camera man.
Trivia[]
- It was confirmed that Prime Ben's Will Harangue is the only counterpart in the multiverse to have a problem with Ben 10. Both his Dimension 23 and Mad Counterparts are fans.
- It was confirmed by Matt Wayne in a twitter post that despite Will working with several villains, he disapproves of the Flame Keeper's Circle.
- Harangue's first name is shared with that of his voice actor John DiMaggio's middle name, which is also William.
- In real life, Harangue would've easily been (ironically) reported for malicious slander against Ben Tennyson, which, in turn, would cost his job and his reputation, making him something of a fallen hero, in a similar vein to Carl Nesmith.
- His nickname, the Hammer of Justice, is very ironic, because what he mainly does is being prejudicial against Ben Tennyson, as well as the fact that he's hypocritically supporting destructive villains, such as Captain Nemesis.
