Cyril O'Reily
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- For the American actor, see Cyril O'Reilly (actor).
Cyril O'Reily is a fictional character, played by American actor Scott William Winters, on the HBO drama Oz. Cyril is the brother of fellow inmate Ryan O'Reily, who is played by Scott's real-life brother, Dean Winters.
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[edit] Potential Plot Spoilers
Cyril was an Irish American hoodlum like his brother until he was injured in a fight, suffering brain damage and becoming mentally handicapped, possessing the intelligence and personality of a young child. In the second season of Oz Cyril murdered the husband of Dr. Gloria Nathan on orders from his brother Ryan, who was in love with Dr Nathan. Arriving in prison, Cyril was originally housed with Vernon Schillinger, head of the Aryan Brotherhood. After Schillinger raped Cyril, Ryan got his brother transferred to his cell. Throughout the series Cyril struck a discordant note as a very trusting and child-like personality in the body of a physically powerful man. His brother Ryan tried to protect him, and the relationship between the two served as a way of humanizing the completely amoral Ryan. In the last season of the show, Ryan's luck ran out, and Cyril was executed. Essentially, every thing bad that happens to Cyril during the series is in some way his brother's fault.
[edit] Season 2
Cyril O'Reily is the mentally handicapped brother of Ryan O'Reily, an Irish American sociopath serving time in Oz. He first appears when Ryan gets an operation to prevent cancer from taking over his body. Cyril is upset because their mother had died of cancer and Cyril has not felt right about hospitals ever since. After recovering, Ryan fell in love with Dr. Gloria Nathan, the prison doctor who helped save his life. Ryan feels that the only thing preventing a potential relationship with her is her husband, Preston, so he asks Cyril to murder him. Cyril does as he's told, and is sentenced to life in prison. Even though Cyril is mentally challenged, he knows enough not to implicate Ryan in the crime as he worships his brother. Dr. Nathan and Unit Manager Tim McManus know that Ryan is responsible and demand that he confess, but Ryan says nothing and Cyril arrives in Oz. When Cyril arrives in Unit B, he is approached by Vernon Schillinger, who promises to take Cyril to see Ryan. Once Cyril is out of sight from the guards, however, he is gang raped by Schillinger and the other members of the Aryan Brotherhood. When Ryan realizes what has happened, he tells Cyril to assault him and as Ryan is hit, Officer Joseph Mineo takes him to Ad Seg, isolated but safely away from Schillinger. McManus then refuses to move Cyril to Emerald City, however, until Ryan confesses to ordering him to kill Preston Nathan.
Later, a guard Eugene Rivera is blinded and needs a blood transfusion, and Ryan is the only person among both the inmates and officers with the same blood type. Ryan blackmails McManus to move Cyril to Em City or the guard will not get the blood transfusion. McManus goes through and Ryan finally confesses to having Cyril kill Preston Nathan. Ryan's parole date is set back 40 years, but he can still protect Cyril from the other inmates, especially Schillinger.
[edit] Season 3
Cyril starts off this season working in the kitchen and essentially following his brother around wherever. The Aryan inmates, especially Schillinger and James Robson, taunt Cyril and Ryan continuously over the rape he suffered at Schillinger's hands. Ryan wants to kill Schillinger, but does not get a chance. Cyril goes to work early one day, against Ryan's wishes, and Robson tries to rape him. Cyril fights back, seriously hurting his would-be assailant. McManus wants to put him in isolation, but new head CO Sean Murphy suggests that this be a warning for Cyril. Murphy is Black Irish like the O'Reily brothers and understands that Ryan is trying to protect him. Murphy also helps McManus start the prison boxing tournament where one member of each group fights as a representative. Ryan enrolls Cyril, who used to box, in the tournament to show everyone in Oz that they are not to be trifled with. In the first round, Cyril goes up against Robson. Ryan spikes Robson's water with drugs to ensure victory. Cyril wins the first fight against Robson in a knockout, and the Aryans leave him alone afterward. Ryan spikes other boxer's drinks as well, as there is a lot of gambling money to be won. Ryan sees another opportunity to get back at the Aryans when Schillinger's heroin-addicted son Andrew arrives in Oz. Ryan, along with Cyril, Chris Keller and Tobias Beecher, who all have a vendetta against Schillinger, devise a plan to turn father against son. With Cyril as his bodyguard, Ryan sells drugs to Andrew then cuts him off, telling him that the only way he can buy drugs from now on is through the non-white inmates, something that the Aryan Brotherhood prohibits. Andrew eventually turns against his father, who bribes the guards to give him enough heroin to overdose. Cyril then fights in round two of the boxing tournament against Italian inmate Chucky Pancamo. Pancamo is the easy favorite to win, as he has more than 60 pounds on Cyril and is one of the most physically imposing inmates in Oz. Ryan spikes Pancamo's water, costing him the match, getting a not-so-easy and shocking victory to the entire prison population. Cyril is in the championship round now and must face either Jason Cramer and Hamid Khan. He is set to face Khan, until Warden Glynn postpones the fight indefinitely, due to the racial tension that is building up between Oz inmates mainly caused from a fight between the Black Muslim and White Aryan inmates. Ryan and Khan convince Glynn to allow the fight as Muslim inmate Kareem Said defended a White inmate Tobias Beecher from Schillinger and the other Aryans in the fight. Glynn then allows the fight to go on but with no crowd. Khan is encouraged by all the black inmates to kill Cyril while Cyril is encouraged to kill Khan by all the White inmates. In the meantime, Murphy finds out that Ryan has been spiking all the water and warns him that he will expose him if he spikes Hamid Khan's drink as well. Desperate to find a way to beat Khan, Ryan calls in their father, Seamus, whom he and Cyril despise, as a way to anger Cyril into fighting dirtier. Ryan then tells Cyril to use that anger to beat Khan who, like Pancamo, is an easy favorite. Cyril imagines Khan is their father and beats him to the point of brain damage after initially getting beaten in the fight. Cyril feels bad about hurting Khan, but Ryan tells him that it was necessary to survive inside of Oz. Khan is hooked to life support which creates animosity among the black inmates and rachets the racial tension up to an all-time high. A near race riot breaks out, and Oz is locked down. Khan dies after his wife wins a lawsuit to take him off of life support.
[edit] Season 4 Part I
The lockdown ends and Cyril is having nightmares over Khan's death. Ryan suggests psychotherapy with prison psychiatrist "Sister Pete" Reimondo, who thinks interaction sessions with the families of Cyril's murder victims is the best way to clear his conscience. The only family willing to participate in the interaction sessions is the Nathan family. Sister Pete demands that Ryan participate as well, as he ordered Preston's murder. In the interaction sessions, Cyril expresses his remorse and the Nathan parents express their anger. Ryan, however, turns the tables on the Nathans when he suggests that Gloria Nathan cheated on him during a temporary separation. As a result, Dr. Nathan and Ryan get on worse terms that endanger everyone around them. In Em City, Cyril is later attacked by inmates Leroy Tidd and Mondo Browne, who threaten to rape him. Cyril, however, beats the both of them and is then sedated with an extraneous amount of Haldol by an angry Dr. Nathan, who is trying to put him into a suppressed state. Ryan and Simon Adebisi, the leader of the Homeboys, then warn Tidd and Browne not to pull any more moves as such. Dr. Nathan is raped in the meantime and she believes Ryan is responsible, punishing him by backing off on Cyril's treatment. With the help of Sister Pete, Ryan convinces Dr. Nathan that he wasn't responsible, and as a result she treats Cyril better. Ryan then has Cyril find a confiscated cell phone to be used from Russian inmate Nikolai Stanislofsky In the midst of this, Em City is undergoing a demographic shift that worries Ryan, Chris Keller and some other white inmates. The new unit manager, Martin Querns, an African American, has empowered the Homeboys to do whatever they wish in exchange for maintaining a non-violent order. Consequently, more and more black inmates and guards are transferred in replacing their white and Latino counterparts. Claire Howell, one of the few white officers left, then develops a sexual relationship with Ryan that Cyril notices. Concerned that Cyril will talk, Ryan has Sister Pete counsel Cyril whom he claims is "seeing things." Cyril then passes the counseling and even convinces Sister Pete not to quit her profession as a nun. Meanwhile, Ryan and Keller murder two inmates as a means of getting Querns fired and McManus reinstated. With the help of Muslim leader Kareem Said, they get hard evidence of the immoral behavior that the Homeboys are being allowed to commit on videotape forcing Warden Glynn to fire Querns. Em City then turns back to normal as McManus and Murphy return and Said kills Adebisi in self defense.
[edit] Season 4 Part II
In this half of the season, Cyril's behavior begins to worry the staff. First, reporter Jack Eldridge comes to Oz to do a news story on what Oz is like inside. When Cyril and Ryan were younger, Eldridge did a story on Irish street gangs, which displayed the O'Reily's gang as brutal and heartless. The story angered their mother Tess, who died of cancer shortly afterwards. Cyril beats Eldridge severely, cancelling the news story. Throughout the season, Dr. Nathan finally falls for Ryan and has become somewhat more forgiving in what Cyril has done to her husband.
After Asian inmate Jia Kenmin arrives in Oz, disputes erupt between him and the Irish and Latino inmates. Kenmin provokes Cyril and Ryan to the point where Cyril loses control and knocks him into a coma. McManus is angered by this and considers transferring Cyril to the Connolly institute for the mentally unstable. Sister Pete, however, pushes him to send Cyril to Protective Custody for a while so that he can cool down. Ryan, in the meantime, meets Henry Stanton, whom he thinks can become a problem for the O'Reily brothers. Back in Em City, Ryan and new inmate Padraig Connolly, an IRA member awaiting deportation plan to blow up Oz. The bomb is a dud, but Ryan leaves the gas leaking in the cafeteria which eventually detonates destroying both Emerald City and the cafeteria.
[edit] Season 5
Ryan's birth mother Suzanne Fitzgerald has been captured after being on the run with a radical group for more than 30 years. Governor Devlin however reduces her charges to 2 years of community service at Oz where she can see Ryan and Cyril. While Cyril was in Protective Custody, it was determined that he and Ryan were half-siblings with different mothers but Ryan and Suzanne keep this secret from him. They enjoy seeing her on a daily basis but this is short lived when Jia Kenmin and new Asian inmate Li Chen attend some of the performing arts classes. Jia offers peace to the two of them which Cyril accepts but Ryan remains cautious about. In an attempt to set up the O'Reily brothers, Kenmin pays inmate Glen Shupe to tell Ryan that Chen will rape Suzanne and as a result, he and Cyril attack Jia. Cyril picks up a knife from the two Asians during the fight and stabs Li Chen to death defending Ryan. Furious, Tim McManus sends Ryan to the cage and Cyril to solitary but not before stating that Cyril will either be sent to the insane asylum or death row as he is growing tired of Cyril's behavior. As Ryan is in the common room cage, Kenmin states to him it was a set up in order to eliminate the two of them. On trial for murder, Cyril is represented by Katherine McClain who claims that she will do every she can but is probably not the best lawyer for this case. In a meeting with other family members to raise money for a better lawyer, Ryan, their Aunt Brenda, Suzanne, and abusive father Seamus decide that Cyril is better off dying than staying alive for the rest of his life in his mental state while in Oz. A new inmate Father Daniel Meehan offers to help and riles Sister Pete and some anti-death penalty activists to state that Cyril being sentenced to death in his mental state is cruel and unusual. Meanwhile, Ryan gets revenge getting the Latinos to injur Glen Shupe and manipulating the COs to kill Jia Kenmin. Cyril's trial does not go well though and he is found guilty of murder in the first degree. When being transferred to Death Row, Cyril attacks Officer Len Lopresti and is then sedated by three additional COs. After a long talk with Father Meehan, Ryan finally agrees to protest Cyril's death by any means necessary.
[edit] Season 6
To overturn Cyril's death sentence, Ryan with the help of Sister Peter Marie and Father Daniel Meehan gets activist attorney Arnold Zelman to appeal his case. Cyril's appeals gather public support in outcrying the state's decision to kill a mentally retarded person. In the meantime Sister Pete gives Cyril a hand puppet named Jericho whom Cyril speaks through with all his darker hidden thoughts in his voice before the brain damage incident. Seeing this, Jericho is taken away from Cyril who begins continually sobbing over the loss of his hand puppet. Cyril's crying angers Officer Lopresti, the supervising officer on death row who with the other COs spray Cyril down with a firehouse to shut him up. In the meantime, Governor Devlin in an attempt to make Cyril appear normal orders ECT (The politically correct abbreviation for shock therapy) treatment to be done as a means of having him appear less mentally disabled in the public's eye. This angers Ryan, Suzanne, and the others who have no legal means of stopping Cyril's ECT treatment. The appeals meanwhile are not going well and while protests continue, his execution date moves closer and closer. Originally, Ryan preferred lethal injection as the means of execution for Cyril. After speaking with Dr. Nathan, however, Ryan concludes that it will be easier for Cyril to undergo the electric chair and he explains this to Cyril in terms of having one last "Special" ECT session. Cyril then has his head shaved prepared for execution unaware of what is going on as Ryan tells him he is having a meal where he can have whatever he wishes before he goes to a "Special" ECT session. In the meantime, their father Seamus arrives in Oz for killing a man in a fight as Oz's prisoners led by Jahfree Neema begin to protest Cyril's execution. During the hour of Cyril's execution, Neema leads every inmate in Em City to tap on their cells as a means of protesting Cyril's death while Cyril's last statement to Warden Glynn is "Huh?". Right before the execution occurs, a 30 day stay is put in effect as new evidence is found in Cyril's case. Ryan then explains to Cyril that his session has been delayed and then is allowed to spend time with him in his remaining days alive. As Cyril's final appeal fails, he is executed and as new warden Martin Querns watches, he throws up. After Cyril's death, Ryan and Seamus finally make peace.
