List of Archer characters

Archer is an American animated sitcom television series created by Adam Reed for the FX network.

Main characters

Sterling Archer

Sterling Malory Archer (H. Jon Benjamin), codename: Duchess, is 184 lb, 6'2", 36 years old (computer-screen readout in the show's first episode), and is considered the world's most dangerous secret agent. Though he shows proficiency in stereotypical spy skills—weapons, driving, martial arts—his only real interest in the job is the opportunity to enjoy a jet-setting lifestyle full of sex, alcohol, thrills, lacrosse, fast cars, and spy toys (in that order).

Egotistical and self-serving, Archer generally lacks empathy towards anyone. He was largely raised by his valet Woodhouse, whom he constantly belittles. A picture in the episode "Placebo Effect" shows Archer graduating from college, implying he is at least smart enough to receive a bachelor's degree in an unknown major. At the graduation, Woodhouse is conspicuously present, while Malory is not, and it is strongly implied he was a better parent to Sterling than Malory was. Archer's only true skill outside of spying appears to be Lacrosse, in which he's won numerous awards.

He is almost always seen with an alcoholic drink, and often refuses to wear anything other than "tactical" turtlenecks during operations (he will take the time to change into one rather than immediately disarming a bomb). He claims he was the first to recognize the garment's tactical potential (referring to it as a "tactle-neck"), and becomes enraged when his style is copied. He appears to carry the classic James Bond Walther PPK as a personal sidearm, despite being consistently insulted as to the gun's diminutive stature by his co-workers (Ray Gillette: "You'd better put that back in your purse," Conway Stern: "Oh, I'm queer, coming from the man whose gun came with a matching purse"). In the season three episode "Drift Problem," he receives a modified black Dodge Challenger as a gift from Mallory Archer, but she takes it back hours later because Archer mistreated it. In recent episodes he is seen driving a black Chevrolet El Camino.

Although Archer has a high kill rate, having stopped and killed a number of highly dangerous criminals, he usually does so not out of a desire to uphold the law, but for his own personal selfish reasons. He has, however, demonstrated compassion for others on occasion: in "Placebo Effect" he genuinely cared about fellow cancer patient Ruth, and was clearly upset over her death; in "Double Trouble," Archer attempts to stop Katya Kasanova and Lana from fighting, as he doesn't want them to hurt each other. It is heavily insinuated, especially in the later seasons of the show, that his feelings for Lana go beyond the physical attraction he makes clear, and he nearly dies saving her life after he learns she's pregnant, confessing his love to her in the process. He shows surprising levels of concern throughout Lana's pregnancy, going so far as to become a certified Doula to help her through labour. He has shown great affinity towards large felines, such as ocelots and tigers, but fears large reptiles, in particular alligators and crocodiles. He has also displayed a heavy dislike of cyborgs, possibly stemming from a childhood incident in which he nearly lost his testicles to a vacuum cleaner (which he was using to simulate the sensation of a blowjob), and more recently difficulty when encountering the psychotic cyborg Barry.

Despite his numerous personality flaws, such as insensitivity, callousness, and a casual attitude towards murdering anyone who crosses him (or even crosses his path), he is also undeniably an intuitively good operative with a high degree of personal bravery. This is shown during his escape from Moscow, when he consistently outwits and outfights the numerous soldiers dispatched to recapture him, despite numerous serious injuries. When he is finally cornered in an elevator, he blindfolds himself and fully intends his last words to be, "Fuck you, you douchebags." Much of Archer's success can be attributed to luck, he seems to prefer to trust to impulse, although when asked to explain his actions, he demonstrates in depth knowledge on the tactics and capabilities of whatever enemy he is facing and near perfect situational awareness. It is impossible to deny that Archer has a natural talent for spying, shown when he temporarily loses his memory and believes himself to be someone else, yet is still able to notice holes in another agent's (Lana's) story.

A recurring joke on the show is Archer forgetting his pre-planned witty one-liners, swearing, "I had something for this," before saying something completely different. Archer also has an intense fascination with the actor Burt Reynolds. He often quotes famous lines and re-enacts scenes from Reynolds' many movies, asking Lana constantly if he resembles his idol.

His encyclopedic knowledge of completely irrelevant things allows him to make clever references on a moment's notice (e.g., "Lana, you'd better call Kenny Loggins 'cause you're in...the Danger Zone!" or referencing the Herman Melville short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener," or saying "Who are you, Horace Greeley?" to someone complaining about him "burying the lede", or the former American ice hockey player Mike Eruzione, referencing Eruzione's famous participation in the United States' win over the Soviet Union). However, he is often completely unaware of core concepts, such as keeping the fact that he is a secret agent a secret (he tells almost everyone he meets, especially beautiful women).

Despite his flaws, rival agents consider Archer a serious threat, due in part to his combat skills but also to his "instinct-based" fieldwork style, which tends to be short on any kind of preparation on his part (he proudly claims to have never read a dossier). Because of this, Archer is equally likely to successfully kill a room full of enemy agents as he is to accidentally cause an international disaster.

Archer and other characters have noted that he exhibits numerous symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders. Including his emotional development issues (though the evidence strongly suggests this is his mother's fault), his near encyclopedic knowledge of trivia, operationally relevant information, and the things that specifically scare him (namely crocodiles). In addition to his obsessive, and accurate, capacity to count the number of bullets remaining in his and others guns, including multiple automatic weapons in a firefight (Often times, when stating these facts, some character will ask him, in surprise, "How do you know that?", to which Archer incredulously will reply, "How do you NOT?").

After ISIS is shut down by the FBI, Archer joins the quest to sell a tonne of cocaine. He also tries to win over Lana, going so far as to get Kenny Loggins to play at her baby shower only to be rocked when he realizes Lana never understood what the "Danger Zone" comments were about. When Lana gives birth, she admits that she used sperm from Archer to get pregnant, making him the father. He is initially angry at Lana for using his genetic material without his consent, but comes to geniunely care for his daughter despite having a loose grasp of parental responsibility. He and Lana re-enter into a committed relationship halfway through Season 6.

Lana Kane

Lana Anthony Kane (Aisha Tyler) was the top female agent at ISIS (prior to its disbandment) and Archer's girlfriend. A tall, beautiful woman, she is a competent and deadly agent but is constantly frustrated that she is treated as the number two ISIS field agent because Archer's mother runs the agency. Like Archer, Lana is an expert in Krav Maga, in which all ISIS agents undergo training, and is usually seen carrying two Tec-9 submachine guns in shoulder holsters, (she is so proficient with these that she can write letters in cursive with one magazine). She drives a purple car that resembles a Living Daylights-era Aston Martin V8 Vantage. Lana also has incredibly large and strong hands, which have been (usually mockingly) likened by Archer and other characters to cricket bats, steam shovels, and the "Truckasaurus" to her ever-mounting frustration.

Before Lana was an agent, she was an animal-rights activist; at a protest, she tried to throw red paint on Malory's fur coat but was stopped when Malory pulled a gun on her. While the other protesters ran, only Lana stayed and stood her ground even with a gun pointed at her. Lana's fearlessness so impressed Malory that she offered Lana the chance to become an agent. Her parents, Claudette and Lemuel, are academics at UC Berkeley who were unaware of her career in espionage for years, believing her to be a doctoral student in Environmental Science at Columbia. Her liberal leanings do occasionally show, and she tends to be the most politically correct character on the show, as well as the "straight man" to the antics of the rest of the staff. However, she is shown to be as capable of questionable behavior as the rest, once charging every man in the ISIS office $600 to say they slept with her as a way to get revenge on her cheating ex-boyfriend Cyril, and on another occasion holding up a firefight on a space station until the other agents conceded her breasts are still perfect. Furthermore, in a moment of surprising insight, Cheryl accused Lana of being a hypocrite as her history as a social activist is not enough to drive her away from ISIS, which is deep down her only true love. She is also prone to extreme acts of unnecessary violence, such as giving Cyril, whom she was dating at the time, a black eye for merely implying that she might have been jealous of a rival agent.

Lana has a complex love/hate relationship with Archer, with whom she had a long-term relationship that she ended six months prior to the start of the series due to his constant philandering and psychological issues resulting from Malory's parenting. She regularly trades insults with him and consistently berates him for his chaotic methods in the field, but at times she has shown sympathy when he is in trouble or been attracted to him in moments of competence. In "Stage Two" she tried to counsel him through his cancer scare, and in a drunken state of fear he admitted he loved her, a statement that rendered her speechless. She slept with him prior to his surgery, but after his cancer was treated he was unable to say it again. He later admitted in "Heart of Archness" that she was his only friend, but was not able to repeat his confession of love until he nearly died saving her life in "Sea Tunt II". She acknowledged his sentiment, but does not confess her own affection for him until after the birth of her daughter in "Arrivals/Departures".

Lana reveals her pregnancy at the end of Season 4, with the biological father being a donor and not Cyril, who she had briefly resumed dating earlier in the season. After ISIS is disbanded, Archer proposes marriage to Lana but she declares she'd rather lose the baby than be let it be raised by Archer. She reluctantly goes along with the plan to form a drug cartel in order to provide for her child. As the season progresses, she is surprised by Archer's high level of sympathy and interest in her pregnancy, Lana eventually gives birth to a daughter, Abbijean, and reveals to a stunned Archer that she used frozen sperm samples from him to make him the father. He reacted to this revelation by fleeing halfway around the world and going on a six-week long bender. Later in season 6 they rekindled their relationship during a mission to swindle the Durhani royal family.

In flashbacks, she is shown sporting an afro, a hairstyle that, according to Archer, made her look "like Angela Davis had a love child with Sweet Lou Dunbar."

Malory Archer

Malory Duchess Archer (Jessica Walter), Sterling Archer's mother and the former head of ISIS, is a self-centered alcoholic who regularly hatches half-baked, invariably disastrous schemes to use the agency's resources to her own personal advantage; she has staged a false assassination attempt on a U.N. official to secure a lucrative government contract and called in a fake bomb threat to get a luxury cabin on a "cruise" aboard a rigid airship and to get reservations at a luxury restaurant.

Greedy, short-sighted, racist, and materialistic, Malory has gone so far as to haggle ransom prices for her own son and has little concern for her other employees. In "Killing Utne" and "Skytanic" she carries out a grudge against her rival/neighbor Trudy Beekman.

In the second season, it is revealed that she was an aspiring actress during World War II, when she was recruited into the OSS by Wild Bill Donovan. During her days as a black-ops spy she had clandestine trysts with KGB head Nikolai Jakov (an affair that lasted 40 years), rival spy agency ODIN's boss Len Trexler, and jazz drummer Buddy Rich. She is not sure which one fathered her son, and told Sterling that his father was John Fitzgerald "Black Jack" Archer, an ace pilot who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. A forth candidate, an Italian anti-fascist rebel murdered by the government, was mentioned in "Lo Scandalo".

She was a highly inattentive parent, sending Sterling to boarding school for 15 years and leaving him stranded in a train station one Christmas Eve because she failed to inform the school she was moving. Malory demonstrated some of her parenting techniques, heavy on punishment, when she babysat the Wee Baby Seamus in "The Double Deuce." Malory believes in corporal punishment; she frequently spanked her young son with a wooden spoon and this object is still a "huge emotional trigger" for the now-grown Archer. In various flashbacks, Malory is shown to have been a highly capable field agent in her younger days. Like her son, she was proficient at the practical things such as martial arts and firearms. She is shown to have been a merciless killer and at some point wore an eyepatch for as-yet-unexplained reasons. Her personal choice of sidearm is a .44 Magnum revolver, calibrated with a laser sight and scope in the present day.

Malory and her son have a very dysfunctional relationship. There is little affection on either side but due to her position, Malory has kept Sterling almost entirely dependent on her. However, there are occasions when Malory has shown concern for Sterling: in "Job Offer" she was jealous when he left to join ODIN, and when she realized she had drunkenly issued a burn notice on him, she became distraught at the possibility that this—and she—might have gotten him killed. In "White Nights" she pleaded with Nikolai Jakov not to kill Sterling; whether this is genuine concern for her son's well-being or just her inability to cope without him being totally dependent on her is unclear; either one is possible. It is shown that deep down, Malory loves Sterling, but obviously does not show it.

In the fourth episode of Season 3, The Man from Jupiter, Malory has started dating Burt Reynolds, much to the chagrin of Sterling, who considers Reynolds his idol. Later in the season, it is hinted that Malory is still dating Reynolds, though she mentions that with her so busy with ISIS and Burt busy in Hollywood, they don't get to spend much time together. At the beginning of season 4, however, Malory has married Ron Cadillac (voiced by Jessica Walter's real-life husband, Ron Liebman), the owner of the top Cadillac dealership in the tri-state area.

Malory carries multiple grudges since World War II, treating her apartment building's Irish maintenance man horribly on the grounds that Ireland didn't help the Allies during the war and, after shooting at the Yakuza boss in "Drift Problem" she claims it was payback for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In "The Honeymooners", she refers to the Dunkirk evacuation when arguing with a French waiter.

In the fifth season premiere, an FBI raid reveals to the rest of the team that ISIS was never sanctioned by the U.S. government and Mallory has been running illegal missions for years. Mallory manages to work a deal to keep everyone from going to jail and living off her hidden bank accounts (naturally, she never warned anyone else to keep their money). She then decides to use a ton of cocaine ISIS had confiscated to set up a drug cartel, noting "how hard can it be if Mexicans can do it?" Her scheme leads to the end of her relationship with Ron, who loses patience with the criminal lifestyle, although they eventually reconcile. Mallory also takes on managing Cheryl in her country music career. It is eventually revealed that Mallory has set up the entire venture as a ploy to sell drugs for the CIA, and is able to leverage her team a position as an sanctioned outsourced organization in Season 6.

Cyril Figgis

Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell) is the comptroller of ISIS. Cyril is portrayed as quite competent at his job but is plagued by a number of personal issues. He was Lana Kane's love interest at the beginning of Season 1, but due to residual trust issues from her relationship with Archer, she refused to call Cyril her boyfriend or say she loved him.

Cyril is a buttoned-down nebbish who wears browline glasses and chops supper vegetables in his office. Cyril is also so remarkably well-endowed that he once put in a claim for "penis ensmallment" surgery, as Pam and Cheryl are shocked to learn when they hack into the company's medical records. Manipulated by Cheryl, Cyril cheats on Lana with her, ISIS office drone "Scatterbrain" Jane, Trinette the callgirl, Framboise (the former head of HR at ODIN whom Archer calls "the Pele of anal"), and Malory Archer. Lana broke up with him when she caught him with Framboise.

In Season 2 there are frequent references to Cyril calling a phone-sex hotline, spending much time looking at Internet porn, and attending sex addiction meetings. His mother is dead and "Tragical History" reveals that he had a dysfunctional relationship with his father, an elementary-school superintendent.

Cyril is also extremely clumsy about gun safety, as seen in "El Secuestro", when he injured Brett Buckley after mistaking whether or not a gun's safety was on. In Season 3, Cyril is promoted to field agent to replace Ray Gillette. While Archer and Lana ridicule this decision due to Cyril's lack of practicality, he quickly displays his penchant for quick-witted lying to develop a cover in a Colombian drug cartel. He ingratiates himself with their boss and is able to maintain a convincing cover to infiltrate their organization and engineer the others' escape. This is a Machiavellian approach in which neither Archer or Lana have demonstrated any skill. He has proven to be poor in firearms skills: on multiple occasions he has accidentally killed peacefully valuable targets who had been subdued. Although it turns out that Gillette hasn't been disabled and has resumed field work, Cyril has kept his promotion to field agent.

He and Lana resumed dating in Season 4, although Lana often appeared to have reservations about it. Still insecure in his relationship with Lana, and egged on by Pam, Cyril shadowed Lana and Archer while they were on a mission posing as honeymooners, which may have prompted Lana to pursue artificial insemination. He was enraged by Lana's revelation in the season finale that she is pregnant and he is not the biological father.

When ISIS is disbanded in season five, Cyril talks about going back to his career as a lawyer and annoyed that Lana doesn't remember his constant talk about it. During the gang's following attempts to sell cocaine, Cyril provides a practical financial viewpoint on their schemes but is little more than liability in the disastrous attempts to find buyers. By the episode "Filibuster", however, he has happily deposed Gustavo Calderone as dictator of San Marcos and, for pure pleasure, thrown Archer in jail. This paradise is short, however, as he is soon forced to flee the nation with his friends as American forces invade the country. In Season 6, he is once again scheming to get back in Lana's good graces and bed.

Cheryl/Carol/Cherlene Tunt

Cheryl Tunt (Judy Greer, speaking; Jessy Lynn Martens, singing, Archer Vice^[1]) is Malory's mentally unstable secretary. In the pilot episode, she was portrayed as a lovesick, ditzy secretary that Archer frequently took advantage of, before that side of her character was gradually phased out as her behavior became more and more unhinged. In the series' first 4 episodes she regularly changed her name, going by Carol, Carina, and Cristal, responding to either Cheryl or Carol from then on. (She is referred to in the show's closed captioning as "Carol/Cheryl.") After being arrested by the FBI in the first episode of season 5, she signed her statement as "Cheryl and/or Carol Tunt." She claims to be 1/64th Cherokee Indian and has apparently had multiple stays at sanitariums/mental hospitals/insane asylums. She spends most of her time bickering with Pam, though they appear to be friends (they have been shown walking to work together, and Cheryl even invites Pam to join her on a trip on her train line).

Cheryl is often found drinking glue, and suffers from pyromaniac and sadomasochistic tendencies. She regularly fantasizes about being choked during sex, with prominent ligature/manual strangulation marks occasionally visible on her neck. She also is easily turned on by slaps to the face. Her lovers have included Cyril, Archer, Barry, Krieger, Randy Gillette, and Conway Stern. Cheryl continually demonstrates an alarming lack of intelligence yet makes references to obscure historical figures like Earl Butz, Elisha Otis and Granuaile O'Malley. She is repulsed by people with cancer (although she often either forgets, or does not even know, what cancer is), the handicapped, babies (though she hoped she was pregnant after having sex with Conway Stern), the deaf, and 'dwarfs'. She has also been known to shout or scream, whenever someone tells her to do something, "You're not my supervisor!" She has also apparently been the recipient of fortunetelling/prophecy from a gypsy woman, because she occasionally responds to an event by saying, "Just like the gypsy woman said."

Prior to the second season, Cheryl went by the surname Gimple before ISIS learns that she is an heiress to the billion-dollar Tunt railroad fortune, although her half is in a trust controlled by her brother Cecil, who uses it for charitable causes.^[2] Despite her position, Carol lives in an extravagant mansion next to the Roosevelt Mansion with a history of equally deranged family members and an ocelot named Babou, which she hates. She shares that insanity runs in her family as one uncle thought the Underground Railroad was a literal railroad, building tunnels to try and recapture escaped slaves and sell them...in 1890. Though she still works as a secretary for Malory, Cheryl has ISIS on retainer to ensure her personal safety. In season five, after ISIS disbands, Cheryl decides to live out her dream to be a country singer with Malory as her manager. It is revealed that she has a beautiful singing voice whenever she is alone, but suffers from severe stage fright. Krieger implants a mind-altering chip in to Cheryl, which removes her stage fright (and also makes her more aggressive) and she begins a career under the name "Cherlene". Cherlene thinks she's hit success when her album goes platinum only to find that a South American dictator bought all the copies, and she returns to ISIS at the end of the season. It also turns out her "mind-altering chip" was really a sticker from the back of a Lego spaceman. In season 6, she decides to completely redo ISIS's new offices to be exactly the way they were just to mess with Mallory. It is also revealed that she has no memory of her "Cherlene" career.

Pam Poovey

Pam Poovey (Amber Nash) is ISIS's Human Resources Director. She condescends to the staff by talking through a dolphin puppet in disciplinary meetings, and she regularly gossips confidential information to the whole office (within an hour, everyone knew when Archer was on a secret mole hunt), though she also relishes revealing more personal information (such as a co-worker being stricken with cancer) and post office gossip on her blog. She is fond of bear claws and has been known to make growling sounds while eating them. She is also highly allergic to soy and soy-meat, but will keep on eating it if it tastes exactly like its meat counterpart. She carries a bug-out bag containing corn liquor in anticipation of TEOTWAWKI.

Pam is constantly subjected to cruel jokes about food and her weight. Apparently bisexual, she's initially desperate to get just one colleague of either gender to have sex with her, finally achieving this In the first season finale, "Dial M for Mother", when Lana agrees to have pity sex on the condition she never speaks of it (Though not so Pam doesn't tell anyone, but because Lana wanted to pretend Pam was Alex Karras.) . By the end of season 4, Pam has had sexual relations with every member of the ISIS staff except Ray and Cheryl, as well as a recurring, casual relationship with Archer, beginning in "Crossing Over." Many of Pam's trysts involve drinking thermos-fulls of "Green Russians", a cocktail of Absinthe and milk. She has even expressed a desire for an office gang-bang or gang-rape (she keeps a large number of dolls and puppets in her desk, should a victim need to reenact one). A favorite sexual move of hers is called the MOAB. Her personal record for number of pool balls stuffed in her mouth is four.

She grew up on her father's Wisconsin dairy farm, "Poovey Farms"; where she once seduced a milkhand named Jorge. She has a fraught relationship with her sister Edie, who tormented her throughout her childhood. Known for having an extraordinary alcohol tolerance, she regularly totes a dispenser of Schützenmeister (a parody of Jägermeister) at parties and is frequently seen drinking a forty at work. "El Secuestro" revealed that she is an expert bare-knuckle pugilist (her skill in street fighting financed her college education) with an extremely high tolerance for pain and has a stanza of Lord Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib" tattooed on her back. Her favorite exclamation is "Holy shitsnacks!", or variations such as "shitzombies" or "shitsninjas." Her go-to insult for most of her coworkers is "dicknuts." It is revealed in Season 3 that she has taken up drift-racing against the Yakuza as a hobby. Pam is a devoted graffiti artist and her tags are seen frequently in the background of scenes as a running gag.

In the season 4 episode, "Un Chien Tangerine", Pam applied to become a field agent. She took the ap test naked (so nobody thinks she would be cheating) and passed it with flying colors. While Malory didn't think Pam could handle herself in actual field work, Pam showed Malory a video where she took on Cyril, Krieger, and Ray who all wore body protection while she was (still) naked, and won. She shadows Lana and Archer as on a mission to The Vatican, during which time she displays an impressive aptitude for learning foreign languages.

In season five, after ISIS disbands and becomes a drug cartel, Pam takes a more active role in the group's missions in light of Ray's condition. However, during her first mission, Pam ends up becoming a cocaine addict as the result of the drug being absorbed into her skin when it was made into a body cast. Pam's addiction leads to her eating a significant amount of the cocaine, to everyone else's fu, and causes her to drastically lose weight. In the Season 5 finale, she delivers Lana's baby. By the start of season 6, she has kicked her cocaine habit (though she remains a heavy drinker), and has regained the weight she lost.

Dr. Krieger

Doctor Algernop^[3] Krieger (Lucky Yates), is the head of the ISIS applied research department. He spends most of his time working on projects to facilitate his kinky sexual fantasies, including an advanced sex robot named Fister Roboto, a mechanical hand to choke Cheryl when his own hands are not strong enough for her taste, a drug that instills homosexual urges in its users (this eventually kills Danny the Intern), various animal-human hybrids, and a holographic girlfriend simulation so real that the state of New York legally allowed him to marry it (their plans were scuttled because "society couldn't deal with it"). Krieger has also displayed a fetish for homeless people and especially bumfights since his first speaking appearances in season one, though that fetish seems to have evolved as of season 3 to include specialized weapons, such as electrified boxing gloves.

He has admitted to not actually being a medical doctor, or a doctor in the sense of holding a PhD either, so either he uses "Doctor" as a fraudulent title, or else his first name is actually Doctor. He kills another intern, Chet, by having him wear a not-quite-bulletproof vest during a live-fire test. He's alluded to frequently drugging other co-workers, admitting to Pam "I've had good results with ether" when advising her on how to increase her odds for having sex with co-workers. For the first three episodes Krieger did not speak. His first lines, during the fourth episode, are a passionate defense of his reasoning for creating Fister Roboto.

Season 2 reveals that his 'father' was a Nazi scientist who escaped to Brazil, and Krieger is possibly a clone of Adolf Hitler (a reference to The Boys from Brazil). In a later episode, he ranted about it and points out he can't be due to the lack of similarity to Adolf and saying quote "If I was a clone of Adolf Goddamn Hitler, then wouldn't I look like Adolf Goddamn Hitler?!" The end of Season 2 reveals that he had been working on a project that, as KGB agent Katya Kazanova puts it, could "shift world power." But when he learns that the Russians have technology to build cyborgs, he remarks that his project was a failure as his 8 years of work was wasted.

He is an avid devotee of the Canadian rock band Rush, going so far as to having an expansive, elaborate drum set installed in his small apartment in an attempt to master their song "YYZ" (which Krieger insists be pronounced in the authentic Canadian style as "why-why-zed"). He also had a van with illegally tinted windows, a souped-up sound system, and the words "EXIT... VAN LEFT" airbrushed on the side. In the Season 2 episode "Double Trouble" the van was destroyed when Archer's fiancée Katya Kazanova sacrifices herself when Barry Dylan, now a cyborg, is attacking Archer by jumping off Archer's balcony, taking Barry with her. In Season 3 episode "The Man from Jupiter", Krieger has a new van that he calls "Vanispheres", which ends up getting shot up by a group of Cuban hitmen trying to kill Archer. Later in "Space Race: Part 2", Krieger's van has since been repainted with the Rush album image of Caress of Steel and rewritten to be titled "Caress of Krieger". In Season 4, Krieger has a new van called Van By Night that is painted with the cover art from the Rush album Fly By Night with Krieger's face superimposed on the head of the Snowy Owl.

Krieger frequently angers the other ISIS employees but is invaluable to the agency for both his technological genius and his ability to dispose of dead bodies in a discreet, orderly and efficiently disturbing fashion. Though most of his actions seem to inspire disgust with his fellow co-workers, Krieger seems to have a sympathetic view towards Archer.

In season 5, Krieger tries to help the team with their new cocaine empire but gets into trouble with such things as building a submarine at an indoor swimming pool, trying to use the cocaine to ballast it and when it fails, destroying all the cocaine. While visiting the mansion of a Central American dictator, Krieger is stunned to realize that the man's lab is staffed by a trio of clones identical to him. When the clones turn out to be insane and planning to fire a nerve gas missile (which has sufficient range to hit New York city, Krieger fights them and seemingly kills them all, but his subsequent memory issues leave the others wondering if he's really their Kreiger. He claims this is a result of a concussion sustained from a fall sufficiently high to kill at least one of the other clones with Krieger landing on him. His claims that it wasn't a chip he implanted in Cheryl's head, along with the fact that he continued to defuse the nerve gas missile, do suggest he is the real Krieger, though hints that he may be a clone continue throughout season 6. Show runner Adam Reed has gone on record to state that only he and voice actor Lucky Yates know whether or not Kreiger is a clone. ^[4]

Ray Gillette

Ray Gillette (Adam Reed), is an intelligence analyst and one of the few competent members of ISIS. Like Lana, he is a much more conscientious field agent than Archer, and the two are close friends. Ray is gay and often verbally-abused in a sophomoric fashion by almost everyone who speaks to him, having an outright hostile relationship with Malory (who disparagingly refers to him as "Ms. Gillette") and an often-adversarial one with Archer though they frequently assist each other. In "Blood Ferlin," Ray is revealed to have been born and raised in the backwoods town of Ferlin, West Virginia, where his brother Randy is a marijuana farmer who is unaware of Ray's occupation and sexual orientation. It is also revealed that Ray has changed the pronunciation of his surname, which his brother pronounces as "GILL-it."

In "A Going Concern" he reveals that he was once married to a lesbian he met at a "Pray Away the Gay" Bible group. Early in Season 2 he reveals he's an Olympic bronze medalist in Men's Giant Slalom, a finish he called "a huge disappointment". A recurring character in Season 1, Ray's much larger role in Season 2 depicted him as a more-than-capable field agent with expertise in wiring and explosives. In the Season 2 finale he reveals that he is an ordained but out-of-practice minister who is still allowed to perform marriages ("the irony of which is not lost on [him]"). He commonly wields a pair of Colt 1911 with ivory grip inlays, and the names 'Barbra' and 'Liza' engraved on them.

In the end of "Heart of Archness," Ray is apparently paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair while his position as a field agent is taken by Cyril. However, in "Blood Ferlin," Ray is revealed to have withheld the truth that he is not suffering paralysis until Archer and Lana finally caught him. But in the Season 3 finale, "Space-Race 2", Ray ends up being paralyzed for real as the result of Archer interfering with Cyril landing the spacecraft. In Season 4, showing more ire towards Archer, Krieger gives Ray cyborg leg-implants that allow him to walk again, although Ray frequently seems to forget that he even has bionic legs. However, in the season finale he is paralyzed once more when Archer, while rough-housing with him, accidentally short-circuits his bionic legs with a defribrillator. In season five, after ISIS disbands, Ray begins falling into a depression due to a combination of tutoring Cheryl and his lack of mobility despite the latter can be resolved with a reboot (which Krieger kept hidden from him for personal pleasures). He does finally give the reboot, allowing Ray to walk again, though Krieger can turn his legs off if Ray offends him.

During "Pocket Listing," Ray was tasked to hide in among the plants of a greenhouse that was housing a large carnivorous plant during a mission. While everyone else was too busy, he was left to fend off the large plant that wanted to eat him. He managed to survive, but unfortunately lost almost half of his right arm during the ordeal. Kreiger transplanted a new bionic (and black) right hand for Ray.

Woodhouse

Woodhouse (George Coe in first four seasons, Tom Kane in season 5, Roy McCrery in flashbacks) is Sterling's long-suffering British valet who patiently accepts the unending stream of abuse Archer hurls at him. An avid heroin user, he apparently used to hang out with William S. Burroughs and may have been an accessory to the manslaughter of Joan Vollmer. He frequently hints at a mysterious military career that included experience with cannibalism in the King's African Rifles. In "The Double Deuce" he discusses being beside his squad leader (and, it is heavily implied, lover), Reggie Thistleton, as he was killed by a sniper during World War I. Woodhouse then killed and scalped over 50 German soldiers with a knife in an apparent berserker rage and was subsequently medically discharged. It was later revealed he received the Victoria Cross for his service. In the aftermath of his discharge Woodhouse seems to have traveled the world trying to forget Reggie, it is implied that his drug addiction started during this time in an oriental opium den, until WW2 when Mallory Archer stumbled into his Tangiers bar in the throes of labor. After delivering Archer atop his bar, even inadvertently naming him, he helped Malory gun down a German hit squad who had been chasing her. He got the new family to safety and raised Sterling by himself for the first several years of his life. When properly motivated, Woodhouse has proven to be a proficient killing machine, even with a single knife. Notably, Woodhouse is one of the few people Malory treats with respect and has been employed directly through ISIS since its inception. Archer, however, is quite unreasonable with him, routinely disciplining him by throwing his clothing, shoes, and other belongings over his balcony or by ordering Woodhouse to eat cobwebs. Archer also threatens to rub sand in his butler's eyes, then orders Woodhouse to buy "coarse" sand in preparation of the act. It is also made clear in the Season 1 episode "Killing Utne" that Sterling perceives Woodhouse as more of a house pet than a human being: When Woodhouse arrives at Malory's dinner party, Sterling states "I don't even know how you got out," and when Malory invites Woodhouse to sit down to dinner, Sterling scolds him and asserts that they should not be kind to him or "he'll think he's people". Despite this however, in "The Papal Chase" Archer briefly expresses concern to Pam as to whether or not Woodhouse seems happy. In "The Double Deuce" Woodhouse reveals that he is occasionally roused to action, as he pistol whips Archer into unconsciousness and announces his plan to "yank his pants off, splash a lot of scotch and women's underthings about, and then tell him he slipped and fell chasing a terrified Asian prostitute out onto the patio," which he has been forced to do to cover his tracks at least three or four times a year.

He has a younger brother named Dicky, whom Archer abandoned in Mexico after the two absconded there from a Las Vegas jail. In "The Papal Chase", Archer reveals to Lana that Dicky has since died and that he never even bothered to inform Woodhouse of it. After ISIS is disbanded and Archer loses his penthouse, he still has Woodhouse move in to the mansion the team uses, the elderly man living in the dried out swimming pool. He does not appear in Season 6, with Archer at one point making copies of a a "missing" poster for him.

The name of "Woodhouse" is an inside-joke and reference to the character of "Jeeves," who was the butler in the P.G. Wodehouse novels.

Recurring characters

• Barry Dylan (Dave Willis) is Archer's arch-enemy. He began the series as Len Trexler's number two at ODIN, in which capacity he had a contentious working relationship with the ISIS staff and a casual flirtation with Lana. He has a major grudge against Archer, who was responsible for shattering Barry's femur during a botched operation in Berlin. Barry also holds Archer responsible for the termination of Barry's engagement after having anal sex with his fiancée, Framboise. However, Barry himself admits to Trexler that they were "engaged to be engaged." Showing a petty side, Barry frequently mocks ISIS's incompetence, going so far as to offer Lana her dream job contingent on her sleeping with him. In the finale of Season 2, Barry is contracted by ISIS to retrieve Archer after he is arrested in Moscow. He agrees (contingent, again, upon Lana sleeping with him when he returns) but in the process, Barry is dropped off a fire escape by Archer in a moment of self-preservation. This results in the amputation of his right leg and several other injuries. The KGB rebuilds Barry as a cyborg under the name "Comrade Bionic Barry" to seek vengeance on Archer, but he goes rogue, murdering Katya Kasanova to ruin Archer's wedding. Having become mentally unhinged to the point of referring to his bloodlust as "Other Barry", Barry takes over the KGB, kills Nikolai Jakov and steals away the now-cyborg Katya before being stranded on the space station Horizon after Cyril destroys his ship. Taking control of Horizon, using its advanced telescopic abilities to keep tabs on Archer to launch attacks on him while ordering the crew to make him a new spacecraft to return to Earth. His return is made possible when Katya manipulates Archer into having Kreiger help finish fixing Barry's escape craft. He returns to earth, though with notable tension in his relationship with Katya, who has taken over as the leader of the KGB. Barry later returns in the Season 6 episode "Edie's Wedding", again intent on killing Archer, whom he reveals to Pam that Katya dumped him for Boris, Nikolai's old ally. With nothing left, he decided to take it out on Archer. Archer and Pam defeat him with the help of Pam's sister Edie, burning off his human skin in the process, but he somehow survives. After his transformation into a cyborg, Barry always appears dressed in a track suit, a reference to The Six Million Dollar Man

• Katya Kazanova (Ona Grauer) is a sexy KGB Agent who wishes to defect to ISIS. When Archer goes to Russia to investigate Nikolai Jakov being his biological father, Katya saves his life. She makes Archer promise to take her back to the States, which he does, and asks to become an ISIS Agent. Katya reveals that she became smitten with Archer the instant she first saw a picture of him when in training with the KGB. Archer quickly falls in love with Katya, and even tries to quit drinking for her. Later, Archer asks her to marry him, and she agrees. The impromptu ceremony takes place on Archer's balcony, but when Barry Dylan appears and attempts to kill Archer, Katya grabs Barry and jumps off the building, committing suicide in an attempt to save Archer. Archer cries hysterically and ends up vanishing for three months. Upon his return, however, he has processed his grief and claims to barely remember Katya's name. It is revealed later in season three that Dr. Krieger surreptitiously stole Katya's body and rebuilt her as a cyborg. She is resurrected and reunited with Archer, requiring him to get over his fear of robots. They nearly marry, but their wedding is interrupted by Barry (again), who tracked Katya down thanks to a part purchased from the KGB by Krieger, and Katya's fight with him eventually turns into sex, and the two cyborgs run off together leaving Archer brokenhearted. Months later, she contacts Archer, pleading for him to help find a way to bring Barry back to Earth, with Archer instead deciding to try and make Katya think Barry is cheating on her to have Katya come back to him. Ultimately, it turned out Katya was only leading Archer on in order to get him to help bring Barry back to Earth. However, even when he returned to Earth, Katya made it clear she refused to have Barry kill him. The factor that Barry still wanted to murder Archer, most likely put them at odds. Katya has displaced him as head of the KGB and eventually leaves him for another man.

• Len Trexler (Jeffrey Tambor) is the head of rival spy agency ODIN (Organization of Democratic Intelligence Networks), a Paris-based organization which regularly undercuts ISIS for lucrative government contracts, which is revealed because they regularly engage in bribery. ODIN enjoys fancier offices, higher salaries and more advanced equipment than ISIS, but is bogged down in the same kind of petty office politics. He may be Sterling's biological father. He purchases ISIS in an attempt to get Malory to marry him, but Archer, Cyril and Kreiger brainwash him (with the assistance of a KGB mind-control chip salvaged from Archer's head) into no longer finding Malory attractive. The effects of the brainwashing may be permanent as well as not limited to his perception of Malory; he displays such a decrease in cognitive function that even Sterling expresses guilt about it.

• Nikolai Jakov (Peter Newman) is the head of the KGB. He is in a secret relationship with Malory (the two would be ruined should their affair become public) and shares Trexler's status as Archer's possible biological father. He has a large video screen link directly to her office, which he uses to talk with her on a regular basis. He continually tries to persuade Malory to live with him in Moscow, often going to extreme lengths such as staging the assassination of a U.N. official at her dinner party and using a whole KGB surveillance team to make a sex tape of her for blackmail purposes. He desperately wishes to be Archer's father, even calling him "son," but with the caveat that if he discovered that Archer was not his son, he would personally kill him. Jakov is briefly united with Archer, as he defects from the KGB, only to be killed by Barry at an ISIS safehouse. Before his death, Jakov attempted to record a video for Sterling, though the whereabouts of the video still remain a mystery. Although his subordinates address him as "Major", this may be an in-joke ("Major Jack-off"), as he wears a Major General's uniform with KGB royal blue colors.

• Mannfred and Uta (René Auberjonois and Kathryn Cressida) are a pair of German freelance assassins. Uta resembles the main character from the film Run Lola Run. The two are in a relationship despite Uta being 19 and Mannfred being middle-aged (Uta admits during an argument that they are together mainly because of her unresolved issues with her father). Uta desperately wants to have a baby to the extent of wearing a prosthetic pregnancy belly and believing that she is actually pregnant. Mannfred reluctantly tolerates her delusions, and she is later seen carrying a life-sized doll in a baby carrier. Jakov regularly hires them for New York-based activities like assassinating a U.N. official or kidnapping Archer to implant a mind-control microchip in his brain. Mannfred is almost always seen wielding a Mauser C96 broomhandle pistol.

• Trinette Magoon (Maggie Wheeler) is Archer's favorite call girl. She answers to a pimp named Popeye. In the second season she has a son named Seamus Sterling Magoon-Archer ("The Wee Baby Seamus") and forces Archer to submit to a paternity test overseen by ODIN. Archer, sure that he is the father, switches his own blood for Cyril's, who turns out to be the actual father. Archer is then stuck paying child support to Trinette and looking after Seamus occasionally, although Trinette knows he isn't the real father.

• Brett Bunson Buckley (Neal Holman) is an ISIS worker who is frequently injured in the office by being shot. He was heard (and shot) several times in Season 1, but was not seen til the Season 1 finale. He has been shot four times by Archer and once by Lana, Cyril, and Hollywood starlet Rona Thorne. He has also been badly beaten twice by Archer and once by Barry Dillon. Brett is finally killed in Season 5 when he got a bullet to the forehead during an FBI raid on ISIS.

• Bilbo (Adam Reed) is a heavyset ISIS worker who mans the control room. Bilbo likes to work Lord of the Rings references into his conversations, and is occasionally victim to Archer's verbal and physical abuse. He is slapped by Malory in Episode 8 of Season 4 causing him to have a heart attack and die. Nobody notices this except Kreiger who laughs and mocks Bilbo for being killed by a slap. Due to an out-of-order airing (Episode 8 is second in the season's production order), his death is referenced by Krieger in Episode 6.

• Rip Riley (Patrick Warburton) is an adventurer and former ISIS agent recruited by Malory (who appears to be an old flame) to track down Archer and bring him home after he disappears following Katya's death. Rip flies a seaplane he calls 'Loosey Goosey' which he adamantly claims is practical despite its obvious shortcomings for the mission. Savvy, level-headed Rip is familiar with the threat of modern pirates and has a good knowledge of geography. As a former ISIS field agent Rip also has good combat, weapon and survival skills. Although Rip is confident and pragmatic he is somewhat arrogant and short-tempered with Archer (mainly due to Archer's personality).

• Noah (David Cross) is an Anthropologist turned pirate slave, who becomes Archer's First Mate and translator when Archer becomes the Pirate King in the "Heart of Archness" arc.

• Burt Reynolds, after being referenced in many episodes as Archer's favorite actor, personal hero, and "spirit guide," appears as himself in the episode "The Man From Jupiter," immediately besting Archer in a bar fight. Archer is thrilled to meet his idol but horrified to discover that Reynolds is dating Malory. Archer attempts to break up his mother's relationship with Reynolds, but accepts it after Reynolds convinces him that he needs to see Malory as someone with emotional (and sexual) needs, not just his mother. The fact that he convinces him while driving Archer around the city in an extremely awesome car chase doesn't hurt his cause. It is implied later on in Season 3 that Reynolds is still dating Malory, but not regularly, leading Malory to believe that Burt is ashamed of being seen with her, and their relationship has ended by season 4.

• Rodney is the new supervisor of the armory at ISIS, a sarcastic pencil-pusher who enjoys having the ISIS agents go through endless paperwork to acquire weapons for missions. Rodney is undaunted by the verbal abuse from ISIS agents, with him being protected by bullet-proof glass and also being able to lock them out of (or inside) the armory with the press of a button. After ISIS was shut down by the CIA, Rodney stole all the weapons from the ISIS armory and became an arms dealer.

• Ron Cadillac (Ron Leibman) is Malory's new husband and the largest Cadillac dealer in the tri-state area. He is amiable, if gruff; and is liked by everyone at ISIS except his new stepson. He was previously a car thief whose original last name was Kazinksy. His uncouth behavior frequently irritates Malory, like bringing crackers and jelly with him to the opera and his casual, though well-meaning, racism tends to infuriate Lana. Though Ron stood by Malory's side, he ultimately left her after being shot by the Yakuza when he learned of one of her old flames. In a later episode, Malory reveals they are getting back together, but that its still not a very solid. At some point, they even tried an open marriage. Ron is voiced by Jessica Walter's real-life husband, Ron Leibman.

• Gustavo and Juliana Calderon (Fred Armisen and Lauren Cohan), the Totalian dictator of the small Southern American country of San Marcos and his scheming, seductive First Lady. Gustavo is engaged in a brutal civil war against communist rebels secretly backed by the CIA, who are also involved in a cocaine-for-weapons deal with Calderon that Archer and his team blunder their way into. A bumbling but violent dictator, Calderon is far more interested in Cherlene, whose music he becomes obsessed with to the point where he buys one million copies of her album to ensure it goes platinum. His wife, Juliana, is implied to have been previously married to his father (the island's previous dictator), and seduces Archer immediately upon his arrival in San Marcos while disguised as a maid. He eventually divorces Juliana to marry Cherlene, but is immediately deposed by Cyril, who imprisons him alongside Archer and forcibly marries Juliana. Gustavo, Cherlene and Archer join forces to escape prison, but he is killed when Cherlene releases a tiger from his personal zoo, which devours him. Juliana is implied to have fled the country soon after.

• Slater (Christian Slater), an arms dealer who is eventually revealed to be an undercover CIA agent who later becomes Mallory's primary contact with the agency in Season 6. Modeled after his voice actor, he insists that his name is a mononym.

Other characters

Other characters have also been voiced by Coby Bell (Conway Stern), Shelly Desai (Crenshaw/Kremensky), Audrey Wasilewski (Elke Huebsch), Ron Perlman (Ramon Limon), Thomas Lennon (Charles), Ben Garant (Rudi), Rafael Ferrer (Skorpio), George Takei (Mr. Moto), Stephen Stanton (Captain Lammers), Kari Wahlgren (Anka), Clarke Peters (Popeye), Peter Serafinowicz (George Spelvin and a fictionalized version of James Mason), Darren Criss (the Irish Mafia), Joan Van Ark (Ruth), Ji Li (Pirate Captain), Michael Rooker (Sherriff E.Z. Ponder), Jack McBrayer (Randy Gillette), Bryan Cranston (Commander Drake), and Timothy Olyphant (Lucas Troy). Judy Greer and Jeffrey Tambor also voiced one-off minor characters in addition to their primary roles: Greer as Framboise, the human resources director at ODIN, and Tambor as Torvald Utne, a United Nations bureaucrat from whom Malory wants to secure a lucrative weapons contract. So far, three of the four main co-stars from H. Jon Benjamin's other animated series, Bob's Burgers including John Roberts (playing the Archer-universe's version of Linda who married an amnesiac Archer and called him 'Bob'.), Eugene Mirman and Kristen Schaal (playing Cheryl/Carol's brother, Cecil and sister-in-law, Tiff) have appeared on the show. Bob's Burger's alumnus, Larry Murphy plays Frank in Season Three.

References

Archer Adam Reed Characters Sterling Archer Cheryl Tunt Seasons 1 "Mole Hunt" "Training Day" 2 3 "The Man from Jupiter" "Space Race" 4 5 6