Aidan Waite

Aidan Waite is a fictional vampire and one of the principal characters featured in the North American television series Being Human. The series is based on a British programme of the same name, which premiered on the BBC in February, 2008. Known primarily as just "Aidan", he is played by actor Sam Witwer and was introduced in the series' pilot episode, "There Goes the Neighborhood (Part 1)", and has appeared in every subsequent episode to date. Aidan's counterpart in the original series is John Mitchell, played by Irish actor Aidan Turner.

Early years
Aidan Waite is an Irish-American born some time in the mid 1700s. He had a wife and child and served during the Revolutionary War. During the war, Aidan encountered a soldier who also happened to be a vampire named James Bishop. Bishop turned Aidan into a vampire and became his mentor. Abandoning everything he knew in his human life, Aidan became Bishop's greatest protégé, an unrelenting, merciless killer. According to another of Bishop's charges, Marcus Damnian, Bishop and Aidan "were like gods". At some point in his life, Aidan assumed the alias Aidan and has been referring to himself by that name ever since.

During the mid 1950s however, Bishop began going through severe emotional torment and began longing for human companionship. He struck up a deep relationship with a woman named Laura - a relationship that Aidan felt was completely foolish and counterintuitive. Aidan admonished Bishop at length, even to the point of humbling his maker. Ultimately, Bishop knew what he had to do and killed Laura so he could resume his previous lifestyle. By the 21st century, Aidan was living in Boston, Massachusetts and began working as a nurse at Suffolk County Hospital. Tired of the sadistic life he had been leading, Aidan chose to abandon his darker impulses and shied away from drinking blood from living humans. Working at the hospital enabled him to sustain his cravings by stealing bags of plasma from the storage rooms.

Roomies
At some point during his time at the hospital, Aidan met a young, neurotic orderly named Josh Levinson. He helped Josh out of a sticky and violent situation and the two became friends. To Aidan's surprise, Josh was a creature of the night as well - a werewolf. Traditionally, vampires and werewolves were natural enemies of one another, but both men ignored tradition and felt that they could help one another in their ongoing struggle to maintain their humanity.

Aidan and Josh decided to buy a house together - a place where they could be themselves without having to worry about keeping their darkest secrets under wraps. They leased a townhouse from a man named Danny Angeli. Danny was not only the landlord of the place, but he was also the former occupant. Aidan and Josh soon discovered that the house was haunted by the spirit of Danny's late fiancé, Sally Malik. Sally, unable to leave the house, became Aidan and Josh's new, reluctant roommate.

Although Aidan had embraced his humanity, he was still subject to vampiric bloodlust. Aidan's inability to control these bouts of hunger yielded drastic consequences when he attacked and killed a fellow nurse named Rebecca Flynt. Terrified over what he had done, he contacted Bishop to help straighten out the matter, but Bishop's solution was one that Aidan was unprepared for. He turned Rebecca into a vampire. Rebecca proved to be an unruly and unpredictable vampire, whose motivations and emotional state changed with each passing night. Inwardly, she resented Aidan for causing her death, but she was also secretly in love with him. The two would occasionally meet in secret to satisfy their carnal lusts. Bishop believed that Rebecca could be his instrument to reshape Aidan back into the "proper vampire" that he once was.

Bernie
A short time later, Aidan met a young neighborhood boy named Bernie. Bernie had been tormented by a group of older bullies until Aidan intervened, scaring them away and warning them to leave Bernie alone. The boy, desperate for both a father figure and a brotherly figure, immediately took a liking to Aidan and Aidan liked the boy as well. Bernie's mother was extremely apprehensive about this budding friendship, but Aidan tried to allay her fears, citing that he was just being a good neighbor. One day, Aidan was babysitting Bernie at his house and tried to get him interested in The Three Stooges. He told him to go upstairs to his room and grab any DVD that he wanted. Unfortunately, Bernie grabbed an altogether different disc entirely. The one he took contained a personal video of Rebecca seducing and then murdering a man in a hotel room. When Bernie's mother learned of this, she flew into a rage and warned Aidan to never come near her son ever again.

Devastated, Aidan nonetheless obeyed the woman's wishes. Returning home from work one evening, he saw Bernie being tormented once again by bullies, but forced himself to walk on by. Trying to get away, Bernie stepped out onto the road and was struck by an oncoming car. Aidan rushed to his side, but there was little he could do. He brought Bernie to the hospital and attempted to reconcile with the boy's grieving mother. His injuries were too severe however and Bernie passed away. Aidan attended his funeral and tried to comfort his mother.

Rebecca learned what had happened and, in her own twisted way, wanted to help Aidan out. Disregarding all protocols about turning children into vampires, she disinterred Bernie's remains and made him into one of them. Aidan was horrified when he learned this, telling her that a vampire with a child's impulse control issues is a threat to everyone around. Rebecca believed that Aidan and she could raise Bernie as if he were their son. Aidan was lost over how to handle the situation.

The following day, Aidan discovered that the two older boys who had bullied Bernie were found in an alley with their throats ripped out. Aidan never questioned the nature of this incident, but he knew what he had to do. He took Bernie out into the middle of the forest under the pretense of hunting for deer. When the child wasn't looking, Aidan used a wooden stake and ended Bernie's existence.

The Dutch
Aidan soon found himself at a place where he had to make some extremely difficult decisions. Josh had been abducted by Bishop's brood and forced to fight in an underground werewolf "dog fight" arena. Aidan negotiated with Bishop to set Josh free, but there was little that Bishop was willing to do as he was putting on the show to impress the vampire elders. Aidan told him that if he let Josh go free, he would return to the "family". Bishop arranged it so that Josh was guaranteed to win his dog fight. As promised, he was set free immediately afterward. Aidan was now forced to honor his side of the agreement and went back to working for Bishop.

Aidan and Bishop's relationship turned immediately caustic when he learned that Bishop intended on killing the Dutch and making an unprecedented bid for power in New England. Bishop invaded Aidan's home and tried to kill him by driving a stake into his heart. As he had entered the building uninvited, he suffered intense burns across his face. Aidan survived the encounter, but knew that he had to take care of Bishop once and for all - particularly when he learned that bishop intended on killing Josh. He conspired with Sally to make sure that Josh was safely tucked away and confronted Bishop one-on-one. The two fought and Aidan decapitated his mentor.

In the wake of Bishop's demise, Aidan found himself in the reluctant position of being the new authoritative figure for the vampire population in Boston. Many of the "orphans" that Bishop left behind flocked to Aidan for guidance and he tried to teach them the merits of drinking blood from sources other than living humans. Not all of the vampires took to this with great enthusiasm and Aidan had trouble keeping his charges from indiscriminately feeding off live prey.

New management
A vampire elder known as "Mother" arrived in Boston to survey the status of the city and to review Aidan's progress. A surviving member of the Dutch, Hegeman, supported Aidan as the city's new vampire leader, but warned him against speaking out-of-turn with Mother. Mother issued an edict declaring that all of Bishop's orphan vampires were to be culled. Aidan tried to appeal to her sense of mercy, but Mother had none to offer. The vampires invaded their domicile and Aidan and Mother were forced to destroy them. Believing Aidan to be a weak leader, she declared that her daughter would become the new leader of the Boston vampires and that Aidan was to follow her instruction. If he proved faithful, she promised that she would award him his freedom from the bureaucracy.

Re-surfacing
Aidan spent the following year buried in his coffin; completely conscious, completely aware and starved for blood. During his internment, he dreamed elaborate Baroque designs of revenge against Mother should he ever see the surface again. A human named Mickey Dorrin found Aidan and dug him up. Aidan was so weak and delusional that he couldn't even offer any resistance when Mickey fitted him with a metal restraint mask. He brought him back to his house where he began draining his blood. Through the haze of dementia, Aidan learned that Mickey intended on selling his blood to other vampires. A member of the Dutch, Atlee, came to Mickey's house and killed him, thus rescuing Aidan. Atlee was in bad shape and explained that during the past year, a new strain of influenza swept through the human population. While it was mildly discomforting for humans, it contaminated their blood, making it deadly to vampires who attempted to feed from them. Atlee believed that Aidan's blood might hold the key towards curing them. He attacked Aidan in his car, but gained no nourishment from him. The final stages of the virus overtook him and Atlee disintegrated.

The first thing Aidan did was to contact Josh from a pay phone. Josh and the newly resurrected Sally Malik drove out to retrieve him. They were elated to see that he was still alive, but Aidan was shocked and more than a little disturbed to note that Josh was no longer a werewolf and that Sally was alive again. He knew that the blood magic used to restore her body could only be bad news.

Once he got himself cleaned up, he tried reconnecting with people from his past. He tried getting blood from his favorite donor, Tracy, but she told him that she had the flu and that her blood was no good. She gave Aidan a tip on where to get clean blood, but this turned out to be a trap. A group of werewolves spotted Aidan in alley trying to purchase some baby's blood and they attacked him. Fortunately for him, his old friend and progeny, Henry Durham, came upon him and helped him escape.

Henry brought Aidan back to his home where he introduced him to his girlfriend, Emma. Emma had clean blood and Henry offered her to Aidan. Aidan came to realize that Emma was a prisoner in the house. Henry never allowed her to even go outside, and continued to compel her actions, which were slowly driving her insane. As hungry as Aidan was, he could not abide this kind of inhuman slavery, so he set Emma free. When Henry learned of this, he flew into a rage. Aidan tried to keep him calm, insisting that he would find another way for them to feed.

Notes & Trivia

 * The character of Aidan Waite was created by Jeremy Carver and his wife Anna Fricke, based on concepts originally developed by Toby Whithouse.


 * Actor Sam Witwer is is no stranger to playing this type of character. In 2008, he played a character named Davis Bloome in season eight of the CW Network television series Smallville. Witwer's character was an EMT serial killer that transformed into a savage monster known as Doomsday. Witwer also played a character named John Stoler on the "Shiny Happy People" episode of Angel and played Private Jessup on in the 2007 film The Mist.


 * Aidan is named after Irish actor Aidan Turner, who played Aidan's counterpart John Mitchell in the BBC version of Being Human.


 * Consuming garlic forces Aidan to reveal his true vampire visage. The only thing that can reverse the effect is bathing in a tub filled with various herbs.

Differences between Aidan and Mitchell

 * Aidan is American whereas Mitchell is British.


 * Aidan is a nurse in a hospital while Mitchell is a porter.


 * Aidan fought in the Revolutionary War and World War I while Mitchell only fought in World War I.


 * Aidan rarely consumes garlic, while Mitchell loves it. Mitchell does not suffer any ill effects from consuming garlic.


 * Aidan casts a reflection and his image can be captured or recorded. Mitchell's cannot.