Who is Crowley?
When it is revealed that John’s father, Dr. Ben Wilson (Charles Dance) , a man thought long dead is still alive, Weir’s life changed dramatically. Ben was a psychologist who worked for the American government and at one point had to fake his own suicide to protect those he loved. When he came back into Weir’s life decades later, Ben almost immediately tried to recruit his estranged son and Valence for his battle against those who would use “The Algorithms of Control” for toppling the American government. He and his former partner, Crowley were the two brilliant minds who had been working on this methodology for decades. The two saw how information can change the outcome of wars, or how misinformation can create chaos, and with Ben’s analytical mind, they could even predict patterns in human behavior that made it easy to move citizens, law enforcement, corporations and high ranking government officials like chess pieces, into whatever formation they so desired.
Crowley for almost the entire season, other than the occasional flashback, is merely a gravelly voice in someone’s ear, or a whisper over a telephone. He is the apparent mastermind behind everything, and his plan, despite a few hitches, is going off very smoothly. Weir, Ben and their team, which eventually includes Homm and Hailey Winton (Meta Golding) always seem as if they are one step behind.
Eventually, Crowley is revealed for the first time in a long time, as he kidnaps Ben and Weir’s ex-wife Liv (Alex Castillo). At this point, Crowley (Lance Henrickson) is a shell of an elderly man, hooked up to an oxygen tank as much as he’s proverbially hooked up to his nefarious system of informational control.
What Was Crowley’s plan?
Simply put, Crowley always wanted control. His time with Ben when they were young agents showed the two men how easy it would be to take control of almost anything, including a government as powerful as the United States.
To get what he wants, Crowley uses his influence to force Valence’s hand, as Weir’s long time friend has to commit suicide in order to protect Weir. Valence had been placed deep undercover in Arda Analytics, an analytical company that, much like Weir did, controls the narrative for their clients, just on a much larger scale.
Crowley also forces Senator Evers (Megan Follows), a Presidential candidacy front-runner to create an act that would allow large corporations to collect and monitor almost all information within America, including private citizen information, all in the guise of national security. Weir originally thinks Crowley wants to place Evers in the White House as a Manchurian Candidate type of puppet, but her assassination at the hands of Crowley dispels that notion fairly quickly. Crowley only needed Evers’ support and martyrdom to push the Act through. Not surprisingly, in honor of her egregious death, the “Nora Evers Protection Act” is greenlit, and naturally, Arda Analytics is named one of the companies the American government would go to in order to collect that precious information.
