Colonel Sullivan: the soldier who wanted to kill Eleven, explained
Character · Sullivan · The army
Two seasons, a handful of scenes, and a human toll the story never settles. In this article: who Jack Sullivan is, the thesis he defends in front of Dr. Owens, the assault on the Lenora house, the attack on the Nina Project and Brenner's death, what this character says about the army faced with the police and the laboratory, what becomes of him under the quarantine, and the three figures he gets confused with. By the end, you'll know why the story needed an adversary without powers.
Lieutenant Colonel Jack Sullivan is the officer who, in the spring of 1986, decides that Eleven must die. He has neither powers, nor a laboratory, nor a creature behind him: he has a theory, men, and helicopters. Here is who Sullivan is in Stranger Things, where his conviction comes from, what he does at the Nina Project, and what becomes of him afterward.
The essentials
- Name: Jack Sullivan, lieutenant-colonel de l'armée américaine
- Played by: Sherman Augustus
- First appearance: Fourth season, third chapter, spring 1986
- His conviction: Eleven kills from a distance; the other dimension has nothing to do with it
- His feat of arms: the assault on the Nina Project, in a former Nevada silo
- Last season: Serves under Dr. Kay's orders; burned in the fourth episode
- Status: Alive in the seventh episode; what follows is not shown
Contents
- Sullivan (Stranger Things): who Lieutenant Colonel Jack Sullivan is
- His thesis: the evil does not come from the other dimension
- The assault on Lenora and the hunt across the country
- The attack on the Nina Project, in the Nevada desert
- What he stands for: the army above the police and the laboratory
- What becomes of him: the quarantine, the flames, the silence
- Not to be confused: Brenner, Owens, Dr. Kay
Sullivan (Stranger Things): who Lieutenant Colonel Jack Sullivan is
Jack Sullivan is a lieutenant colonel in the American army. He enters the story in the third chapter of the fourth season, in the spring of 1986, in Dr. Sam Owens's office, a file of photographs under his arm. He is neither a doctor, nor a police officer, nor a scientist: he commands armed men, and someone has entrusted him with a problem nobody knows how to name.
Sherman Augustus lends him his face: a calm voice, sparing gestures, no excess. Sullivan does not shout and does not believe himself wicked. He sets out a line of reasoning, politely, then he has them fire.
His role holds in few scenes, spread over two seasons, and yet he shifts the whole trajectory. He is the one who forces Eleven to flee east, the one who costs Martin Brenner his life, the one who installs the army as a human adversary in place of the Soviets. In exchange, the story grants him no past: neither a unit of origin, nor a family, nor an identified superior.
The Eleven T-shirt, the target of the whole operation.
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His thesis: the evil does not come from the other dimension
The office scene is the key to the character. Sullivan spreads in front of Owens the photographs of Chrissy Cunningham, the first victim of March 1986: the limbs broken, the eyes pushed in, and nothing else. No break-in, no bruise, no trace of a struggle. His reasoning starts from that void. If nobody touched the victim, it is because the attacker did not need to touch her.
From that follows his conclusion. A single person, in the army's files, kills from a distance by thought. Sullivan recalls that Brenner's program trained its subjects for that type of execution, and that a massacre has already taken place in the corridors of the Hawkins laboratory, seven years earlier. For him, the line is straight: the girl killed before, she is doing it again, and someone in the administration is covering for her.
Owens says no. He first states that Eleven is dead, then refuses to give up her position. Sullivan leaves him the choice between cooperation and the hard way, and leaves without obtaining anything. The rest of the season is only the application of that threat.
His thesis is false, and that is what makes it interesting. The killer of 1986 is Henry Creel, become Vecna, a child of the same laboratory thrown to the other side seven years earlier. Sullivan is therefore right on one point: everything does start from Eleven. He is wrong about the one who matters: she wanted none of this. His error is not stupidity, it is a refusal. Admitting another dimension costs an officer more than accusing a teenage girl.
The assault on Lenora and the hunt across the country
Since the fall of 1985, Eleven has lived in California with Joyce, Will, and Jonathan, in Lenora Hills. Owens posted two agents in front of the house, Wallace and Harmon. In the spring, after the skating-rink incident, Eleven is arrested and then picked up by Owens, who takes her into the desert. The boys stay in Lenora.
In the fifth chapter, soldiers take the house by assault, at night, in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. Wallace is killed. Jonathan, Mike, and Will flee in Argyle's delivery van; Harmon, wounded, collapses in the back and dies on the road after breathing a single word, the name of the project.
Sullivan searches the house himself. In the bedroom, he finds the note Eleven had left for Mike: the proof that she is alive, that she left of her own accord, and that a code name is circulating around her. The hunt stops being an office hypothesis.
It is worth measuring what the story shows there. An army unit opens fire on a California house, at the other end of the country, far from Hawkins and its dead, to reach a teenage girl. No warrant, no police warned, no warning. The only two adults on post there are agents of the state, and both of them lose their lives there.
The attack on the Nina Project, in the Nevada desert
The Nina Project occupies a former missile silo in Nevada, decommissioned and then put back into service in secret. Owens installed a sensory-isolation tank there, designed with Brenner, meant to plunge Eleven back into her memories until her powers return. The site has neither an address nor a sign.
In the eighth chapter, titled Papa, Sullivan's men take the base and shoot the staff. A few minutes earlier, Brenner had drugged Eleven to keep her from leaving and had Owens chained to a pipe. When the assault begins, nobody, in the bunker, is in a state to fight back.
Brenner brings Eleven out of the building and covers her with his body. A helicopter opens fire. Hit, he collapses on the sand and asks her to say she understands; she leaves without saying it. Her powers, back just in time, destroy the aircraft in flight, at the moment when Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle arrive.
The operation is a failure, and Sullivan leaves free. He is neither arrested, nor relieved of his duties, nor even contradicted. Owens stays chained in the bunker, and the story does not show what becomes of him. The count, for its part, is clear: the site's staff, two agents in California, a helicopter crew, the founder of the program. None of these deaths is the work of the creature whose hypothesis he refused.
The Dr. Brenner figure, fallen in the Nevada desert.
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What he stands for: the army above the police and the laboratory
Three institutions have shared the story from the start. The police, with Jim Hopper, who protects badly but protects. The laboratory, with Brenner and then Owens, who studies, lies, and covers. And the army, long kept in the background. Sullivan is the moment when the third moves ahead of the other two.
His method holds in one principle: ask nobody's permission. He warns no local police, neither in Indiana nor in California. He does not go to the laboratory, closed since 1984. He treats a senior health official as an accomplice. He does not investigate, he concludes, then he deploys.
The story holds there one of its most constant ideas: the adults in uniform never understand what they are guarding. Brenner trains in order to possess. Owens conceals in order to protect. Sullivan shoots in order to eliminate. Three ways of missing the same child, and three failures.
This turn prepares what follows. After showing the enemy on the other side of the Iron Curtain, the story shows what its own side does with a teenage girl who frightens it. The final season no longer has a single Russian: the human adversary carries the same flag as the heroes.
What becomes of him: the quarantine, the flames, the silence
Nineteen months pass. In November 1987, Hawkins is sealed off, the population believes in a natural phenomenon, and the army holds the roads. Sullivan is still in his post, and has not been sanctioned: he serves in Dr. Kay's unit, nicknamed the "wolf pack," alongside Lieutenant Akers and Sergeant Ramirez. The order has not changed: find Eleven, at any cost.
In the third episode, when Akers is captured on the other side, he is the one who launches the search. In the fourth, he catches the children's evacuation organized by the group and has Joyce, Will, Mike, and Derek Turnbow arrested on the military base.
That is where everything turns against him. Henry Creel appears in his form as Vecna and massacres the guards. The creatures that come with him are not him: they are Demogorgons, beasts of the hive, and Vecna is no more the Mind Flayer of the previous seasons. Three distinct entities, which the story has never confused. An explosion throws Sullivan to the ground; he burns.
He is seen again in the seventh episode. His face bandaged, his skin in shreds, he describes to Dr. Kay what he saw: the wizard, the creature that commands the others. The officer who refused to consider another dimension ends up testifying to it. Kay listens to him, then repeats to Akers that the priority remains unchanged: Eleven, at any cost.
It is his last scene. The story shows neither his death, nor his recovery, nor his departure. In the spring that follows the battle, the army has left Hawkins, and his name does not come back. Like Dr. Kay, he exits without redemption or punishment: an institutional obstacle, not a monster to defeat.
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Season 4 · Episode 3 The visit to Dr. Owens
Sullivan sets the photographs of Chrissy Cunningham on the desk and lays out his theory. Owens refuses to give up Eleven's position.
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Season 4 · Episode 5 The assault on the Lenora house
Soldiers attack the Byers' house. Agent Wallace is killed; Agent Harmon dies in Argyle's van after breathing the project's name.
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Season 4 · Episode 5 The note left for Mike
He searches the room himself and finds Eleven's note: the proof that she is alive and that she has been put in a safe place.
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Season 4 · Episode 8 The assault on the Nevada silo
His men take the Nina Project and shoot the staff. Owens is chained, Eleven drugged: nobody can fight back.
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Season 4 · Episode 8 Brenner's death
Brenner brings Eleven out of the building and takes the shots from a helicopter. She destroys the aircraft and leaves. Sullivan leaves free, without sanction.
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Season 5 · Episode 3 Under Dr. Kay's orders
He serves in the unit charged with capturing Eleven. When Lieutenant Akers disappears on the other side, he launches the search.
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Season 5 · Episode 4 The roundup, then the flames
He catches the children's evacuation and has Joyce, Will, Mike, and Derek arrested. Henry attacks the base; Sullivan is badly burned.
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Season 5 · Episode 7 The last testimony
His face bandaged, he describes the wizard to Dr. Kay, who keeps her priority. It is the last time he is seen.
Not to be confused: Brenner, Owens, Dr. Kay
Martin Brenner is not Sullivan. Brenner founded the program, raised the numbered children, and had himself called Papa; he dies in the desert, shot from a helicopter placed under Sullivan's orders. The two men want the same girl, but one of them wants her alive.
Dr. Sam Owens neither. Owens ran the laboratory, he provided Eleven with a birth certificate and a roof, and he is the first target of Sullivan's pressure. He is the man of the state in whom Eleven places her trust, and he pays for it.
Dr. Kay, finally, occupies another function. In 1987, she runs the military operation; Sullivan carries it out. She conducts experiments, he conducts assaults. Confusing them amounts to confusing the brain and the arm.
One useful clarification remains. Sullivan has no power, no link to the other dimension, no share of monster. He is a man with a rank, a conviction, and orders. That is what makes him unsettling: an antagonist you could run into in an administration corridor.
The final-season poster, when the army seals the town off.
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Frequently asked questions
Who is Lieutenant Colonel Sullivan?
An officer of the American army, played by Sherman Augustus. Convinced that Eleven is responsible for the deaths of the spring of 1986, he hunts her across the country and gives the assault on the Nina Project, in the Nevada desert.
In which episodes does Sullivan appear?
In the fourth season, from the third chapter through the eighth, Papa. In the final season, he is seen in the third, the fourth, and the seventh episode.
Why does Sullivan want to kill Eleven?
Because he believes she kills from a distance by thought: the victims bear no trace of an attacker, and Brenner's program trained its subjects for that type of execution. He knows nothing of Henry Creel.
Does Sullivan kill Dr. Brenner?
Indirectly. Brenner is shot by the crew of a helicopter placed under his command, in front of the Nevada silo, while he was protecting Eleven with his body.
Does Sullivan die?
Not on screen. He is badly burned in the fourth episode of the final season, during the attack on the base, then shown alive in the seventh, his face bandaged. What follows is not told.
Who plays Sullivan?
Sherman Augustus, in the last two seasons. He plays the character with a great deal of restraint, with neither a vocal effect nor a pressed threat.
What is the link between Sullivan and Dr. Kay?
He serves under her orders in 1987, in the unit nicknamed the "wolf pack," with Lieutenant Akers and Sergeant Ramirez. Kay decides, Sullivan carries it out.
Does Sullivan have powers?
None. He is an ordinary soldier, with no link to the other dimension. His only weapon is institutional: men, vehicles, and orders that are not discussed.
