Characters / Justified Bennett Family

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Bennett Family & Associates

In General

One of Harlan County's oldest crime families, the Bennetts have been in business since Prohibition, selling moonshine and marijuana. They dominate the town of Bennett, and their hand can be felt, not only throughout the rest of Harlan, but much of the south, with their marijuana fields reaching all the way to West Virginia. They have a longstanding feud with the Givens family, which dates back to their days as alcohol smugglers, and which still flares up from time to time.

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• Archenemy: The Bennetts are the collective archenemies of the Givens'. On a personal level, Dickie would like to be Raylan's, though he's overshadowed in this regard by Boyd Crowder.
• All for Nothing: At the end of the day, all of efforts of Mags and her boys to gain a fortune for herself and establish a better future for the next generation of their family are for naught. The community they ran for decades despises them, Loretta turned on Mags, and Mags, Doyle and Coover are dead, all because of Mags selfishness of trying to steal Loretta for herself.
• Bandit Clan: A rural gang of moonshine runners and marijuana dealers, they've since branched out into other criminal enterprises.
• The Clan: They were one, back during the days of Prohibition. Nowadays they are down to just the one nuclear family, though they still operate along these lines, and maintain control over the town that bears their name.
• Corruption of a Minor: They employ 14-year-old Loretta to sell weed.
• David Versus Goliath: The Bennetts, with their greater manpower and established reputation are the Goliath to Boyd's David. Unfortunately for them, Boyd's men make up for their lack of numbers with better training and planning.
• The Dreaded: Within the town of Bennett. When Raylan and Rachel arrive in town hoping to arrest Jimmy Earl Dean—a child molestor—they receive no help from the locals because Dean works for the Bennetts. People would rather have their children at risk from a predator, than chance a confrontation with Mags or a visit from Dickie and Coover.
• Egopolis: Their town, Bennett, is named after them and was founded by their ancestors.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Bennetts are a dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless. Dickie, Coover, and Doyle all look out for one another and their mother, and while Mags is often disappointed by and abusive towards her boys, she still loves them just the same.
• The Family That Slays Together: Let's see...Mags is a marijuana kingpin who poisoned Walt McCready and goes to war with Boyd Crowder. Doyle's her right-hand man and enforcer, who murders two people to cover up his brothers' crimes. Dickie's a spectacular example of arrested emotional development, who ratchets up the highest bodycount of any of them—including Raylan's aunt. Coover's a brutal thug who beats Raylan to a pulp and tries to murder a fourteen year old girl. And surrogate daughter Loretta is a weed-dealer who is now working her way up to taking Mags' place.
• Feuding Families: With the Givens. The entire thing was based on a misunderstanding (a Bennett thought a Givens had sold him out to the police), but no one cares about that any more, and there are very few Bennetts or Givens' left in Harlan County.
• Hillbilly Moonshiner: They got their start this way, even though the family business is now marijuana. Mags still brews up the occasional batch.
• I Own This Town: Bennett township is the property of the family it's named for, with Mags and her boys brooking no outside interference in how they conduct their internal affairs. Dickie takes the attitude one step further, hoping to one day own all of Harlan County, though he's woefully ill-suited to the task of making this dream come true.
• Mob War: Dickie and Coover almost start one with the Dixie Mafia, and Dickie subsequently embroils the family in a conflict with Boyd Crowder's new gang.
• Unknown Rival: To Raylan Givens. The entire clan see's him as their biggest enemy and greatest threat. Raylan, for his part, doesn't care at all and all of his investigations into the clan are due to his regular duties as a US Marshall.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Doyle's kids aren't seen or mentioned after the family's downfall, while Dickie seems to have primary or sole ownership of the Bennetts' emergency money stash and family land.

Family

Mags

Maggie "Mags" Bennett

"I had every intention of living a simple life."

Played By: Margo Martindale

"We got our own kind of food, our own music, our own lick-ah! We got our own way of courtin’, raisin’ children and our own way of livin’ and dyin’."

Maggie "Mags" Bennett is the matriarch of the Bennett family, whose history of criminal undertakings includes a large marijuana operation. She's also the mother of Doyle, Dickie, and Coover Bennett, all of whom are disappointments to her in one way or another. With her plans of being a simple wife and mother ruined by her husband's early death, Mags took control of the family's drug enterprise, running the convenience store that acts as their front, and ruling the town of Bennett with an iron fist behind the scenes. She's as famous for her "applie-pie" moonshine as she is for her ruthlessness, and has complex dealings with both Boyd Crowder and US Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens.

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• Abusive Mom: She breaks Coover's hand, and it certainly isn't the first time she's inflicted physical abuse upon her sons. She later tells Dickie that if Coover had hurt Loretta she'd have killed him herself.
• Affably Evil: Very, very affable. She's witty, cool and friendly to just about everyone. She often seems irritated when she 'has' to use violence and takes a definite shine to Loretta. She even tries to keep the peace after Raylan kills Coover by having a civilised sit-down with Helen, during which she admits her own culpability in what happened.
• Alas, Poor Villain: By the time that Mags commits suicide there's not much left of the Bennett township tyrant. Her dealings with Black Pike have turned the town against her, and she made the deal in the first place to provide for favored son Doyle, who is now dead. Coover is dead as well, Dickie is headed for prison and Mags' beloved surrogate daughter Loretta views her with nothing but vicious hatred for killing her father. Her criminal empire is also in tatters following a war with Boyd, truly leaving her with nothing. Mags decides that there's nothing left for her, and takes her own life.
• Almighty Janitor: Mags is a grandmotherly, humble shopkeeper who is in reality the head of the largest marijuana-dealing operation in Harlan County and the one who really controls the town of Bennett.
• Almighty Mom: Everyone is terrified of Mags, though it's mixed with a certain amount of respect; she's Affably Evil enough to be a beloved member of the community, but no one's foolish enough to cross her and incur her wrath. She's also the only one who can bring her idiotic and violent sons Dickie and Coover in line, and her wrath is the one thing that scares them off from their various moronic schemes.
• Animal Motifs: Mags basically treats her family more like pets than actual people. She disciplines Coover like a disobeident dog, and her relationship with Loretta is treated akin to Mags as more of a new pet than an actual human.
• Antagonist in Mourning: Despite the Givens and Bennetts being Feuding Families, Mags sincerely respected Hern. She's genuinely upset when Dickie murders her and is furious when he confirms he's guilty, even slapping him.
• Anti-Villain: Mags isn't a good person and is ruthlessly vicious when she's crossed, but she's one of the most sympathetic villains. She certainly presents herself as much more well-intentioned and community-minded than she actually is, but she's generally quite reasonable and avoids needless bloodshed.
• Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster: To the unaware, Mags seems like a humble shop owner, but in reality she controls Harlan County's weed trade and is the real power in control of Bennett despite any indications to the contrary.
• Apologetic Attacker: While breaking Coover's hand with a hammer, she admits she doesn't want to do it, but can't let such a betrayal pass without consequence.
  Coover: Mama, I'm sorry.
  Mags: I know you are, Coover. That's why it hurts so much to do this.
• The Atoner: Subverted. She just wants to retire and extricate her family from the dangerous criminal underworld, but Mags feels no remorse about her misdeeds up to the very end. She acknowledges that she's done bad things and regrets that they've hurt people, but she ultimately views everything she's done as necessary.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: If you do not want to sell your land to her, she will send her sons over to convince you otherwise. They might use bear traps or wild animals to do the convincing.
• Authority Sounds Deep: She has a deep voice and is the undisputed leader of the Bennett clan. Also doubles as Evil Sounds Deep.
• Avenging the Villain: Subverted. She initially wants to seek vengeance on Raylan for killing Coover, but Helen convinces her not to and Mags admits it was Coover's own fault he was killed, and that he had forced Raylan's hand. Unfortunately, Dickie's actions wind up reigniting the feud between her and Raylan anyway, and she sides with Dickie to protect him.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Dickie is clearly The Unfavorite and Mags's relationship with him is strained at best. However, after briefly letting him get sent to jail, she has him released and comforts him, reassuring him that she'll protect him.
• Bad Boss: Downplayed in comparison to the series' other villains, but Mags refuses to tolerate screw-ups, even if it's from her children. She punishes Coover for going behind her back by breaking his hand with a hammer.
• Baby Be Mine: She killed Walt out of hopes that she would be able to do a better job of raising Loretta than he did.
• Bait the Dog: In her first appearance, Mags is quite Affably Evil, treats her underlings well, and even gets along well with Raylan. She's so charming it's easy to doubt her bad reputation, until she murders Loretta's father for reporting Jimmy Earl to the police, even though it was because he had threatened to rape Loretta and Mags herself was disgusted with him.
• Being Evil Sucks: She admits to Raylan she hates being a criminal and what it's turned her into, and that she really just wanted to be a housewife. She's as ruthless as she is to make sure her family doesn't have to take the same path she did, no matter the cost.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Mags is a lot more sociable and easy going than her sons, or other major villains like Wynn Duffy, Robert Quarles, or Nicky Augustine. She is not, however, any less dangerous.
• Big Bad: Of Season 2. It's her attempts, first to extract herself from her family's criminal dealings, and then to win the Mob War that Dickie triggered, that drive the seasonal arcs.
• Book Ends: In the first and last episode of Season 2, Mags shares a jar of her " apple pie" (i.e. moonshine) with someone, and says almost exactly the same words, revealing that while the apple pie wasn't poisoned, one of the glasses was. In the first episode, the poisoned person was Loretta's dad, in the last episode it was Mags herself.
• Brainy Brunette: She's a brunette and one of the biggest Chessmasters in the entire series.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Loretta adores Mags and sees her as a Parental Substitute right up until she finds out Mags killed her father, which destroys her trust in her and permanently shatters their relationship.
  • Despite being on opposite sides of the law and frequently clashing with her sons, Raylan gets along quite well with Mags and respects her, and the two are on friendly terms. After learning she killed Loretta's father so she could take him in, he becomes much colder to her and is clearly angered he was suckered in by her charm.
  • The citizens of Harlan County and Bennett in particular adore Mags and she's a beloved member of the community despite her profession. She destroys her reputation with her deal with Black Pike, and turns the town against her for betraying them.
• Category Traitor: She's viewed as a traitor to the community after selling her ancestral land to Black Pike. As Black Pike is a coal mining company with a history of exploiting the region and leaving devastating pollution behind, and since Mags had been a strong opponent against them, her siding with them destroys her reputation and makes her into a Broken Pedestal to most of the town.
• Character Death: She commits suicide at the end of Season 2.
• The Chessmaster: Mags stays a step ahead of everyone until the season finale.
• Churchgoing Villain: She's a frequent churchgoer, although she doesn't seem particularly religious.
• Clean Food, Poisoned Fork: She kills Walt with a glass of her "apple pie" liquor that she poisoned before filling it. She later uses the same method during her final encounter with Raylan, except this time on herself.
• Comfort the Dying: A twisted example where she does this to someone she killed. After poisoning Walt, she reassures him that she'll take care of Loretta, that he can forget all his worries and pain, and that he'll reunite with his late wife.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Season 1's Big Bad was Bo Crowder, who reveled in being a criminal and was more than willing to go after his own family if it got him what he wanted, as well as being somewhat misogynistic. Mags is a woman who is fiercely loyal to her family and wants to quit the criminal life. Where Bo wanted to make a deal with outside forces to increase his own influence in the underworld and flood Harlan with drugs, Mags is opposed to getting involved with the gangs from outside Harlan and is morally opposed to dealing anything harder than marijuana.
• Cool Old Lady: She's certainly evil, but Mags is very much this. She's witty, charming, friendly, intelligent, and sings a mean tune.
• The Corrupter: For Loretta, albeit unintentionally. Mags genuinely wants to provide Loretta with a life far away from Harlan's criminal underworld and the poverty and pain so common in the county. But by getting her involved in the family's drug dealing, teaching her the tricks of the trade. and killing her father, Mags ultimately causes Loretta to become just like her.
• Dissonant Serenity: She's calm and simply behaves like a typical disappointed mother while bashing Coover's hand in with a hammer. It's clear doing so is a completely logical and routine affair, with no emotion factored into it.
• The Don: Mags is a female variant. She has total control over Harlan County's marijuana trade and is the head of a close-knit yet dysfunctional family of drug dealers and moonshiners.
• Doting Parent: To Loretta and Loretta only, even though Loretta isn't officially adopted into the Bennett family. Coover grows jealous and sabotages their relationship, though Mags never stops caring about Loretta.
• Driven to Suicide: With her only halfway competent son dead, her criminal empire dismantled and her surrogate daughter longing to see her dead, Mags decides she's had enough. She drinks some of her own poisoned 'apple pie' and expires.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means: She's fine with Black Pike polluting the region and destroying Harlan County's environment so long as her family has enough money to live comfortably.
• Entitled to Have You: Mags has shades of this with her relationship with Loretta. She up and declares that she's her mother, even killing her father in order to take the girl for herself.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Coover and Dickie sincerely love her and desperately want to earn her affection, especially the former. It's subverted in Doyle's case, as he seems reliable but ultimately is willing to let her die so he can get her money. Loretta also loves and admires her before she learns that Mags had Walt killed.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She does love her sons in a twisted, conditional way, and wants to get her grandchildren out of the family business. She also loves Loretta, who she sees as a daughter.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Mags tells Raylan that she stays away from methamphetamines and pills like Oxy due to moral objections. It's unclear if she's being honest, or if she's just savvy enough that she knows the Oxy business invites out-of-town invaders like Quarles, though she's sincerely offended when she learns Coover and Dickie have been trying to branch out into selling harder drugs.
  • She's disgusted with Jimmy Earl Dean's ephebophilia and his obvious lust for Loretta. She quickly cuts ties with him when he learns he tried to rape her.
  • She clearly doesn't like how Dickie and Coover refuse to accept responsibility for their actions, and discourages it. It's one of the many reasons she regards them as disappointments.
  • She phrases it quite rudely, but admits she wouldn't subject Dickie to the same physical punishment she inflicts on Coover is because he's already crippled.
• Evil Counterpart: Mags has a lot in common with Helen Givens, and their similarities come to the fore when they meet to discuss the family feud. Both of them have experienced hardship as women in the largely patriarchal world of Harlan with their feet firmly planted in the criminal element.
• Evil Matriarch: Of the Bennett clan.
• Evil Mentor: To her sons Doyle, Dickie, Co0ver, as well as her surrogate daughter Loretta. She schools them in the ways of the criminal underworld and in simple business, hoping that one of them will take after her. Dickie and Coover prove to stupid to be viable successors, and Doyle is only really an effective henchman, but Loretta proves a worthy successor to Mags.
• Evil Old Folks: She's in her later years, but hasn't lost her bite.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Played with. Mags involved all her sons in the criminal life, but her ultimate goal is to make enough money for her children and grandchildren to live a financially secure life legitimately, and to leave behind their criminal ways. Unfortunately, Dickie is so enamored with being a criminal that he ruins these plans, and Mags decides her dreams of retirement were always a pipe dream.
• Evil Sounds Deep: She has a deep voice and while she's quite nice and at times sympathetic, she's still ruthless and evil.
• Eviler than Thou: Carol Johnson comes to Harlan under the belief she can easily deal with Mags, and that she isn't much of a threat. Mags very quickly out-gambits her and forces her to make a deal on Mags's terms.
• Face Death with Dignity: After poisoning herself, Mags remains calm and serene as she dies, and ends the Bennett feud with Raylan by shaking his hand. Even as the poison painfully kicks in, Mags contentedly states that she'll see her boys again and "get to know the mystery".
• Family-Values Villain: She's a firm proponent of family values, though it doesn't stop her from being quite abusive to her children.
• Fat Bastard: Mags is hefty and overweight, and while she's not as outright evil as some of the other antagonists, she's still bad news.
• Fat Sweaty Southerner: A rare female variant, although she's much less of a caricature than this trope usually is. She is an overweight Small-Town Tyrant, but Mags is sincerely charming and down-to-earth, and her weight is simply just accepted as part of her character. She just happens to be a ruthless drug kingpin at the same time.
• The Fatalist: Mags was forced into the criminal life, but by the end of Season 2 she decides she can never escape from it and decides to embrace being a criminal, feeling satisfied that Doyle's family can grow up far away from Harlan and lead normal lives.
• Forced into Evil: Mags just wanted to be a housewife, but was forced into the criminal life after her husband was killed, and was forced to harden herself to succeed in a Wretched Hive like Harlan.
• Freudian Excuse: In a moment of vulnerability, Mags admits all she wanted was to be a housewife, but after her husband Pervis was killed she was forced to take control of the family marijuana business. This caused her to become increasingly ruthless because that was what was necessary to survive in Harlan's underworld, which in turn caused her abuse of her children.
• Friendly Enemy:
  • Typically presents this front when dealing with Raylan. They know they're on opposite sides of the law, and the family feud can't be forgotten, but they're always civil to each other, and at least early on, come off as genuinely friendly. Towards the end of the season, the facade crumbles, and the feud resurfaces with full force, though the conversation she has with Raylan just before her suicide indicates that she would like to forgive him and move on.
  • She's also quite friendly with Helen despite the feud, and even hears her out when she tries to talk Mags out of killing Raylan.
• Geek Physiques: She's an overweight woman and a crafty, intelligent Chessmaster who effortlessly manipulates everyone and stays on top throughout most of Season 2.
• Genius Sweet Tooth: She's The Chessmaster, able to run rings around her opponents mentally and outwits almost everyone. She also has a fondness for apple pie, and home brews her own moonshine that's flavored just like apple pie.
• Graceful Loser: She accepts her defeat with dignity. She calmly shakes hands with Raylan, acknowledges the feud between their families was always pointless, and calmly poisons herself so she won't go to prison and can see Doyle and Coover again.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of Season 3. She's dead, but the search for the money she's left behind drives a good deal of the plot.
• Half-Witted Hillbilly: Carol Johnson and Black Pike as a whole assume Mags is this. Unfortunately for them, Mags is quite intelligent and more than able to outwit them with ease.
• Hammy Villain, Serious Hero: Raylan is a stoic man of few words. Mags is much more charismatic and loquacious, using her unassuming Southern granny charm to disarm people. That is unless you get on her bad side. Then she'll set off on a scathing rant that will embarrass you enough to want to leave town. She's also known to break out in song on occasion.
• The Heavy: For most of Season 2, she serves as the biggest threat to Raylan and Harlan as a whole, overshadowing both the Dixie Mafia and Boyd.
• A Hero to His Hometown: Mags' ruthlessness is well-known in her hometown, but she's still beloved by the populace as a local hero and has numerous friends in the community despite her profession. She exploits her reputation to help force Black Pike to make a deal with her, though the land she sells results in her destroying her reputation for betraying the community to the exploitative mining company.
• Hidden Depths:
  • She's an excellent singer, and breaks out into song while Doyle plays the guitar after successfully brokering a deal with Black Pike.
  • According to this interview with Graham Yost, she respects Raylan because he was The One Who Made It Out, which to her means that it's possible for her and her family to escape Harlan and its criminal underworld too.
  Graham Yost: Mags didn't want to be a criminal matriarch. She wanted to be a housewife, and then her husband was killed by highway robbers and she was forced into this position and she's done it. She's done it well. She's ruled with an iron fist, and occasionally a hammer. But it was not her choice. So Raylan represents someone who got out and made a life for himself outside of the hollers.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Mags seems like a simple shop-owner and weed dealer, but throughout the second season it becomes clear she's pulling almost all of the strings in Harlan County.
• Humble Goal: Part of what makes Mags a surprisingly sympathetic figure despite all her evil is that all her power, wealth, and influence is only a means to an end so that she can provide for her family and retire in peace. During a moment of vulnerability, she admits to Raylan that she only really wanted to be a housewife, and only took over the weed business by necessity.
• Hypocrite: She gives a Rousing Speech against making deals with Black Pike, only to turn around and make a damn good deal with them herself.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Mags acknowledges she's done bad things and hates being a criminal, but she views all her crimes as being necessary in service of giving her family a better future far away from Harlan's criminal underworld. Even when she confesses to Loretta that she killed her father, she refuses to apologize for it and continues to insist it was necessary to give Loretta a better life.
• I Gave My Word: Even after Raylan kills Coover, she still insists on paying Helen and Arlo for their services because she gave her word. She was also quite willing to leave Boyd's gang alone as she promised until they messed with Dickie (which was admittedly Dickie's own fault).
• Iconic Sequel Character: She debuted in the second season and died at the end of it, but is revered as one of the series's best villains and the role won her actress an Emmy.
• Iron Lady: Under Mags' folksy demeanor is a titanium spine, which emerges whenever she's in the midst of a business deal.
• It's All About Me: For all her protests about looking out for her community and family being the most important thing in the world, Mags has no qualms about betraying anyone and everyone if it means getting a better deal for herself.
• It's All My Fault: For all her faults, Mags acknowledges she's a bad mother and that she did a horrible job raising her sons. After Coover dies, she admits it probably wouldn't have happened if she hadn't "let him become a nitwit", and she seems to view raising Loretta as My Greatest Second Chance.
• Justified Criminal: Deconstructed. Mags certainly views herself as this, as she sees all her actions as having been necessary to give her family a better life far away from Harlan's criminal underworld. She even justifies killing Walt as having been to give Loretta a better life. Ultimately, however, while Mags genuinely cares about her family, she uses the justification to rationalize horrific actions that have pushed her way over the line.
• Kick the Dog: Mags has a few moments of cruelty just to remind the audience she's evil despite her Affably Evil personality.
  • Her murder of Walt MacCready, done mainly to enforce her power and because she thought she could do a better job of raising Loretta.
  • Shortly after agreeing not to go after Raylan, a man confronts Mags about betraying her community to Black Pike. Mags responds by slapping him and telling him his children would be heartbroken to grow up without a father.
  • Her brutal punishment of Coover by breaking his hand almost certainly counts as this. While Coover is something of an Asshole Victim, it's hard not to feel sorry for him since Mags is his mother and he spends the entire time pleading and apologizing to her like a small child.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Zig-Zagged. She never betrays Loretta and never stops loving her like a mother, but she hurts her deeply by killing her father and refuses to apologize for it, regarding it as having been necessary to give Loretta a better life.
• Laser-Guided Karma: She chooses to commit suicide the same way she killed Walt MacCready. For bonus karma, part of the reason she killed Walt was because she believed she could do a better job raising Loretta than him wrapped up in his sorrow. She kills herself partially out of sorrow that Loretta now hates her.
• Lovable Rogue: Mags presents herself as one to make people less inclined to investigate her business. It's public knowledge she runs a marijuana farm, but since she refuses to sell harder drugs like oxycontin and her business is relatively harmless, law enforcement mostly ignores her.
• Mafia Princess: She started off as one, being Pervis's wife and more concerned with raising their children than their weed business. After Pervis was murdered, she was forced to take up the business and became a crime boss herself.
• Manipulative Bastard: At first she appears to be a simple shop-owner (admittedly, one with a prosperous marijuana sideline). As the story goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that this is very much not the case. Mags expertly manipulates both Black Pike and the people of Harlan County with one speech.
• Mama Bear: She may abuse her sons herself, but she will not tolerate anybody else hurting them.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: She ultimately gets what she wants; her grandchildren have enough money to get out of Harlan and escape becoming criminals like the rest of the family. However, it costs Mags her reputation, Doyle and Coover, and causes her surrogate daughter Loretta to despise her. Mags ultimately chooses to end her own life rather than go on.
• Misplaced Retribution: She places the lion's share of the blame for Coover's death on Dickie and cuts him off, who for once wasn't really at fault. As she points out, he's screwed up numerous times before in ways that put their family in jeopardy, so it was more the culmination of his failures rather than punishment for that specific act.
• The Mob Boss Is Scarier: No one will testify against anyone who even works for Mags, both because she's a beloved member of the community and because people know she'll kill them if they summon law enforcement from outside Bennett. When Walt does so, Mags kills him without hesitation.
• Moral Myopia: Subverted. She initially wants to kill Raylan to avenge Coover, but Helen talks her out of it by getting her to acknowledge that Raylan did it in self-defense and that Coover would have killed Loretta if Rayla hadn't. When she ultimately chooses to go after him to defend Dickie, she acknowledges it's wrong, but she loves her son too much to let him die.
• Morality Pet: Deconstructed. Mags genuinely loves Loretta, and she's one of the few people she treats kindly with no ulterior motive. However, Mags's attempts to serve as a Parental Substitute for her just leads to tragedy once the truth comes out that Mags killed her father.
• Morton's Fork: Mags is left with this choice towards the end of Season 2. She can either let Dickie go to prison or have Arlo ruin the Black Pike deal, which would ruin her plan to secure a safe financial future for her family. She ultimately takes a third option by waiting until the deal is closed and forcing Jed to take the fall for Dickie so he'll be released.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Mags regrets the poor job she's done raising her boys, and sees taking Loretta in as a chance to raise a proper child who can live a safe and law-abiding life.
• Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters: Subverted. She presents herself as a friend of the community and takes a stand against Black Pike to prevent the inevitable pollution and devastation to the community their mining will bring, but it's just posturing. In reality, Mags doesn't give a damn about her community and just wants Black Pike to agree to her price; she's perfectly happy with her community being exploited so long as her family's doing the exploiting.
• Never Mess with Granny: She's grandmother to Doyle's kids, and holds an iron grip over her territory.
• No Sympathy: After cutting Dickie off and leaving him only the marijuana business for telling Raylan where Coover had chased Loretta, leading to Coover's death, Dickie complains Raylan got the information out via torture. Mags is entirely unsympathetic and tells him he should've taken it.
• Noble Demon: Double Subverted. Mags presents herself as a Lovable Rogue and a Neighborhood Friendly Gangster, but it's mostly just posturing to keep the community loyal to her and to stop outside law enforcement from looking into the family too closely. That said, she's quite reasonable and generally refrains from unnecessary bloodshed.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Mags was never a fighter, and is too old and out of shape to threaten anybody directly. Luckily, she has her boys for that.
• Noodle Incident: Somehow, Limehouse ended up indebted to her and became her banker. It's never stated why he owes her a favor or what she did, but Limehouse is quite loyal to her even after her death.
• Not Me This Time: When assassins try to murder Raylan and Winona shortly after he killed Coover, Raylan suspects Mags was responsible. However, as she tells him, she's decided to keep the peace and wasn't responsible for it. In reality, it was the Dixie Mafia who were hired by Gary, who was jealous that Winona had gone back to Raylan after enough of his bad investments and stupidity.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: It's an Open Secret in Harlan that Mags runs a marijuana farm alongside her shop, but law enforcement mostly ignores her because she's seemingly harmless in comparison to Harlan's other gangs. In truth, Mags is a ruthless and powerful mob boss with much greater ambitions than her by comparison paltry businesses.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: She's one of Black Pike's most vocal opponents and has her men attack their camps to scare them off, seemingly out of a genuine desire to protect her home from the pollution Black Pike's mining would inevitably bring. However, it eventually is revealed Mags is actually trying to force Black Pike to agree to her terms and pay her an exorbitant amount; she's fine with their mining so long as she can have enough money to retire and support her family.
• Nothing Personal: Mags admits she doesn't really care about the Bennett and Givens feud, and likes Raylan well enough. Even after things become personal, when she's defeated she admits to Raylan she regrets it and she makes amends with him by shaking hands.
• Offing the Offspring: Discussed. During a conversation with Helen after Coover's death, Mags admits that had Coover succeeded in killing Loretta, she would have murdered him herself.
• Only Sane Man: Mags is the only one of the Bennetts with her head on straight. Doyle is competent but fairly prone to gaffes, and Dickie and Coover are utter morons, but Mags is a Chessmaster of the highest order and far more pragmatic. She takes a shine to Loretta because she sees that she shares Mags's cunning and common sense.
• Opposed Mentors: After her father's "disappearance" in Season 2, Raylan and Mags both take an interest in Loretta's future, with Raylan attempting to extract her from the criminal underworld, while Mags leads her further into it. Loretta eventually sides with Raylan once his cold war with the Bennetts turns hot, but as future seasons show, Mags is the one whose influence has ultimately lasted, even if she ultimately still has a soft spot for Raylan.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Mags is generally quite friendly and calm, and rarely engages in violence directly. It makes it more shocking when she break Coover's hand and screams at him and Dickie, as it shows just how much she refuses to be crossed, even by her own children.
• Out-Gambitted: Outgambits Black Pike by coming to a separate arrangement with Boyd behind their representative's back. She herself is outgambitted by Boyd when she sends a small army to attack his allies during a supposed truce, only to discover that Boyd has brought in his own reinforcements and equipped them with much better weapons.
• Parental Favoritism: Favors Doyle and his sons over Dickie and Coover, and Coover over Dickie. And if Loretta is counted as a surrogate daughter, she favors her over all of them.
• Parental Substitute: She wants to be this to Loretta and views the girl as a substitute daughter, to the point of murdering her father so she can take over as her sole parent. It works at first, but ends in tears when Loretta finds out the truth.
• Pet the Dog: She's quite prone to moments of surprising kindness, especially in her relationship with Loretta. It makes her a deeply and surprisingly likable character, making her acts of genuinely horrific cruelty all the more shocking, especially since she often continues to behave just as kindly. For example, after poisoning Walt, she spends the entire time reassuring and comforting him as he painfully dies.
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: Downplayed. Raylan is generally polite if his company returns it in kind regardless of what side of the law they're on, but he can be quite rude when in a bad mood or if he's insulted. Mags is almost always sweet, pleasant, and grandmotherly, but she's downright vicious when she's crossed.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: She's never explicitly racist, but she's implied to be by her curt treatment of Rachel, the fact she displays the Confederate flag in her general store, and by Coover's own casual racism. It's subverted in Season 3, which reveals she was friends with Limehouse and that she did something that left him and Noble's Holler indebted to her.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Mags understands that war is bad for business, and that there's nothing to be gained through bloodshed.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Most of Mags's cruelest acts stem from her need to preserve her power in the criminal underworld, which requires avoiding any signs of public weakness. All Mags wants to do is provide for her family and retire to a simple life with her family, hoping to make enough money so that they no longer need their criminal empire.
• Pyrrhic Villainy: Mags is an extremely competent Chessmaster and she succeeds in getting rich off of her deal with Black Pike, but ultimately all her scheming results in the death of her two favorite sons, her becoming a local pariah, and the destruction of her relationship with Loretta. Not to mention that Dickie's actions result in the police trying to arrest her. Ultimately, it causes her to commit suicide rather than face what her life has become.
• Racist Grandma: She's hinted at being one by her curt treatment of Rachel and the Confederate flag displayed outside her door, although Mags is generally too Affably Evil to express these sentiments directly. It's subverted and lightly retconned in Season 3, which reveals she had a Villainous Friendship with Limehouse.
• The Queenpin: As the reigning head of one of Harlan's oldest criminal families, Mags fulfills all the requirements of the trope.
• Rage Breaking Point: While she tolerates a lot of Dickie's failures and general stupidity, she loses her patience with him due to his indirect involvement in Coover's death. Ironically, it was one of the few times Dickie wasn't really at fault, but as she points out it's the latest in a long line of screw-ups that endangered the family.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Mags is actually quite reasonable despite her ruthlessness, and more than willing to negotiate with her enemies. She's firm and demanding yet entirely on-the-level in her deal with Boyd and Black Pike, she pays Arlo and Helen what they're owed even after Raylan kills Coover, and Helen's able to talk her out of going after Raylan for doing it. She was willing to end the Givens-Bennett feud entirely before Dickie screwed it up.
• Redemption Equals Death: Shortly before her death, Mags helps Raylan talk Loretta out of killing her so she won't grow up to become bitter and ruthless like the two of them. It isn't out of cowardice, but out of a sincere desire for Loretta to have a better life. Mags proves this by committing suicide shortly after, but not before telling Raylan the feud between their families was pointless and shaking his hand.
• Retired Monster: Invoked and averted. Mags wants to get out of the marijuana business and retire to the countryside with her grandchildren, despite having no real regrets about her many criminal actions. In the end, Coover's death and Dickie's screw-ups, combined with the renewed Givens/Bennett feud convince her that she was kidding herself, and she takes the family's reins once again.
• Rousing Speech: Gives one at a town hall in order to turn the people of Harlan against Black Pike Mining.
• Self-Poisoning Gambit: Mags shares moonshine with Walt. Walt is suspicious, as Mags has motive to kill him. But he is reassured when he sees her filling their glasses out of the same bottle of moonshine and she drinks first. As he begins to die and stares at her in surprise, she tells him, "the poison was in the glass..." At season's end she reverses the trick just before Raylan can take her to prison, using the same line to reassure Raylan that she had only poisoned herself.
• Sexy Villains, Chaste Heroes: Inverted. The heroic Raylan is a handsome, well-groomed Chick Magnet, while Mags is a plain, overweight grandmother.
• Small-Town Tyrant: A female variant; Mags dominates the Harlan County marijuana trade, and is the uncrowned Feudal Overlord of the town of Bennett in particular, which she rules through a combination of tradition, the people's fear of Dickie and Coover, and Doyle's position as chief of police.
• Smarter Than You Look: At first glance she's a kooky, fun, redneck grandma. She's actually incredibly intelligent and perceptive.
• Southern-Fried Genius: Much like Boyd and Bo Crowder, Mags comes off as an uneducated rube, but actually possesses a very high IQ.
• Start of Darkness: Mags was initially just a housewife content to leave the weed business to her husband and simply raise her children, but Pervis's death forced her to take control. This led to her being considerably hardened, and resulted in her becoming the ruthless Anti-Villain she is today.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: Mags is the Sympathetic, being an Affably Evil Anti-Villain with numerous sympathetic moments. Her son Dickie is the Despicable, being a Stupid Evil Smug Snake who constantly wrecks the lives of the people around him out of spitefulness and incompetence.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Her use of poisoned "apple pie" moonshine to murder Walt.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: After getting Dickie out of jail and making Jed take the fall for Helen's murder, Mags admits the circumstances it led to made her decide her dreams of retirement were a pipe dream. She feels it's too late for her to escape the criminal life, and she's content that her grandchildren have enough money to live safe, law-abiding lives.
• Together in Death: After poisoning Walt, she reassures him that he'll see his wife again and "get to know the mystery". After poisoning herself the same way in "Bloody Harlan", she acknowledges she's doing it partially to "see [her] boys again."
• Trademark Favorite Food: Apple pie, particularly her home brewed apple pie flavored whiskey.
• Troubled Abuser: She was abusive to all her sons, but Mags recognizes she was a terrible parent and attributes it to the fact she needed to harden them so they could survive Harlan's criminal underworld. She regards taking Loretta in as a second chance to be a parent, and raise a child in stable conditions so they can turn out better than her sons.
• The Unapologetic: While Mags certainly regrets some of her actions, she feels they were all necessary and refuses to apologize. Even when she confesses to Loretta that she killed her father, she refuses to apologize and while she clearly feels guilty for causing Loretta pain, right up until the end she insists Loretta would have been better off under her care.
• Underestimating Badassery: Black Pike does it to Mags, and she herself admits to doing it to Boyd Crowder.
• Unwitting Instigatorof Doom:
  • Mags is this to her entire family. The downfall of her entire clan can be traced directly back to her killing Loretta's father to take the girl for herself.
  • Mags' decision to cut off Dickie due to blaming him for Coover's death and leave him with only the weed business causes her a lot of trouble down the line, as its what leads to Dickie Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and murdering Helen.
• Villain Cred: Even Arlo and Boyd are quick to advise Raylan not to mess with Mags when he starts poking around and investigating their affairs.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Zig-Zagged. It's an Open Secret that Mags sells weed, but law enforcement tends to dismiss it as harmless and leaves her alone, and she's beloved by the citizens of Harlan as a lovable local hero despite her drug dealing. Her deal with Black Pike, however, destroys her reputation and turns the citizens against her.
• Villain Takes an Interest: She comes to view Loretta as a surrogate daughter and wants her to become her successor, or to at least take control of the family fortune. Ultimately, she succeeds despite her death and numerous other setbacks, as Loretta essentially becomes the next Mags.
• Villain Team-Up: With Boyd in the middle of Season 2. Their alliance falls apart when Dickie stupidly tries to intimidate Boyd after Mags cuts him off so he can establish himself as a force to be reckoned with, and Boyd retaliates by robbing him.
• Villainous Friendship: In the third season, it's revealed she had one with Limehouse, who owes her a debt somehow and promised to look after Dickie after she died.
• Villainous Legacy: The money that Mags left with Limehouse and the fallout from her deal with Black Pike continues to drive events in Harlan County for a long time afterwards.
• Villainous Lineage: Mags seems to have genuine concern over this for her sons. She realizes Coover and Dickie are both irresponsible, irredeemable criminals, and Doyle is a corrupt cop, but she says she has hope to build a legitimate future for Doyle's children and, later, for Loretta.
• Villainous Parental Instinct: For as evil and abusive as she is, Mags genuinely does care about her children and is extremely protective of them. She acknowledges that they're awful people and that it's her fault for raising them that way, but she still tries to protect them from harm and the consequences of their actions.
• Wanted a Son Instead: Gender-inverted. She only has sons, and she badly wanted a daughter. That's how Loretta came into the picture.
• Weak Boss, Strong Underlings: Mags is a fat old woman in no shape to do any fighting, and she relies on her sons and other underlings to carry out intimidation and fighting. Mags's strength lies instead with her cunning mind and her ability to manipulate people and situations to her advantage.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Zig-Zagged and Downplayed. Mags' pretensions of looking out for her often exploited community are all lies designed to manipulate the residents of Harlan and Black Pike, but she does have a selfish but still somewhat well-meaning goal under that. Mags wants to pull her family out of the criminal underworld and retire so they can live a simple, law-abiding life, though she eventually exempts Dickie from that out of spite.
• Wicked Cultured: She's an excellent brewer of alcohol, and is famous for her "apple pie" home brew.
• Wise Old Folk Façade: Downplayed. Mags is a friendly, witty, and grandmotherly old woman who is quite affable with everyone, and takes a special interest in mentoring Loretta and serving as a Parental Substitute for her. It's not an act, but Mags is also a ruthless drug lord willing to do anything to provide for her family, and she murdered Loretta's father due to her belief she could do a better job of taking care of the young girl.
• Worthy Opponent: She regards Boyd as such, sincerely respecting him and admitting she underestimated him, while also acknowledging him as too much of a threat to her operation to let him live.
• You Have Failed Me: A non-lethal variant. Mags refuses to tolerate being crossed, even by her own children. When Coover cashes Walt's checks without her knowledge, she punishes him by breaking his hand with a hammer and threatens to cut him out of her inheritance if he crosses her again.

Doyle

Doyle Bennett

"This bullet's been on its way for twenty years."

Played By: Joseph Lyle Taylor

"If the police chief wants to kill a guy, he ain't got to send anyone. He just waits for the guy to show up on his turf, and he rolls up on him with a bunch of his police officers. You know, that way, he can make it look like the guy died resisting arrest. Or if that don't fly, well, hell, he could just, uh, disappear the body down an old, boarded-up mine shaft."

Doyle Bennett is the oldest son of crime family matriarch Mags Bennett and, like his younger brothers, something of a disappointment to mom. Still, of the Bennett brothers, he is the most put together, serving as the crooked chief of police. He believes his position gives him more power than it really does, resulting in a brash persona that doesn't sit well with his law enforcement colleagues, especially U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens.

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• Affably Evil: In contrast to his brothers and much like Mags, he's sincerely polite and civil with everyone. He shifts into Faux Affably Evil around Raylan once he kills Coover, offering up threats in the same polite tone of voice.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despited his issues with Coover and Dickie's general stupidity and constant fuck-ups, he really does love them. He's enraged when Raylan kills Coover, and tries to comfort Dickie when Mags cuts him off.
• Avenging the Villain: Wants to avenge Dickie's crippling and Coover's death.
• Beard of Evil: He has a thick beard and is very evil.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Unlike Dickie and Coover, Doyle can actually fake being a Nice Guy. It's entirely a facade, though.
• Boom, Headshot!: Tim kills him with one.
• Broken Pedestal: Subverted. When he believes Raylan is a Dirty Cop, he initially pretends to be disappointed in him… only to immediately try and propose an alliance, and offers to cover it up for him provided he pays Doyle back with certain favors.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Is forced to play this role to his dim-witted brothers more often than not, thanks to his position as the Bennet chief of police, protecting them from the law when their hairbrained criminal schemes go south.
• Character Death: Killed by sniper fire while trying to shoot Raylan.
• Deadpan Snarker: Doyle's got a very sarcastic sense of humour, though not to the extent of the likes of Tim Gutterson or his brother Dickie.
• Dirty Cop: Doyle is blatantly corrupt, working for his mother, and not afraid to shoot other criminals to cover up his own family's activities and writing it off with "they drew down on me."
• Disappeared Dad: Like the other Bennett boys.
• The Dutiful Son: Follows Mags' every order. Though it's ultimately subverted, as he's willing to let Loretta murder her since he'll get the money from the Black Pike deal either way.
• The Dragon: To his mother, acting as her primary agent and enforcer.
• Dragon with an Agenda: In the second season finale, he's perfectly willing to let Mags die since he'll be inheriting her fortune anyway.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Doyle cares about his mom a lot and is very loyal to her.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He loves his mother, his sons, and his wife, and for all his issues with Dickie and Coover, wants payback for what Raylan did to them. Though it's subverted with Mags, as he's willing to let her die once he's assured to get the Black Pike money either way.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Implied. Following Helen's murder, Arlo works out that Dickie was the culprit because "Doyle wouldn't do this." This could also mean that Doyle is smart enough not to be involved, but given his general lack of dog kicking the possibility that he has standards can't be ignored. Doyle is also visibly disgusted when Dickie admits to being guilty, and can't even bring himself to speak to him afterwards.
• Evil Counterpart: As Doyle himself points out, he and Raylan are actually quite similar. They both come from families notorious for being criminals, and both of them wound up joining law enforcement to distance themselves from their family name. The difference is Raylan is genuinely trying to be a better person than his father, where Doyle simply wants the appearance of legitimacy and is just as corrupt as the rest of his family.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's generally sincerely Affably Evil, but he shifts into this around Raylan after he kills Coover in self-defense. He remains just as civil and friendly, but he's much more open about threatening Raylan and clearly hostile to him despite keeping up the act.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: He's the Responsible Sibling to Dickie and Coover's Foolish. Doyle holds down a legitimate job despite his corruption and is a reliable Dragon to Mags, while Dickie and Coover are morons who constantly screw up and self-sabotage. Doyle is generally the one to clean up their messes, and tries to protect them from Mags' wrath as best he can.
• Friendly Enemy: He's quite friendly to Raylan at first, although he eventually stops playing nice when he kills Coover and seemingly sides with Black Pike.
• Happily Married: Implied. He seems to genuinely love his wife, and enjoys being a family man, though it doesn't come up much.
• Hidden Depths: He may be a vile snake, but he has a family and plays guitar pretty damn well.
• It's Personal: He doesn't seem to have much enmity against Raylan at first and hides his resentment of him fairly well, but it comes out in full force once he kills Coover.
• Killer Cop: Murders two of Dickie and Coover's goons in order to cover up his brothers' crimes.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Being the Only Sane Man of the Bennett sons, Doyle lacks Dickie and Coover's tendency to pointlessly Kick the Dog and is much more prone to Pragmatic Villainy.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The Nice to Coover's Mean and Dickie's In-Between. Doyle is the most affable and charming of the Bennett sons and while he's still a ruthless criminal, he lacks his brothers' pointless cruelty and penchant for kicking the dog.
• Not So Above It All: He can take pride in being the smartest of the Bennett boys, but that's not a very high bar to jump and he has his moments of idiocy too. Particularly when he kills the two goons Dickie and Coover hired to hijack that shipment of Oxycontin, and failing to tell Mags about it before Raylan rolls up to blindside her with that little fact.
  Mags: Why didn't you tell me this before?
  Doyle: I had nothing to do with it.
  Mags: Oh, aside from shooting two idiots to keep 'em from talking!
  Doyle: (lamely) Well... yeah, that.
• Only Sane Man: It's a relative thing, but he's the smartest of Mags' sons and he's forced to play the voice of reason to Dickie and Coover's rampant stupidity.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Unlike Dickie or Coover, Doyle only really commits crimes when it's necessary or ordered. He lacks their needless sadism and is horrified when Dickie murders Helen out of needless spite.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Tries to deliver one to Raylan, but they end up being his own last words courtesy of Tim's sniper shot.
• The Reliable One: He's the only one of Mags' sons to follow orders and actually see them out, rather than going off on his own agenda. Dickie and Coover usually rely on him to clean up their messes before Mags finds out.
• The Rival: See's himself as this to Raylan, and is arguably a better fit for it than his brother Dickie. Not that it matters, as Raylan isn't even the one to kill him.
• The Sheriff: Bennett Chief of Police if you want to be technical about it, but the result is the same.
• Small-Town Tyrant: Doyle's the one who makes sure his mother's rule over the town of Bennett is enforced, and has an entire force of equally corrupt cops at his beck and call.
• Smug Snake: Doyle is comfortable in the position he's in and happy about it, but he's a pawn of his mother and isn't much of a planner himself. So he can smirk all he wants as Mags gives him the family fortune, but he earned it only because his competition was so poor.
• The Starscream: Despite ostensibly being a most loyal son, he doesn't bother to search Loretta when he lets her talk to Mags and doesn't seem to bothered by Raylan's revelation that she brought a gun to the meeting.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Averted. His unquestioning loyalty and common sense make him the favorite of the Bennett brothers.
• Yes-Man: He's one to his mom.

Dickie

Dickie Bennett

"To be very clear, I am the victim here."

Played By: Jeremy Davies

Mags: You wanna be in charge? Is that what this is about?

Dickie: I want what's coming to me.

Dickie Bennett is the second son of matriarch Mags Bennett, and brother of Coover Bennett and Doyle Bennett. The longtime feud between the Bennett and Givens clans has extra special resonance to Dickie, who was also a high-school baseball rival of now U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. It was during one notorious game that Givens provided Dickie with his persistent limp. High-strung and always seemingly scattered, Dickie is a source of disappointment to his mother, with a penchant for concocting schemes that go nowhere but bad. His best perceivable skills are his ability to deal pot and shift the blame.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Raylan takes him into the woods to kill him, Dickie begs and cries and pleads with tears in his eyes. It's so pathetic and horrible that Raylan actually doesn't kill him.
• Ambition Is Evil: Dickie is the most personally ambitious of the Bennetts, and hopes to one day rule as crime lord of all Harlan County, as Bo Crowder did in his heyday. These dreams do not mesh well with Mags' plan to extract the family's future generations from crime, or with Dickie's own limited abilities, and wind up getting a lot of people needlessly killed.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • He utterly despises Raylan and has a deeply personal enmity for him. Raylan is mostly apathetic to him, but Dickie manages to make their feud mutual by murdering Helen.
  • He also winds up becoming one of Boyd's most personal opponents by shooting Ava.
• Asshole Victim: He's tortured on two separate occasions by Raylan and Boyd, but it's hard not to admit he had it coming. Especially in the latter case, since this comes mere weeks after he had shot Ava just to spite Boyd.
• Avenging the Villain: Wants payback for Coover's death.
• Ax-Crazy: He's stable enough at first, just stupid and sadistic, but he goes flying off the rails once Coover dies and begins resorting to murder whenever he's upset. It culminates in him trying to murder Raylan by trying to beat him to death with a baseball bat.
• Bad Boss: When his new minions decide to abandon him, Dickie waits until their backs are turned and then kills them both. He also plans to have Jed take the fall for Helen's murder, and then be killed resisting arrest, and later abandons several of his other henchmen when the attack on Boyd goes south.
• Bait the Dog: He has a few Pet the Dog moments to show he's not all bad, and he's sincerely nice to his henchman and reassures Baz in particular about his poor marksmanship in an uncharacteristically nice way. He murders Baz in the same episode for trying to bail on him and proves willing to screw over the sincerely loyal Jed, and proves himself to be one of the eviler villains by killing Helen in cold blood.
• Batter Up!: Tries to beat Raylan to death with a baseball bat. This is meant to be ironic payback for Raylan breaking his knee with a bat in high school, leaving him with his trademark limp.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: He spends all of Season 2 wanting Raylan to take him seriously as a threat and reciprocate their rivalry. He succeeds by killing Helen, which results in Raylan nearly murdering him in cold blood before realizing Helen wouldn't want that of him.
• Beard of Evil: He sports a beard and is quite the nasty customer.
• Being Evil Sucks: He believes the opposite, but his sadism and ambition ultimately leads to the destruction of his family and leads to him getting sent to prison.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Dickie genuinely believes himself to be a badass criminal mastermind in the same league as Boyd and Mags despite his incompetence and stupidity. Raylan lampshades it, pointing out to Dickie that his biggest problem is that he thinks he's tough when he's really just stupid.
• Benevolent Boss: Subverted. He's quite friendly to Baz and his other men, frequently complimenting them and reassuring Baz in particular about his poor aim. However, when Baz and another man decide to quit once Dickie pisses off Boyd and make the mistake of disrespecting him, Dickie shoots them both in cold blood and threatens to do the same if any of his other men try to leave.
• Berserk Button: He gets enraged whenever he feels he's not given the proper respect. As he starts to go off the deep end, this starts to result in people dying.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Dickie is soft-spoken, and his voice rarely rises above mumbling and whispering. He's also a dangerous - albeit stupid - criminal.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Dickie's incompetence and odd mannerisms make him quite funny, but he's still a threat and will lash out violently in horrific ways.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Wants to ascend to his mother's position, but is outclassed by Raylan and Boyd both. He's still violent enough and underhanded enough to be a real problem, though.
• Big Brother Bully: Downplayed. He teases Coover at times, but for the most part he's one of the few people Dickie treats kindly.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Dickie is much shorter and skinnier than his partner-in-crime and brother Coover, who is a gigantic brute of a man.
• Big "NO!": When Doyle is killed in front of him.
• Birds of a Feather: He quickly forms a Villainous Friendship with fellow Manchild and Stupid Crook Dewey Crowe, since they're both around the same level of emotional maturity and intelligence: none at all.
• Blaming the Victim: When Raylan tries to execute him for murdering Helen, Dickie insists he shot her in self-defense and that she forced his hand. Raylan doesn't buy his Blatant Lies and only stops because he realized it's not what Helen would have wanted.
• Blatant Lies: When Raylan holds him at gunpoint for killing Helen, Dickie insists that he shot her in self-defense. In the previous episode, the audience had clearly seen that Dickie shot her in cold blood when she wasn't a threat, and he admits he did it to prove he and the Bennetts were still a threat.
• The Blind Leading the Blind: Dickie isn't too bright himself, but he frequently leads his even more dimwitted brother Coover along in his various impulsive and poorly thought out schemes.
• Boisterous Weakling: Dickie talks a lot of trash for a scrawny, physically impaired coward. The fact that he normally has Coover or Doyle backing him up helps explain this.
• Brains and Brawn: As the mildly more intelligent of the two, he plays the brains to Coover's brawn.
• The Bully: He was a Jerk Jock as a teenager who beat up other kids, and by the time of the series he hasn't matured out of that mindset at all. He's prone to throwing his weight around and insulting people when he thinks he can get away with it, which often backfires on him.
• Bullying a Dragon: Dickie goes out of his way to pick fights with dangerous people because he genuinely thinks he can back up his threats. He can't, and it always turns out badly for him, not that he ever learns.
• Bumbling Henchmen Duo: He and Coover are Mags's go-to enforcers and muscle, which they're actually pretty competent at. Unfortunately, Dickie has grander aspirations and Coover is always happy to assist, leading to them making increasingly big screw-ups.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Raylan refuses to turn him over to Boyd to be killed mainly because he needs Dickie to get past Mags and Doyle's men. Later, Boyd keeps him alive despite hating his guts because Dickie is the only one who can get his inheritance from Mags.
• Career-Ending Injury: He was a high school baseball star before he tried to beat Raylan up for fun, to which Raylan responded by hitting him in the leg with a baseball bat. It ruined Dickie's sports career and caused him to require a leg brace even years after the fact, something for which he still holds a grudge.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Prison has undermined Dickie's mental health. By Seasons 5 and 6, he's decidedly eccentric, displaying strange gestures, figures of speech, and syntax while talking to Raylan and Tim.
• Cold Ham: Dickie is soft-spoken and often speaks barely above a whisper, but his every word is filled with dramatic intensity.
• Commuting on a Bus: After being Put on a Prison Bus, he still makes occasional appearances throughout the series.
• Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Deconstructed. Dickie loves being a gangster and the power and respect that come with it, but he's too stupid and arrogant to ultimately earn it. Not only that, but his efforts to become a serious threat just ruin his life and make things worse for him and everyone in his vicinity.
• Dead Serious: He comes off as much less of a threat than Mags or his other brothers, lacking Mags and Doyle's intelligence and Coover's physicality. Then he kills Helen and makes things personal.
• Deadpan Snarker: Constantly sarcastic and sullen.
• Despair Event Horizon: He crosses it when he realizes Mags only left him a fraction of her inheritance, to the point he turns himself in to Raylan without a fuss.
• A Dick in Name: He's named Dickie and is a sadistic, petty Jerkass.
• Dirty Coward: When things don't go Dickie's way he runs or cries.
• Disappeared Dad: Like the other Bennett boys.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He murders Baz and Logan in cold blood because they tried to bail out on his revenge crusade against Boyd, and later murders Helen out of pure spite for the Givens family.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Dickie resents that no one gives him the respect he feels he's owed as a member of the Bennetts and a dangerous gangster. This of course stems from the fact that Dickie is an incompetent fool who's only really a threat because he has his family backing him up, but Dickie is totally oblivious to this and expects power and respect to be handed to him without doing anything to earn it.
• Dumbass Has a Point:
  • As mentioned below on Jerkass Has a Point, he is right for once that Coover's death really wasn't his fault and that Mags is being unfair in blaming him, However, given his long history of catastrophic screw-ups and his refusal to take responsibility for any of them, Mags isn't inclined to listen.
  • When Ash demands Dickie give him the inheritance Mags left him and threatens to make life miserable for him otherwise, Dickie is for once bewildered at someone else's short-sightedness and points out to Ash that he can't get it because he's still in prison.
  • He accurately calls out Ash and Lance for making constant mistakes, such as disobeying Limehouse's orders. It's telling that Dickie of all people has to play the voice of reason to them.
• '80s Hair: In Season 3, his hair goes from being a disheveled mess to an outrageous mohawk.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: Parodied. Looking to build his reputation after being cut off by his mother, Dickie does this as part of an attempt to intimidate Boyd. As it happens, Boyd and his henchmen were just discussing who they can target to establish themselves as being back in the criminal game. Dickie's pathetic attempts are seen by Boyd as good fortune, and he can't stop laughing when Dickie tries.
• Entitled Bastard: He wants power and respect handed to him without doing anything to earn it, and feels people should bend over backwards to give him what he wants. He doesn't react well when reality comes biting back at him.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: He desperately wants Mags' respect and sincerely loves her.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His brothers Coover and Doyle and his mother Mags. He wants Mags' trust and approval, tries to protect Coover from his mother's wrath and from Raylan ("Don't you hurt my brother, Raylan!") and lets out a Big "NO!" when Doyle dies.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He tries to stop Coover from killing Loretta. Although this was to protect Coover from Raylan and his mother more than out of concern for Loretta. He also refuses to let James Earl Dean go after Loretta in the first episode of Season 2.
• Evil Feels Good: Dickie loves being a gangster and constantly indulges in his sadism. It's another way he contrasts with his mother Mags, who views their profession as simply unfortunate but necessary work.
• Evil Is Petty: Dickie is a high school bully all grown up, and thus is as prone to acts of petty and mundane cruelty as he is monstrous evil, and he often combines the two. It's most prominent with his murder of Helen; it's not necessary at all, but he does it just to spite Raylan and Arlo at the same time because they humiliated him on separate occasions.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Boyd, or rather Eviler Counterpart. Boyd is a criminal, but he has a sense of morality and he's sincerely charming and romantic. Like Boyd, Dickie is heir to a criminal empire and wants to follow in his parent's footsteps, but unlike Boyd, Dickie lacks any sort of scruples or intelligence to back up his ambition.
  • He's also one to Raylan in a fashion. Both of them haven't really grown up from their teenage years and are emotionally stunted, but Raylan is mature enough to admit to his mistakes and hates bullies due to his abusive childhood. Dickie on the other hand was a bully in high school and hasn't grown out of that mentality, and never takes responsibility for his actions.
• Evil Cripple: Best described as physically crippled, emotionally stunted, and dangerously unpredictable—a winning combination if ever there was one. By Season 5 he is in a wheelchair.
• Evil Gloating: When he has Raylan tied up and at his mercy in "Bloody Harlan", he gleefully gloats about it while beating him senseless with a baseball bat. Fortunately, Boyd arrives and frees Raylan, and Dickie immediately starts begging for mercy.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Raylan nearly murders Dickie for killing Helen, but ultimately decides it wouldn't be what Helen wanted and chooses to spare him. Dickie returns the favor by capturing Raylan the following episode and trying to beat him to death with a baseball bat. Tellingly, when Raylan next has him at his mercy he's not nearly so forgiving and nearly lets Boyd kill him.
• Fat and Skinny: The skinny to Coover's fat. They're both absolute morons, but the emaciated Dickie's clearly the smarter and more ambitious of the two, where the overweight Coover is more of a follower.
• Fatal Flaw: Dickie has numerous flaws, but the absolute biggest is his recklessness. Dickie never thinks his actions through and acts on whatever pops into his head the second he thinks of it. It makes him a very dangerous opponent because he'll kill without considering the consequences, but it also leads to him pissing off very dangerous people and ruining every good thing he has.
• Faux Affably Evil: Dickie tries to come across as friendly in a similar manner to his mother, but he's too slimy and short-tempered to keep the mask on very long.
• Fearless Fool: Dickie is a Dirty Coward to be sure, but he's also convinced he's some kind of badass and goes out of his way to piss off much more dangerous and intelligent people because he thinks he can handle it. Of course, when he has to deal with the consequences he'll cry and run to his mother.
• Foil: To Boyd Crowder. Both men are part of a criminal family with a large presence in Harlan County, and have a long history with Raylan Givens. However, Boyd Crowder is a dangerous and charismatic individual who is a significant threat without relying on his family's legacy, Dickie Bennett is a cowardly opportunist who relies entirely on his family and their reputation to etablish himself as a threat. Essentially, Boyd is the type of man Dickie thinks he is.
  • This further extends to their relationship with Raylan Givens. Both men have long histories with Raylan, with Dickie having been crippled by him during a high school baseball game and Boyd having dug coal with Raylan. But while Raylan views Boyd as his greatest enemy, Boyd regards him as one of his closest friends. Meanwhile Dickie thinks he is Raylan's arch nemesis, but Raylan could care less about Dickie or his clan.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Foolish to Doyle's Responsible. Dickie is a foolish Smug Snake who constantly embarks on ambitious but poorly thought out plans to earn himself respect and power that cause more trouble than anything else. Doyle on the other hand is a reliable henchman and holds down a respectable job as the chief of police, and is usually the one to bail Dickie out of trouble.
• Grew a Spine: He's considerably less cowardly after his first escape in Season 3, talking back to Ash (who has kidnapped him and plans to kill him if the plan fails), mocking two men who want to murder him, shrugging off threats from Limehouse and Hot-Rod, and walking into Boyd's bar despite knowing that the latter wants him dead. When Raylan corners him in the penultimate episode, he actually tries to pull a gun on Raylan, instead of begging for mercy. It is implied that prison life, coupled with a series of near-death experiences, and his belief that he's a dead man anyway if he doesn't get the money, are the reasons for this.
• Half-Witted Hillbilly: Like the rest of the Bennetts, Dickie is quite firmly a hillbilly, but he lacks the intelligence of Mag and Doyle. While he's nowhere near as dumb as Coover, Dickie is still a moron by any regard and quite prone to fucking up catastrophically. Unfortunately, he's also quite ambitious way beyond his limited capabilities, causing quite a bit of trouble for his family.
• Handicapped Badass: Downplayed. He might be a crippled, skinny idiot, but he still manages to kill Helen, shoot Ava and trap Raylan, even if doing so earns him no respect.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Though an unreliable one. Sometimes Dickie can keep his temper during highly stressful circumstances; other times he'll explode with very little provocation.
• Hate Sink: Dickie is there to make his mother look more likeable by comparison. He's smug, whiny, stupid, has a large yet unwarranted ego, and is a petty sadist.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Downplayed. Dickie's nowhere close to a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but he has quite a few Pet the Dog moments throughout Season 2 to show he's not all bad. It's brutally subverted once he goes Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• The Heavy: Tries to take this role from his mother on occasion, and she is regularly forced to act to cover his screw-ups.
• High Hopes, Zero Talent: He has grand ambitions of becoming a feared and powerful drug lord in his own right, but he lacks the brains and common sense to actually pull it off.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Dickie is desperate to prove himself a badass gangster who should be feared and respected by everyone, but his stupidity and recklessness result in his attempts to accomplish this screwing him over time and time again. Every time Dickie tries to do this, he makes his life increasingly worse, but never quite catches on to this.
• Hot-Blooded: He's not as easy to provoke as Coover, but if Dickie's ego is bruised, he will pick a fight and he'll do it viciously.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: He wants nothing more than to be a feared, respected and powerful criminal mastermind, but he's ultimately too dumb and cowardly to pull it off. He's certainly dangerous and has flashes of cunning, but he proves time and time again to be way too incompetent to handle any sort of power or leadership position.
• Iconic Sequel Character: He's only introduced in the second season, but became one of the series's most recurring villains.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Dickie is the heir apparent to the family weed business, but Mags holds him in very low regard, ultimately handing Boyd control of most of the county behind Dickie's back.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Dickie has a massive ego but tends to react poorly when it's bruised, with it often resulting in him lashing out, either through tantrums or by murdering the offender or someone close to them.
• Inheritance Backlash: Dickie inherits all the money his mother earned during her long and prosperous criminal career. However, he is in prison and cannot just get the money and leave the state. Some very dangerous people know about the money and want it for themselves. Dickie knows that once he gives up the money, he will be killed. To add insult to injury only a fraction of the money remains after his mother set up a land deal that Dickie was cut out of.
• Insufferable Imbecile: He's an utter moron despite his belief to the contrary, making him prone to impulsive decisions and unfounded arrogance, as well as a penchant for refusing to accept the blame for his many failures and shortcomings. He is a little better than his brother and partner in crime Coover in that he can at least try to be nice and charming, but it never overshadows his stupidity or Jerkass behavior.
• It's All About Me: Dickie thinks he has fortune and respect coming his way without having to actually earn it. He's more concerned with personal gratification and retribution for past slights than he is with the benefit of the Bennett family as a whole.
• It's Personal with the Dragon:
  • He and Raylan have the most personal enmity between them. Raylan at first doesn't pay Dickie much mind, but Dickie despises Raylan for ruining his baseball career and leaving him with a permanent limp. He eventually makes the feud personal by killing Helen.
  • Boyd respects Mags and doesn't have anything personal against her, viewing her as simply a business rival even if he's willing to go after her operation. He has a very personal hatred of Dickie on the other hand because he shot Ava, and takes great joy in tormenting him.
• Jerk Jock: He was one in high school. Raylan recalls that Dickie was a baseball star, but a bully who would physically abuse other teenagers. When he tried to beat up Raylan, he took a baseball bat to Dickie's knee, ending his sports career then and there.
• Jerkass: Slightly less-so than Coover, but he's still a smug jackass.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Dickie never accepts responsibility for his many, many screw-ups and is a weaselly Smug Snake in general, he does accurately point out that Mags blaming him for Coover's death was unfair. He did try to defend Loretta on his own and while he gave her location to Raylan out of cowardice, she would have died otherwise. However, given that Dickie's screwed up may times before, this is the last straw for her.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: He's a sleazy Jerkass from the start, but Dickie has a few somewhat sympathetic moments at first and comes off as the least dangerous of the Bennetts. His murders of Baz, Logan, and Helen in "Full Commitment" are what shift him into genuinely despicable territory and marks the point where he starts becoming increasingly monstrous.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Dickie is a massive Jerkass, making his constant misfortune quite satisfying to watch. It's especially true in Season 3, which he spends as a hapless pawn being bullied by much more dangerous people.
• Kick the Dog: He's quite prone to pointless acts of cruelty.
  • His murder of Helen is an undeniably cruel act designed to hurt Raylan and Arlo.
  • Forcing Walt to put his leg in a bear trap springs to mind.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Dickie is quite vicious and cruel, but his worst actions have a way of catching up with him. He's able to survive a lot of misfortune despite everything, but he makes enemies of both law enforcement and a good chunk of Harlan's criminal element.
• Laughably Evil: For most of Season 3. Having lost access to the criminal organization that made him threatening in the first place, while retaining all his humorous quirks, this is pretty justifiable.
• Leader Wannabe: Dickie desperately wants to be Mags's successor and views himself as a criminal mastermind in his own right. But while he is tenacious in his own right, he lacks the intelligence and bravery to actually take the position, and consistently screws up whenever he ends up in a leadership position.
• Lean and Mean: He's almost emaciated, and Dickie is not a pleasant person at all. He's selfish, childish, sullen, and just a Jerkass in general.
• Lethally Stupid: Very much so. Dickie's monumental stupidity and incompetence leads to the destruction of the Bennetts' criminal empire.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Dickie's mother Mags is a brilliant Chessmaster and quite Affably Evil, and avoids needless violence out of pragmatism. Dickie is a moronic Jerkass who is too big for his britches and constantly picks needless fights out of a misguided need to prove himself.
• Meaningful Name: Dickie is a petty Jerkass and one of the most unlikeable and unrepentantly evil characters in the series.
• The Millstone: He causes nothing but problems for the Bennett clan with his various schemes and general poor decision making, and winds up inadvertently causing the destruction of their criminal empire because of it. And unlike Coover, he doesn't even have the use of being a decent enforcer due to his leg injury.
• Mood-Swinger: Dickie's abrupt mood changes are part of what make him so dangerous.
• More Despicable Minion: He's firmly a henchman for Mags (albeit a disobedient one) until he's left the Sole Survivor of the Bennett clan, and much more loathsome than she is. Where Mags is Affably Evil and respectful even towards her enemies, Dickie is a smug, weaselly sadist who takes joy in tormenting the weak and folds like a coward when someone confronts him on his bullshit. He's nowhere near as evil as Jimmy Earl Dean, but still one of the worst villains in the series.
• Motor Mouth: He's quite prone to long, rambling speeches apropos of nothing.
• Narcissist: Dickie believes he's far more intelligent and tough than he actually is, and expects everyone to give him whatever he wants without doing anything to earn it.
• Nepotism: Downplayed. He has a somewhat high-ranking role in the hierarchy of the Bennetts, but Mags recognizes his incompetence and mostly relegates him and Coover to grunt work. Dickie resents this, and craves more power so he can be a feared gangster like his mother, while lacking the steel and wit that earned her her reputation.
• Never Going Back to Prison: So much so that he tries to commit Suicide by Cop by drawing a gun on Raylan. Raylan clips him and sends him back to prison.
• Never My Fault: Dickie tends to blame everyone around him except himself for his own failures. He always has some sort of reason why he's not at fault or why someone else is to blame for his misfortune, always ignoring how it generally stems from his own actions and poor decision making.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The In-Between to Doyle's Nice and Coover's Mean. Dickie is undeniably a Jerkass, but he at least attempts to be Faux Affably Evil unlike Coover and lacks Coover's penchant for random violence.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The only time Dickie does something genuinely altruistic is when he tries to stop Coover from killing Lorett, and it turns out quite poorly for him. As a result, Coover strangles him into unconsciousness, and Raylan wakes him up to torture Loretta's location out of him. And after the fact, Mags blames him for Coover's death and cuts him off from the family, with the exception of their weed business.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Repeatedly. Dickie's a moron, but he's also utterly vicious, and if you turn your back on him, he will bite you.
• Obviously Evil: Where Mags and Doyle try to look respectable, Dickie makes no effort to hide what he is. His unkempt appearance, skeevy personality, and quiet, sinister manner of speaking makes it quite obvious he's bad news.
• Only Sane by Comparison:
  • Dickie is a moron by any standard and tends to throw logic to the wind, but he winds up being forced to play the voice of reason around Coover. Not that he's particularly good at doing it, but even he's nowhere near as suicidally dumb as Coover is.
  • It's telling how shoddy Lance and Ash's operation is that Dickie has to play the voice of reason. He consistently calls them out for disobeying Limehouse, making obvious mistakes, and just generally being incompetent and overly aggressive.
• Pet the Dog: Fairly consistently. He drags Hobart Curtis off of Carol Johnson, commenting that the two of them will "have to have a talk about polite," dances with his mother at the party, and does his best to stop Coover from killing Loretta, even volunteering to go after them when Raylan shows up.
• The Peter Principle: He is a legitimately good enforcer who excels at intimidating people, but whenever he's placed any higher on the chain of command he crashes and burns. When Mags leaves him with control of the weed business, he manages to screw it up extremely quickly and causes a massive clusterfuck that leads to the destruction of their entire operation.
• Playing the Victim Card: Since Dickie is pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for his actions, he'll always position himself as the victim in any given situation, even when he's clearly at fault. It gets to the point that when Raylan tries to kill him for murdering Helen, Dickie tries to claim that it was Helen's fault and that he killed her in self-defense. Graham Yost even acknowledged during an interview that Dickie has a bad case of this.
  Graham Yost: Dickie sees himself as a victim. He always sees himself as a victim. And sees himself as smart. And he’s neither. He’s not that smart, and he’s not really a victim. He’s made a choice in his life, and Raylan calls him on it. And Dickie is a cockroach. He just will not go away.
• Prison Changes People: His time in prison causes him to go increasingly insane, and he becomes even more impulsive than he was prior.
• Psychopathic Man Child: He tends to behave like a vicious, spoiled teenager. Word of God is that he is mentally and emotionally 'stuck' in the moment in high school when Raylan broke his leg.
• Put on a Prison Bus: He's sent to prison at the end of Season 2, from which he occasionally comes back.
• Rage Breaking Point: After losing Coover, being cut off by Mags from the family fortune, and having even his weed business taken from him by Boyd's gang, Dickie snaps. He murders Baz and Logan for trying to bail and disrespecting him, and then proceeds to murder Helen to prove to everyone that he's playing for keeps.
• The Resenter: Towards Raylan, Doyle, and anybody else who has got it better than he does. The problem is, there are wounded cuttlefish that have it better than Dickie.
• Revenge Before Reason: Dickie despises Raylan for all the trouble in his life, and his thirst for revenge leads him to make stupid and impulsive decisions.
• Rival Turned Evil: Back in high school, he was Raylan's baseball rival. Now he's one of Harlan's foremost gangsters, while Raylan is a federal marshal.
• Sadist: He's a cowardly drug dealer who wants respect and will inflict as much pain as he can on anybody who doesn't give it to him. His Establishing Character Moment has him forcing a man to put his leg in a bear-trap because the man dared to grow weed without his permission. He later captures Raylan, strings him up from a tree, and tries to beat him to death, gloating the entire time.
• Sanity Slippage: As seen in Season 6, his time in prison has not been good for his mental health. He's crazier, hammier and dumber than ever.
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: He was a Jerk Jock who bullied other kids during high school, and Raylan recalls that he tried to beat him up during a baseball game, which led to Raylan retaliating by breaking his knee with a baseball bat. In the present day, Dickie hasn't changed at all and remains an immature, cowardly bully.
• Slimeball: Dickie is a greasy, sleazy prick who considers himself a criminal mastermind despite lacking the skill and intelligence to back it up. He does play at being Faux Affably Evil, but he's so slimy that it's a transparent mask for how horrible he really is.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Dickie considers himself a criminal mastermind despite being a cowardly, moronic Evil Cripple with the temperament and personality of a spoiled teenager. He only gets as far as he does because he has his family behind him, and absolutely no one takes him seriously and he's dismissed by all as a threat.
• Smart Jerk and Nice Moron: Inverted. Dickie isn't nice or all that bright, but he's much smarter than Coover and has enough sense to try to be charming and amicable to get people to trust him. Coover on the other hand is a moron with the temperament of a bratty toddler who constantly has to be reigned in so he won't go off on a violent rampage.
• Smarter Than You Look: Downplayed. Dickie really is a moron, but he also has flashes of brilliance on occasion. He's able to come up with a genuinely good plan to frame Jed for Helen's murder and to have Doyle kill him and frame it as "resisting arrest", which would have gone off without a hitch had Raylan not shown up.
• Smug Snake: Dicke considers himself a criminal mastermind on par with Boyd or his mother, but his family relations are the only reason he's halfway successful. He tries to intimidate others but rarely succeeds, with the likes of Limehouse seeing him as little more than a joke.
• Sole Survivor: Of the Bennett clan.
• Spoiled Brat: It's implied he was this in the past, give his general sense of entitlement and his former status as a high school baseball star. In the present, Mags is clearly disappointed he's become such a loser and clearly prefers his brothers to him.
• The Starscream: He doesn't necessarily want to take control from his mother, but he does want to be right behind her in command, and his attempts at stepping out from under her regularly jeopardize the entire family.
• Straw Loser: Dickie is incompetent in almost every regard, which is used to make his enemies and the rest of his family look better by comparison.
• Stupid Crooks: Dickie is a moron with delusions of grandeur who is quite prone to screwing himself over with his harebrained schemes and impulsive decisions. Fittingly, he's quite close with fellow moronic crooks Coover and Dewey.
• Stupid Evil: Dickie is a complete moron, which both makes him more and less dangerous. He's easy to outwit and outmaneuver, but he's also impulsive and vicious enough to be upredictably violent. As Raylan spells out in his final appearance, "You were so hot to start a feud with me that had long since ended, you sold your ancestral land to Loretta McCready."
• Suicide by Cop: May have been attempting this when, after swearing that he could not go back to prison, he pulled a gun on Raylan in the penultimate episode of Season 3. Dickie knows what a good shot and Quick Draw Raylan is, and that trying to get the drop on him is signing your own death warrant, so he may well have expected to wind up dead. Raylan clips him in the leg instead.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: He's the Despicable to Mags' Sympathetic. Mags is an Affably Evil Anti-Villain with numerous sympathetic and Pet the Dog moments. Dickie on the other hand is a spiteful, bullying Smug Snake who constantly wrecks the lives of the people around him out of pettiness and incompetence. Admittedly, Dickie does have some sympathetic moments early in the second season, but quickly descends into irredeemable cruelty midway through.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: He murders Helen to spite Raylan and Arlo for crossing him. He later shoots Ava to spite Boyd instead, something that results in him nearly killing Dickie.
• Teens Are Monsters: Dickie was a bully in high school, which is how he ended up getting crippled by Raylan.
• Too Dumb to Live: Dickie is very stupid and prone to Bullying the Dragon with no regard for his own safety, and just generally take suicidal risks for very little gain. Although from time to time, he has his moments of genuine intelligence.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Dickie is a slimy Jerkass from the start, but he has some genuine Pet the Dog moments throughout his introductory season to show he's not all bad. He grows increasingly vicious after Coover dies and Mags cuts him off, culminating in his murder of Helen, after which he just gets worse and worse.
• Underestimating Badassery: Downplayed. People tend to dismiss Dickie as a threat for the rather legitimate reason that he's a moron, and he's easy to push around despite Dickie insisting to the contrary. However, Dickie proves to be quite dangerous despite this because his stupidity makes him surprisingly unpredictable and violent, as Arlo, Boyd, and Raylan learn the hard way.
• The Unfavorite: His mother favors both Doyle and Coover over him. Some time before her death, she made a deal with Limehouse which ensured that not only would Dickie never inherit her personal fortune, he wouldn't even know that it still existed.
• Ungrateful Bastard: After Dickie murders Helen, Raylan nearly murders him but decides to show mercy. Dickie repays this by trying to beat Raylan to death with a baseball bat for even trying it. When Boyd frees Raylan and prepares to murder Dickie, Raylan is perfectly willing to let him do it until Dickie points out Raylan needs him.
• Unknown Rival: Dickie desperately wants to be Raylan's Arch-Enemy, but Raylan disregards him as a nuisance and while he certainly dislikes Dickie, he's more annoyed by him than anything else. It's subverted when Dickie murders Helen, sending Raylan on the warpath against him.
• Villains Want Mercy: Dickie begs and cries and whines whenever someone has him on the ropes.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • After Coover dies, Mags cuts him off, and Boyd robs him, Dickie goes flying off the deep end. Unfortunately, this makes him even more dangerous, as he goes from stupid but relatively reasonable to downright Ax-Crazy and murderous.
  • He has another one at the end of "The Devil You Know" when he realizes Mags only left him a fraction of her money. He goes into a sobbing meltdown, hands the money back to Limehouse, and calmly lets Raylan arrest him.
• Villainous Friendship: Aside from the obvious one with his brothers, he's friends with Dewey Crowe.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He desires his mother's love and approval, and his attempts to get it only make her resent him more.
• Wild Card: Dickie is an idiot, but it actually makes him a threat because he's so unpredictable. He's extremely impulsive and operates on the fly, meaning he can be an indiscriminate killer just as often as a comically incompetent moron.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Downplayed. He's not above killing women, but he won't stand for sexual harassment and he tries to stop Coover from killing Loretta.
• Would Hit a Girl: Kills Helen and wounds Ava. In Season 3 he shows up at Loretta's house with a gun; it's a good thing Raylan beat him there.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: He tries to talk Coover down from killing Loretta and later offers to save her to Raylan while he tortures her location out of him.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Minor example, but a lot of Dickie's bad decisions begin to make more sense if you assume that his starting premise is that he's both Raylan's archenemy and the Big Bad of the series.
• The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: After making the deal with Black Pike, Mags decides to retire and leaves the money from the deal to Doyle. She cuts off Dickie and leaves him with only the weed business, much to his anger. Dickie still decides to establish himself as a big shot by branching out into selling other drugs, and by doing so stupidly goes out of his way to piss off Boyd's gang. They quickly rob him and take over the business for themselves, sending Dickie into a Villainous Breakdown.
• You Have Failed Me: He kills Baz and Logan when they try to leave his gang because they're unwilling to get into a war with Boyd's gang.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Dickie is baffled when Ash tries to threaten him into giving him his inheritance, pointing out he can't do that while he's in prison.

Coover

Coover Bennett

"Ma ain't never left me in charge..."

Played By: Brad William Henke

"I am the only one protecting this family!"

The youngest son of matriarch Mags Bennett and brother to Dickie and Doyle Bennett, Coover is big, dumb and possesses a terrible temper. All in all, he is the most disappointing of Mags's disappointing sons and—because he is notably lacking in the intelligence department—the least likely to be intimidated by U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. Coover always wants his mother's affection, but can never seem to win it.

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• A Death in the Limelight: "Brother's Keeper" puts a lot of focus on him, and a major subplot is his successful attempts to sever the bond between Loretta and Mags. It ends with him being shot in self-defense by Raylan while trying to murder Loretta.
• Abusive Parents: Coover might have been a violent idiot, but it's easy to see how he grew up the way he did. Mags was cruel to him and her cruelty continues even after his death. She herself laments her parenting style.
  Mags: You did kill my baby, but I was the one who let him become a nitwit.
• Addled Addict: Coover's regular intake of cocaine and weed doesn't exactly help his intelligence any, and helps lead to his idea to reveal to Loretta the Bennetts killed her father rout of spite, which would have gone very poorly for him even if Raylan didn't shoot him.
• AM/FM Characterization: He's a fan of heavy metal and black metal, wearing t-shirts of Accept and Immortal, and keeping a poster of Immortal.
• The Alcoholic: He's frequently seen drinking beer and is implied to be an alcoholic.
• Arch-Enemy: He despises Loretta for being Mags' favorite and goes out of his way to torment her. He's the one to destroy her bond with Mags, and he even tries to murder her in his final appearance before being shot dead by Raylan.
• Ax-Crazy: Coover is extremely volatile, easy to provoke, and prone to violence when he gets upset. Not even his family is safe when he's upset; when Dickie lightly teases him, an enraged Coover strangles him into unconsciousness.
• Bait the Dog: When Loretta brings him a blunt, Coover is clearly surprised and invites her inside, having an uncharacteristically warm conversation with her while he smokes it. Eventually, however, he shifts to passive aggressively needling her about how Mags favors her over him. And when he realizes she knows they killed her father, he goes into a violent rage and tries to murder her, something that horrifies even Dickie.
• Beard of Evil: He has one that's too thick to be called stubble, but it isn't a beard on par with Dickie or Doyle.
• Berserk Button: Reminding him that he's not his mother's favorite.
• The Berserker: Descends into a foaming rage during fights. When he and Raylan fight in the Bennett store, Mags has to smack him with a shovel and repeatedly snap 'stop it!' to get him to cease his attack, as if he were a wild animal. By the time of their last clash, in the mine, he is completely out of his mind.
• Better with Non-Human Company: He's anti-social and rude to most people outside his immediate family, but sincerely loves his pet wildcat Charlie and is devastated when Ava shoots it.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Coover is a massive, brutish giant, while his partner-in-crime and brother Dickie is shorter and skinny.
• The Blind Leading the Blind: Dickie isn't that bright himself, but he's charismatic enough to rope Coover into his schemes and help him with his latest poorly thought out plan to carve out more respect and power for himself.
• Blood Knight: Deconstructed. Coover seems to enjoy fighting, but it's used to show how stupid he is and how much he's unable to comprehend that his actions have consequences.
• Brains and Brawn: The brawn to the slightly smarter Dickie's brains.
• The Brute: To Dickie and his mother, serving as little more then muscle. He's very tough though, and even manages to beat Raylan down.
• The Bully: Being the Butt-Monkey of his own family, Coover loves to push other people around to vent his anger, especially Loretta.
• Bumbling Henchmen Duo: With Dickie. The two are Mags's go-to enforcers and intimidators, which they're quite good at, but they tend to be quite incompetent when it comes to everything else. Where Dickie screws up because he has High Hopes, Zero Talent, Coover just has no impulse control or common sense.
• Bumbling Sidekick: He frequently serves as Dickie's sidekick and tends to be even more incompetent and bungling than he is.
• Butt-Monkey: He's verbally abused quite frequently by Mags and treated like a barely functioning idiot by his brothers. His luck is nowhere near as bad as Dickie's, but it leads to him having his hand broken with a hammer by Mags.
• Chaotic Stupid: A rare serious example. Coover acts on his base desires no matter the circumstances, and just does whatever he wants with no regard for consequences. Since he's a muscular giant of a man with the temperament of a spoiled toddler, it means that Coover is prone to violence and frequent screw-ups, to the point of trying to murder the teenage Loretta out of jealousy and spite.
• Character Death: Shot by Raylan, he then plunges down a mineshaft.
• Child Hater: He despises the teenage Loretta out of jealousy from the attention and love she gets from Mags. Ironically, Coover is far more immature than she is, acting more like an eight-year-old than a middle-aged man.
• Childhood Brain Damage: Subverted. Mags admits she explains Coover's stupidity by telling people she dropped him on his head as a baby, but she has no excuse.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Coover is almost unbelievably stupid, but get him in a fight and he's all but unstoppable, being one of the few villains to lay an absolute beatdown on both Raylan and Boyd.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: After he dies, Doyle lays the blame for Walt's death solely on Coover and claims he murdered Walt to steal his watch. Everyone knows it's a lie, but don't have enough evidence to prove Doyle wrong.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Ditz. Coover is genuinely stupid, but mainly because of a terrible upbringing and his constant drug use. He's also quite prone to violence and unable to weigh consequences because of his stupidity, making him quite the liability to his family.
• Didn't Think This Through: He's even worse about this than Dickie. Coover has no impulse control whatsoever and constantly takes needless risks without thinking of the consequences.
• Disappeared Dad: Like the other Bennett boys. He's the only one to comment on the unknown Bennett patriarch, claiming he 'never gave him nothin','.
• Disney Villain Death: He's shot by Raylan and then falls into a mineshaft.
• Drugs Are Bad: Smokes weed, snorts cocaine, and has very few braincells left. Coover's a walking advert for why drugs will ruin your life.
• Dumb Muscle: Very stupid, but very tough.
• Establishing Character Moment: When we first see him, he's stoned out of his mind. The second time he's holding a gun and twirling a dead rat by the tail. He then calls Rachel a racial slur and throws the rat at the Marshals' car while waving his gun in their direction. All of this establishes him as stupid and mean.
• Evil Is Petty: Coover is quite petty, especially with how he bullies Loretta, a teenage girl several decades his junior. Even before he tries to set her up so he can murder her, he torments her in petty ways such as making a mess in the Bennett shop for her to clean up or forcing her to carry a beer keg that's clearly to heavy for her. His introductory scene also has him fling a dead rat at Rachel just to be an asshole.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Like Dickie, he's desperate for Mags' love and respect.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: After he dies, his brothers and mother sincerely mourn him. Mags at least acknowledges he had his death coming, but Dickie and Doyle are outraged following his death and stop even bothering to pretend to play nice with Raylan afterwards.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His mother and his brothers. He freaks out when he thinks he might have hurt Dickie.
• Fat and Skinny: The fat to Dickie's skinny. He's also the dumber of the pair, although it's a relative thing.
• Fatal Flaw: Coover's envy of Loretta and violent temper ultimately lead to his death when he tries to murder her out of jealousy, and then lunges at an armed Raylan when he tries to defend her.
• Fearless Fool: The main reason why he's not afraid to challenge Raylan, is that unlike Doyle and Dickie he doesn't really consider the consequences.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: He's the Foolish to Doyle and Dickie's relative Responsible Sibling. Doyle is the chief of police and a competent lackey to Mags, and while Dickie is a moron he still has more common sense than Coover. Both of them frequently have to hold Coover back from taking suicidal risks, and he's the most prone to lashing out.
• Freudian Excuse: He's a mean bastard, but it's clear Coover is the way he is because of Mags' emotional abuse and blunt admissions of being disappointed in him. He takes his anger out on Loretta simply because she's an easier target than Mags.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: He's a frequent smoker of blunts, which is used to add to Coover's loutish and vice-ridden personality.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Is able to overpower Raylan based on nothing but his ability as a brawler. Jed notes that he would "love to hear someone say Coover couldn't fight."
• Green-Eyed Monster: Towards Loretta who gets all the affection from his mom that he has failed to earn.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He's very short tempered and prone to violently blowing his top at the slightest provocation.
• Halfwitted Hillbilly: Coover is a moronic brute with the mind of a bratty child and a foul temper who is constantly doing drugs and drinking beer. He's a noticeable contrast to the Southern-Fried Genius Mags, the competent henchman Doyle, and the admittedly inept but ambitious Dickie in that he's content to just serve as muscle and has no real desire for power.
• Handicapped Badass: Coover spends half the show with his hand in a cast. This doesn't stop him from giving Raylan the beating of his life twice over.
• Hot-Blooded: For as stupid as he is, he's very passionate about whatever his family is doing and is easy to provoke into a fight if whatever that is is insulted or interrupted.
• Hidden Depths: Coover is a moron in almost every regard, but he's a genius at growing weed. Mags half-jokingly attributes to him smoking it all the time.
• Idiot Savant: While not terribly bright in other circumstances, Coover is very good at creating new cultivars of marijuana. After his death, Hotrod and Mags both reminisce about how skilled Coover was in raising new strains with specific properties (i.e., raising or lowering levels of THC).
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: According to Dickie, Coover "couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat."
• Inadequate Inheritor: It's less focused on than with Dickie, but Mags makes it clear she views Coover as another disappointing stain on her legacy, although she holds him in higher regard than Dickie.
• Informed Attribute: Mags speaks of Coover's genius ability to cultivate marijuana after his death, but all he is ever seen doing with it on-screen is smoking it.
• Insufferable Imbecile: Coover is a moron with the mind and temperament of a bratty child, and he's prone to violent outbursts and temper tantrums. He's even more of a Jerkass than Dickie, who's at least socially aware enough to try and play nice to get what he wants, where Coover simply behaves like a violent lout at all times.
• Irony: Coover is the only one of the Bennett clan with the weakest claim to regard Raylan as his rival. Doyle is Raylan's dark counterpart in law enforcement, and Dickie has personal history with him dating back to high school that led to his crippling. But Coover is the only one to actually face down Raylan, and is the only member of the clan to be directly killed by Givens.
• Jerkass: He's aggressive and always ready to fight.
• Karmic Death: He throws Walt's corpse down a mineshaft to hide it, and spends most of the second season tormenting his daughter Loretta. Coover is ultimately fatally wounded by Raylan while trying to kill Loretta and tumbles down the same mineshaft to his death.
• Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency: Coover is dumb, childish, and hinted to have some sort of undiagnosed mental handicap, and he's also a violent, brutish enforcer for his criminal mother.
• Mighty Glacier: Big and slow, but very strong and very tough.
• The Millstone: He's not as bad as Dickie, but Coover's childish jealously of Loretta and his tendency to have violent outbursts frequently turn him into a liability for his family. The fact that Coover also takes orders from Dickie doesn't help at all.
• Misplaced Retribution: Coover is deeply hurt by Mags's treatment of him and resents that Loretta is the clear favorite, but he only takes it out on the young girl in extremely petty ways since he's simultaneously too afraid of and too loving of Mags to actually confront her on it.
• Morality Pet: He's one of the few people Dickie treats nicely without betraying at some point, and his death is what sends Dickie Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• Mugging the Monster: Coover's Establishing Character Moment is to threaten Raylan and Rachel for no logical reason when they're simply trying to ask questions much to their disbelief, even while Dickie tries to get him to stop. Coover continues to threaten and assault Raylan with little reason throughout the second season, which Raylan tolerates right up until Coover tries to do it while trying to kill Loretta, at which point he shoots him.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Actually has a moment like this when he knocks Dickie out and is worried he might have killed him.
• Never My Fault: Like Dickie, he blames his actions and screw-ups on anyone but himself.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The Mean to Doyle's Nice and Dickie's In-Between. Unlike his brothers, Coover doesn't even bother to feign friendliness and is constantly on the verge of a violent outburst.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Does it to Raylan twice and Boyd once.
• Not Blood, Not Family: He firmly believes this about Loretta mainly due to his own jealousy that Mags loves her more than him, to the point of trying to murder her. He even accuses her of trying to "tear [my] family apart".
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Downplayed. Coover is sincerely dumb, but he does have some intelligence below his brutish exterior. He's skilled enough to be the main source of the Bennetts' weed and he's exulted by numerous people after he died as a genius at growing it. He's also capable of calculation at times, such as using Walt's watch to form a rift between Loretta and Mags.
• Pet the Dog: Flips out when Ava kills his wildcat. "She killed Charlie!"
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He hollers a racial slur at Rachel during a confrontation, and he regard her with disdain simply because of her race.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: Despite his stupidity and childishness, Coover is an amazing fighter who effortlessly thrashes his opponents. He's also a fan of Scooby-Doo and wears a t-shirt with a picture of Shaggy on it, reflecting his stunted emotional maturity.
• Psycho Party Member: Coover's stupidity and childish mindset make him very prone to lashing out violently with very little provocation. Where Doyle and Mags are calculated about inflicting violence, and even Dickie requires some planning and reason to lash out, Coover is always on the verge of attacking someone at the slightest stimuli.
• Psychological Projection: He accuses Loretta of trying to tear the family apart, when in reality Coover had made sure to tear a rift between her and Mags because he was jealous of how much Mags favored her over him.
• Psychopathic Man Child: Coover's emotionally about eight years old. He's impulsive, selfish, envious, careless and prone to temper tantrums. Many of his actions are very childish, such as when Mags breaks his hand and Coover just keeps telling her he's sorry.
• Reckless Sidekick: A villainous example. He tends to take the role of subordinate to whatever member of his family he shares the scene with, and Coover is by far the most reckless of the Bennetts, even outweighing Dickie in this regard.
• The Resenter: Of Loretta, who Mags favors over Coover.
• Smart Jerk and Nice Moron: Inverted. Coover is much meaner and coarser than his ambitious and somewhat smarter partner-in-crime Dickie, who is cunning enough to act charming and amicable to get people to trust him.
• Smug Snake: He's not overly ambitious like Dickie or as self-satisfied as Doyle, but Coover is the most suicidally arrogant of the Bennett brothers, to the point of threatening Raylan and Rachel with a gun for no logical reason because he wants to throw his weight around. Coover is a legitimate threat thanks to his sheer size and fighting prowess, but he's too stupid to be relied on for anything other than grunt work and his rare schemes turn out very badly for him.
• The Stoner: He's a weed addict who is constantly smoking the stuff, and smokes so much of it he's immune to Loretta's drugged weed designed to make him pass out. He's also a savant at cultivating new strains of weed, which Mags half-jokingly attributes to Coover's intake of the stuff.
• Stupid Crooks: Coover is a moron and even stupider than Dickie. He's more than content to serve as muscle and seems somewhat self-aware of his stupidity, relying on other people to make plans for him; unfortunately, he mainly relies on Dickie to give him orders.
• Tantrum Throwing: When Loretta is left in charge of Mags's store while Mags is gone, Coover throws a tantrum out of jealousy and throws several pastries on the floor in a fit of pique.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Subverted. His decision to keep Loretta's father's watch seems to be just another example of Coover's stupidity, but it's actually intentional. He wants her too figure out the Bennetts killed her father so he'll have an excuse to kill her.
  • Played straight otherwise, as Coover charges into dangerous situations with no regard for the consequences. His first appearance has him confront two armed U.S. Marshals with a gun when they simply want to question him, and nearly causes a firefight before Dickie talks him down.
• Tragic Villain: Coover has shades of this. He's mostly a brutish, childish psycho, but Mags' abuse and her poor job raising him is what led to him growing up to be as much of a wreck as he is, and he comes off as far more unstable than Dickie to the point he likely has some kind of untreated disorder.
• The Unfavorite: Views himself this way, but actually stands higher in Mags' affections than Dickie who comments when breaking his hand that "I like Coover".
• Unstoppable Rage: When Coover goes ballistic nothing can stop him. During his last appearance he's all but foaming at the mouth as he goes after Raylan and Loretta.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Downplayed. He certainly intended to cause harm by wearing Walt's watch, as he knew it would form a rift between Loretta and Mags. However, it ultimately causes a chain of events that leads to Coover's death and the destruction of the Bennetts' criminal empire, something Coover certainly didn't predict.
• Villainous Valor: Coover is many things, but a coward he is not. Where Dickie is a Dirty Coward and Doyle hides behind his men, Coover is more than willing to throw down with his enemies should they incur his wrath. It's deconstructed, as Coover's bravery stems from his inability to understand consequences and the fact that he's The Berserker, making him take increasing risks until he gets himself killed by trying to murder Raylan while he's training a gun on Coover.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Towards his mother. He has a mix of love and hatred for his mother, who he claims never gave him anything. However, Coover does love her and desperately wants her approval. It's clear from his expressions that every cruel word cuts right to his heart and tears him up. Even after she breaks his hand, he desperately tries to apologize for his actions and tell her how much he loves her.
• Would Hit a Girl: He tries to kill Loretta.
• Would Hurt a Child: Once he realizes Loretta knows they killed her father, he takes the opportunity to try and murder her for "trying to tear this family apart".
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He assumes that if Loretta became a threat to the Bennetts, he would have carte blanche to kill her, and does his best to make sure this happens. However, after his death, Mags admits to Helen she would have killed him herself had he succeeded in murdering Loretta.

Pervis

Pervis Bennett

The long-dead patriarch of the Bennett family.

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• Disappeared Dad: He was killed when the Bennett boys were young, leaving Mags to raise them and lead their criminal business at the same time.
• Posthumous Character: He's long-dead by the time of the series.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He's long-dead by the time of the series and barely factors into the narrative, but his death forced Mags to take over their criminal enterprise and helped transform her into the woman she is today.

Associates

Loretta

Loretta McCready

"You all know me. Know that I'm Harlan through and through."

Played By: Kaitlyn Dever

Foster Mom: What was your job?

Loretta: I sold weed to kids at school.

Loretta McCready is a young teenager taken in by the Bennett family after her father, who was mixed up in Harlan County's drug trade, goes missing. She forms a particular bond with Mags Bennett, who sees Loretta as the daughter she wishes she had. Later, she also forms a bond with U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens, who recognizes some of himself in Loretta, a resourceful, fiercely independent child forced to grow up far too quickly.

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• Action Survivor: Loretta's first instinct when she's kidnapped is to rig a trap against the man who's chasing her.
• Anti-Villain: She's a drug dealer, is willing to both set up her boyfriend and use Raylan against Hot-Rod, and enters into partnership with Boyd. She's still a thoroughly sympathetic character.
• Bastard Understudy: Mags, perpetually disappointed in her own sons, seemed to be grooming Loretta for this role for much of Season 2. She ascends in Season 6, proving that she was every bit the understudy Mags thought she would be.
• The Chessmaster: Spends most of Season 6 matching Markham move for move and purchase for purchase.
• Commuting on a Bus: Loretta commutes in Season 3 and 4 for short appearances after being a fixture of Season 2. She then returns full-time for most of Season 6.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Downplayed. In Season 6 Loretta sets up a shell company, LM Consolidated, through which she funnels her money and makes purchases that she cannot make face to face. Her position as CEO isn't especially relevant, it simply facilitates her other criminal activities.
• Corrupt the Cutie: She is a resourceful, highly intelligent young teenager in Season 2. Mags' poisonous influence turns her into all of the other "corrupts" on this list.
• Daddy's Little Villain: As the daughter of Walter McCready, she's familiar with the ins and outs of the marijuana trade. As of Season 6, she aspires to become a marijuana kingpin like her mentor and mother figure, Mags.
• Expy: Deliberately done in-universe. Loretta is slowly but surely turning into a younger version of Mags Bennett. Season 6 drives this home, with her speech at Markham's party mirroring Mags' speech at the town hall.
• Extremely Protective Child: Downplayed. Her father is an idiot and a drunk, but she shoots Mags and ultimately betrays her when she finds out that Mags killed him.
• Happily Adopted: Toyed with. The family that takes her in are clearly good people (obnoxious children aside), but Loretta's not happy there, and ends up striking out on her own with all the money Mags left her.
• Little Miss Badass: Loretta is 14-years-old when she first appears, but she has Nerves of Steel and is much smarter than most of the adults in the series. She's perfectly capable of outrunning, outwitting and outgunning grown criminals. This is most clearly seen in her confrontation with Jimmy Earl Dean, who she gives some nasty scars via a barbed wire and fishhook trap.
• Little Miss Snarker: Her age does not impede her snarkiness even remotely.
• Manipulative Bitch: She took some lessons from Mags, it seems; she successfully uses Raylan against to take care of her Hot-Rod problem by playing on who he is, and later turns Markham's audience against him via Rousing Speech.
• Morality Pet: For Mags, who sees the smart capable Loretta as the daughter she always wanted, or possibly the young woman Mags herself had once been.
• Nerves of Steel: It takes a lot to break Loretta; she only really shows fear when her life is in immediate danger, such as from Coover who she knows can't be talked out of anything simply by virtue of his idiocy.
• Opposed Mentors: After her father's disappearance in Season 2, Raylan Givens and Mags Bennett both take an interest in Loretta's future, with Raylan attempting to extract her from the criminal underworld, while Mags leads her further into it. Loretta eventually sides with Raylan once his cold war with the Bennetts turns hot, but as future seasons show, Mags is the one whose influence has ultimately lasted, even if she still respects Raylan.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Uses them on Raylan, when Derek goes missing.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When she discovers that Mags murdered her father. Raylan manages to talk her down before she does something that will forever ruin her life.
• Rousing Speech: In "Burned", she turns Markham's party guests against him, convincing them that she would use legalized marijuana to help Harlan's people prosper. In the dress Mags gave her, no less.
• Small-Town Tyrant: As of Season 6, Loretta aims to take Mags' place as the kingpin of the rural Kentucky marijuana trade. Interestingly, the season's build-up to marijuana becoming legal implies that the "corrupt" part of Loretta's business is only temporary, something she seems to understand.
• Taking Up the Mantle: She takes up Mags' by becoming queen of the local marijuana trade (and with Mags' money, and wearing the dress Mags gave her).
• Teen Genius: Loretta is highly intelligent, and successfully outwits dangerous criminals like Hot-Rod Dunham, Avery Markham, and Dickie Bennett. She even manages to buy Dickie's land and house without disclosing her identity, essentially getting it for nothing.
• Teens Are Monsters: Averted. Loretta's a teenage drug-dealer and all-around criminal, yet despite this, remains one of the most moral characters in the setting.
• Trauma Conga Line: Well, hell. Her mother dies prior to the start of the series, then a child molestor attacks and later abducts her, her father is killed by her mother figure and Coover tries to kill her in a pretty brutal way. Loretta ends up pretty much alone, with nobody to rely on beyond Raylan.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Exaggerated. Loretta starts out as a weed dealer, graduates to threatening Mags with a gun, and is now trying to take over the whole of Harlan's marijuana trade in partnership with Boyd.
• Villainous Legacy: Receives one from Mags in the form of three million dollars in Bennett weed money. She's currently using it to buy up most of Harlan, and appears to be aiming to take Mags' place as queen of the local marijuana trade.
• Villainous Rescue: In Season 6, she's the one who stops Boon from attempting a Last Breath Bullet on the collapsed Raylan, stepping on his wrist to keep him from aiming.
• Villain Team-Up: Tries to talk Boyd into one in Season 6, going so far as to announce their partnership to the county in an effort at tying him down in town.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: She's probably one of the smartest and most mature characters in the series despite her young age.
• You Killed My Father: The reason she tries to kill Mags.

Jed

Jed Berwind

Played By: Richard Speight Jr.

A longtime associate of the Bennetts, who is 'employed' by a rogue Dickie Bennett.

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• Beard of Evil: He has a very thick beard, although it's shaven when he's seen in Season 3.
• The Bus Came Back: Briefly in Season 3.
• The Dragon: Reluctantly, for Dickie.
• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: To Dickie; he only stays 'employed' by him because he's scared.
• He Knows Too Much: After Dickie kills Helen with Jed present, Doyle pays him a visit to eliminate the only witness to Helen's murder. Luckily for Jed, Raylan turns up at the same time and takes him into custody, saving his life in the process.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Jed is really only trying to provide for his family and rid the Berwind name of a debt owed to the Bennetts.
• Put on a Bus: To prison.

Walt

Walter 'Walt' McCready

Played By: Chris Mulkey

Loretta's father, still grieving the loss of his wife while dealing weed without the Bennett's permission.

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• Butt-Monkey: He's repeatedly bullied and hurt over the course of his appearance.
• Mercy Kill: As he's dying, Mags claims she's doing him a favor in letting him see his wife faster, since he still hasn't moved on after her death.
  Mags: You'll get to know the mystery, Walt. Get to see your Sally Anne again.
• The Mourning After: Walt is still deep in mourning for the loss of his wife, to the detriment of his daughter. It's partially why Mags decides to kill him, claiming that Loretta doesn't need his sadness constantly affecting her.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears once in Season 2, but has a big impact on the rest of Season 2 regarding the Bennetts and Loretta.
• Useless Bystander Parent: Mags thinks (or tells herself she does) that Walt is not a good dad to Loretta and she would be better because he isn't using Loretta's potential.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Mags has him killed in the same episode he's introduced.

Jimmy Earl Dean

James 'Jimmy' Earl Dean

"I only just turned thirty."

Played By: Billy Miller

Raylan: Who we going after?

Rachel: Jimmy Earl Dean.

Raylan: Three first names. A triple winner, right off the bat.

A child molester who works for the Bennett boys, helping to harvest their weed. His attempted assault on Loretta McCready brings the Kentucky State Police and US Marshals Service into Bennett township, kickstarting the events of Season 2.

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• Ax-Crazy: His reaction to Loretta giving him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech calling him out on being an Ephebophile is to charge at her in a feral rage. He later abducts her after being fired so he can have his way with her.
• Blaming the Victim: Loretta accuses him of believing his victims wanted to be raped simply because they weren't able to stop him. Jimmy's violent reaction implies she was right.
• Classic Villain: Lust and and to a lesser extent, Pride. Jimmy is motivated entirely by his ephebophilia to the point he never thinks anything through and acts mainly on impulse. He's also arrogant enough to think he's invincible despite this and the fact he's an idiot.
• Didn't Think This Through: He never thinks his actions through and acts mainly on impulse. He targets Loretta despite Mags' affection for her, leading to him being fired. He also tries to shoot Raylan even though he's been doused in gasoline, and is only stopped when Rachel pulls a gun on him.
• Entitled to Have You: He feels entitled to Loretta and genuinely seems to believe they belong together, never mind that she despises him and is still a teenager. He eventually decides to kidnap her after being fired by the Bennetts to keep her as a Sex Slave.
• Ephebophile: Jimmy is a rapist who primarily targets teenage girls and has a perverse lust for them.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's on the receiving end. The Bennetts as a whole are disgusted by his perversion and grotesque sexual tastes, and even Dickie admits he never would have hired him if he knew Jimmy was a child molester.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Jimmy genuinely doesn't comprehend why his ephebophilia is frowned upon by most people. He expects the Bennetts to not care in the slightest about his perversion and obvious advances on Loretta despite Mags' affection for her, and he's downright baffled when. Loretta points out most teenagers don't want to have sex with an adult man.
• Fatal Flaw: Short-sightedness. He never really thinks his actions through and simply does things on the fly, with no real regard for the consequences. He even nearly tries to shoot at Raylan after being doused with gasoline.
• Faux Affably Evil: He has a folksy, amiable demeanor, but it never disguises how much of a perverted monster he is.
• For the Evulz: He targets teenage girls simply because he enjoys it, although it's implied he sees himself as a genuine romantic partner to them.
• Evil Scars: Loretta escapes from him by leading him into her booby traps, one of which is a net of fish hooks that tear up his face rather badly.
• Gunman with Three Names: Or rather, epheophile with three names. It's lampshaded by Raylan.
• Hate Sink: Dean is a loathsome, sleazy pederast who preys on teenage girls and hopes to keep Loretta as a Sex Slave. Unlike the rest of the series's villains, he's utterly vile to the core and even the Bennetts are utterly disgusted by him.
• Hated by All: Everyone despises Jimmy, namely because of his ephebophilia. The Bennetts quickly cut ties with him once they learn he's been making advances on Loretta, and Raylan and Rachel are blatantly disgusted with him.
• Insane Troll Logic: He truly believes his rapes are acceptable simply because he only turned thirty recently, and Loretta accuses him of deluding himself into believing his victims wanted it.
• Insufferable Imbecile: He's an idiot who clearly thinks he's much smarter than he is. Perhaps his biggest feat of stupidity is trying to shoot Raylan despite being doused in gasoline.
• It's All About Me: He cares about nothing but his own pleasure. He doesn't give a damn about the fact his victims are underage so long as he satisfies his own lust.
• Jailbait Taboo: Subverted. Jimmy seems incapable of comprehending his lust for Loretta is not normal or even sane, and lashes out when she points out she's still a teenager.
• Jerkass: He acts friendly, but he's openly scummy and perverted even when he's trying to be charming. Mags admits she knew he was bad news even before learning he was an Ephebophile.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Dean goes through quite a bit of abuse. He's scarred when he runs face-first into a booby trap filled with fish hooks, and he's humiliated when Raylan douses him in gasoline before he can shoot at him.
• Lower-Class Lout: He's an uneducated hillbilly who works as a hired goon for the Bennet clan. He manages to disgust even them when it's revealed he's a deviant pervert and rapist who primarily targets teenage girls.
• Lust Makes You Dumb: His lust for teenage girls results in him making plenty of stupid decisions. He attacks a teenage girl immediately after being released, sending the US Marshals after him, and he targets Loretta despite Mags' affection for her and ruthlessness towards anyone who crosses her. It doesn't help that Jimmy is rather dumb in general, either.
• More Despicable Minion: Mags is too Affably Evil to hate, and her sons all have some redeeming qualities. Jimmy on the other hand is a repugnant, ephebophilic sex offender who spends his time perving on teenage girls. Absolutely no one can stand him, and Mags fires him after learning he tried to rape Loretta.
• Pædo Hunt: He's a child molester who preys on teenage girls. Everyone is disgusted with him, even Mags and Dickie, who quickly cut ties with him once they learn Jimmy's predilections.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: He's a Serial Rapist who targets teenage girls specifically. Both Dickie and Mags express disgust at his behaviour.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Loretta gives him a little speech to demonstrate his delusion and her disgust with him.
  Dean: You're very funny. That's good stuff.
  Loretta: Is this gonna be your new line? How we got the same sense of humor? What's in your mind? How do you think this is gonna go? You thinking, "maybe we'll fight a little, then it'll turn to wrestling and tickling and laughing, then she'll say, 'ooh, don't touch me there,' and then she won't stop me"? Is that how it runs in your head? You don't even know what to say now, do you? Even me talking about wrestling and tickling and "ooh, don't touch me there," it's like a spell's been cast, and you won't break it. Well, maybe you're just dreaming and you don't wanna wake up. [Loretta slaps Dean hard across the face] Well, wake up!
• Serial Rapist: He's a registered sex offender who's already raped other teenage girls, or at least has been caught attempting to do so in the past.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Walt's death, which kicks off Loretta's entire arc in relation to the Bennetts, is the result of him calling the cops on Dean.
• Smug Snake: He's deeply arrogant, but Jimmy's also not particularly bright or competent. He's repeatedly humiliated throughout his single appearance, and while he's still a threat Raylan's able to outmaneuver him without needing to even fire his gun.
• The Sociopath: Of the low-functioning variety. He's a child molester with no real sense of empathy or long-term goals outside of satisfying his perverse sexual desires.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He's generally soft-spoken and amiable in his demeanor, but he's a vicious child molester. He proves utterly determined to rape Loretta, regardless of the consequences.
• Stupid Evil: Dean continues targeting teenage girls after he's been paroled, which leads to Raylan and Rachel being dispatched to arrest him. He also preys on Loretta specifically despite Mags' protectiveness over the girl and her lack of mercy towards anyone who defies her.
• Stupid Crooks: Dean's a moron who has no idea what he's doing most of the time, and he acts more on impulse than anything else. He's dangerous to be sure, but his lack of common sense leads to him being captured very early on in Season 2.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: While most sexual predators portrayed on television tend to be rather obvious (overweight, balding, glasses, maybe a moustache) Dean is a handsome young man with a clean-cut appearance. It just makes him even more disturbing.
• Token Evil Teammate: None of the Bennetts are particularly good people, but Dean's the worst of their associates. He's a loathsome pederast and rapist who targets teenage girls, and he's so vile that even Dickie is disgusted by him.
• Too Dumb to Live: Firing a gun in a gas station is a bad idea anyway, but trying to do it when you yourself are covered in gasoline? That's just downright silly.
  Raylan: The key word in firearm is "fire." When the pin hits the cap, makes the charge explode, meaning there's a spark, which should be of some concern to a man soaked in gasoline.
  Jimmy: That's bullshit. That spark's too far away from the gasoline.
  Raylan: You didn't finish school, did you, Mr. Dean?
• Two First Names: Discussed. Raylan and Mags both comment on how Jimmy Earl Dean has three first names and therefore should not be trusted.
• Uncertain Doom: He's never killed onscreen and last seen being taken into custody, but Mags reassures Loretta that child molesters don't last long in prison and that he'll quickly be killed once his crimes are discovered by his fellow inmates.
• Unsexy Sadist: Jimmy is an ephebophile whose fetishization of teenage girls is used to demonstrate how disgusting he is. He's accurately called out as being a child molester, and even other criminals are disgusted by him.
• Would Hurt a Child: He's fully prepared to rape Loretta, and he's raped other teenage girls in the past.

Hobart Curtis

Hobart Curtis

Played By: Mark Colson

An associate of the Bennetts.

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• The Alcoholic: He's always either drunk or on his way there.
• Dirty Old Man: Hobart tries to fondle Carol Johnson at the Bennett's party.
• Too Dumb to Live: It's unclear what possessed him to confront Mags Bennett so loudly and angrily. That's akin to poking a lion with a stick. Had Mags been in a less-than-merciful mood, Hobart wouldn't have come out of the confrontation alive.

Baz

Baz

Played by: Patrick Cox

A huge, dumb thug hired by Dickie when he strikes out on his own, Baz is intimidating to look at, but a terrible shot.

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• Bald of Evil: He seems more thuggish then pure, true evil but considering he's a criminal without a hair on his head, he still fits.
• Beard of Evil: Possessed of a fairly heavy beard.
• The Brute: Dickie clearly meant for him to play this role in his new gang.
• Character Death: Shot in the back by Dickie when he tries to walk away.
• Dumb Muscle: He doesn't appear to have much in the way of intelligence, which is fine by Dickie.
• Fat Bastard: Baz is a heavy guy and a basic thug.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Can't hit a target from a few feet away, for which he is roundly mocked.
• In the Back: With a bullet, from Dickie.
• Replacement Goldfish: Dickie briefly tries to make him into one for Coover, but it fails.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Tries to bail on Dickie once the war with Boyd gets underway.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Dickie equips him with one to make up for his poor aim.

Logan

Logan

Played by: Steve Humphreys

Another henchman recruited by Dickie when he strikes out on his own.

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• Bald of Evil: A bald criminal.
• Character Death: Shot in the back by Dickie when he and Baz try to walk away.
• In the Back: With a bullet, from Dickie.
• Jerkass: His total screentime consists of him mocking Baz, and then trying to run away when things get tough.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Decides to leave Dickie once things get too serious for his liking.