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Absaroka County Sheriff's Office
Sheriff Walter "Walt" Longmire
"We men are wretched things".
The main character of the show (and the books it's based on) and the veteran sheriff of Absaroka County. At the start of the series, Walt has become distant from both his job and his daughter following the death of his wife.
Played by: Robert Taylor (1963)
- Anti-Hero: Vacillates between a Pragmatic Anti Hero for episode arcs and a Byronic Hero for his much longer character arc has him damage and destroy his relationships with his daughter Cady and his friend Henry by being unable to understand how badly his wife’s has affected the former and being unavailable to help her with it, wrongfully accusing Henry of various crimes despite their long friendship, and for both of them, having blinders on when it comes to investigating Jacob Nighthorse.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Does not own a cell phone and refuses to buy one.
- Cool Car: Walt's patrol vehicle is a slightly beat-up 1989 Ford Bronco.
- Cowboy Cop: Gets accused of being this a lot.
- Deadpan Snarker
- Drink-Based Characterization: Longmire is a Rainiers man and is usually seen drinking it.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic. Walt is ethical, loyal, incredibly detail-oriented, and thoughtful. Unfortunately for his deputies, he is also incredibly set in his ways. He tends towards a strait-laced, conservative lifestyle, expecting everyone to live up to the impossibly high standards he sets for himself.
- Heartbroken Badass: He's a tough sheriff but begins the series mourning the death of his beloved wife.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Lifelong best friend of Henry Standing Bear.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: He is able to fire his rifle and hit the driver of a moving SUV that is a fair distance from him and driving over very bumpy terrain. Just hitting the car would have been a very good shot. Somewhat justified in that he takes his time and uses proper marksmanship technique instead of just jamming the rifle into his shoulder and firing.
- The Lost Lenore: He keeps his wife's ashes in a wooden tea box for the first few seasons. Even as he tries to let her go, new information about the circumstances surrounding her death keeps popping up.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: He doesn't always reveal how much he knows to people he is questioning.
- Parental Substitute: Barlow Connaly angrily states that Walt had become this to Branch, in spite of Branch acting as The Rival to Walt politically and Barlow continually trying to turn him back to his way of doing things.
- The Protagonist
- The Sheriff: Of Absaroka County, Wyoming.
- MartialPacifist/Technical Pacifist: Walt is both: Walt is a skilled marksman, and frequently demonstrates his skill, but even when dealing almost exclusively with murderers, Walt has almost always refused to let the suspect die and successfully transported them to a hospital to survive. He was even willing to apply this to Barlow Connally, the man who murdered Branch and Walt’s wife while gloating about it to him.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: While Walt has more than a few faults, he treats people fairly. He's as unlikely to mock an Eastern couple who went to a palm-reader to contact their dead daughter as he is to disrespect the weirder customs of the local Cheyenne.
- Will They or Won't They?: With Vic. They do, at the very end.
Deputy Victoria "Vic" Moretti
Walt's right-hand deputy and an ex-Philadelphia homicide detective. She recently moved to Wyoming with Shaun Keegan, her husband. Is of Italian descent.
Played by: Katee Sackhoff
- Action Girl: More than willing to take the fight to the enemy.
- Actor Allusion:
- Katee Sackhoff is highly competent at her job but has a Dark and Troubled Past and thinks she's bad luck for people around her. Sound familiar?
- More specifically, in "Party's Over", Vic, with little apparent reason, challenges a suspect who is a woman MMA fighter to spar with her at a gym, and gets mercilessly pounded on. This is almost certainly a nod to the famous boxing match between Kara and Lee in the Battlestar Galactica (2003) episode "Unfinished Business".
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Vic has black hair in the books.
- Vic reveals that she’s a bottle blonde dying her hair to hide it from Ed Gorski.
- Audience Surrogate: Her recent transfer from Philadelphia means she’s just as ignorant of the history and interesting characters of Absaroka County as the audience is, allowing for some explanation to be done without getting too annoying.
- Broken Bird: As her troubles begin to stack up and stack up, Vic gradually becomes more and more traumatized until she loses her child, then sees a happy family with a child of their own, and nearly commits suicide.
- Can't Bathe Without a Weapon: When Vic is being stalked by Ed Gorski in "A Good Death is Hard to Find", she starts taking her gun into the shower with her.
- City Mouse: Vic is from Philadelphia still adapting to Wyoming winters, wildlife, and people.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The reason she relocated to Absaroka.
- Deadpan Snarker: Picks up on this due to having Walt as her boss.
- Dude Magnet: She tends to be pretty popular with guys. Apart from Walt, there is also Sean, Eamonn, Travis, Omar, Gorski, Bob, as well as others.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Mathias calls her "Filly," a Double Entendre referencing both her attractiveness and her Philadelphia roots. Vic hates it.
- Fair Cop: Appears to be in a tight-jeans contest with Branch, but modifies her rolled up sleeves and open-buttoned shirts with undershirts.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Sanguine. Vic is outgoing, capable, compassionate, and highly energetic. Like Branch, however, she is impulsive and rash, and (to a lesser extent than Branch) suffers from emotional issues and instabilities that she tends to repress rather than deal with.
- Happily Married: Averted big time. Although she and Shaun do truly love each other, it's obvious that neither is happy with their marriage. Furthermore, Shaun suspects that Vic has feelings for Walt - a suspicion which is not entirely unfounded. At the end of Season 3, Shaun files for divorce after Vic refuses to quit her job.
- The Lancer: More or less shares this role with Branch in the first 3 seasons. After Season 3, she is solidly this.
- Non-Uniform Uniform: She has a distinctive look where she usually rolls her uniform shirt's sleeves up, but reveals a long-sleeved white undershirt beneath. This is probably because Katee Sackhoff has a prominent tattoo on her inner right arm just below the elbow, and most law enforcement agencies disapprove of members having tattoos in places that are visible when wearing uniforms or conservative plain clothes.
- Pregnant Badass: In Seasons 5 and 6. Unfortunately, she has a miscarriage, courtesy of Chance Gilbert.
- Trauma Conga Line: Seasons 3-6. She and her husband are taken hostage and tortured by Chance Gilbert, a paranoid sovereign-citizen type who thought that she was spying on him when her car broke down near his home. Her husband divorces her because of trauma over this and because he suspects that she has feelings for Walt. She also gets evicted from her home, which was provided by her husband's employer. When Walt is shot and seriously wounded she impulsively kisses him in the hospital, which leads to their enemies spreading false stories that they are having an illicit relationship. She gets pregnant by one of two one-night-stands with different guys. When Gilbert is put on trial he represents himself and aggressively cross-examines her, retraumatising her. Gilbert then manipulates her into unknowingly giving him an opportunity to escape custody, after which he stalks her and eventually gets into a gunfight with her. She kills him, but he shoots and wounds her, causing her to miscarry the pregnancy. In her grief after the miscarriage, she comes close to shooting herself but can't pull the trigger because of the pain it would cause to other people.
- Undying Loyalty: To Walt. While she often disapproves of his reckless actions (primarily out of concern for his safety), she is always at his side and will not hesitate to put her career and/or life on the line for him.
- Will They or Won't They?: With Walt. They do, at the very end.
Deputy Branch Connally
"Don't you ever pull a gun on me. I'm not the quarterback anymore. I am the next sheriff."
An ambitious deputy who comes from a wealthy local family; his uncle Lucian was Walt's predecessor as sheriff, and Branch also hopes to be sheriff one day.
Played by: Bailey Chase
- Adaptation Name Change: His book counterpart's first name is Turk.
- Ascended Extra: In the book series, his character only appeared in the first book.
- Beard of Sorrow: When his sanity collapses in the third season, he becomes stubbly and unshaven.
- The Determinator: A not-so-nice one. To prove that David Ridges isn't dead, he's pulled himself out of a peyote-induced stupor and returns to the job before he's truly ready, but before long he's abducting a local peyote dealer and dosing him with his own product, circumventing protocol and asking friends to perjure themselves, conducting his own forensic test without Walt's knowledge, and more recently ignoring Cady's search for her mom's killer and snooping into Vic's personal laptop to prove himself right.
- Fair Cop: As the spear to Vic's distaff version, Branch sports tight jeans and is more likely to be seen without a shirt than any other member of the cast.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric. Branch is outgoing, people-oriented, ambitious and charming. He's also hot-tempered, makes rash judgments, bucks authority, and shows a tendency towards emotional instability.
- Hidden Heart of Gold: Though he rarely admits it, he actually admires Walt. Unfortunately, he's also ambitious, and that ambition is easily-manipulated by his father.
- Jerkass with a Heart of Gold
- Killed Offscreen: At the end of Season 3 it is implied that his father shot him, when Branch attempts to arrest him for having Walt's wife murdered and it is confirmed at the beginning of Season 4 when his body is found staged to make it look like he committed suicide.
- Race Lift: His book counterpart is black.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: He repeatedly complains throughout season 3 that they're devoting resources to hunting for other people when they should be hunting David Ridges. He's just trying to feed his vendetta, but he's absolutely right. All the other leads are Red Herrings, and finding Ridges proves the key to securing Henry's freedom. Pursuing the lead sooner might even have saved Hector from being horrifically murdered and scalped.
- The Rival: Is running against Walt for the position of sheriff during Seasons 1-2.
- The Sneaky Guy: Lock picking is his specialty.
- Sanity Slippage: Starting from Season 3 after he nearly died from getting shot and in his quest to prove that Ridges faked his death and is the one that shot him. Ridges using bad medicine to steal parts of him and/or repeatedly messing with his mind to drive him off the deep end don't help.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Throughout Season 2, the shady people funding his re-election campaign, including both Jacob Nighthorse and his father, think they've bought him off. But Branch is an honest man, and he's loyal to his conscience, not them.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: It’s subtle and only slowly revealed, but Branch has a case of this… but not towards his father Barlow, but Walt. By the end of his story, it’s clear that losing some of Walt’s respect hits him so much harder than his father turning out to be a criminal mastermind.
Deputy Archie "The Ferg" Ferguson
"I know I was a favor. I only got hired 'cause you were helping out my dad."
An awkward but hard-working young deputy. Walt sees something in Ferg, but initially can't articulate it. As the series progresses, Ferg is revealed to have eclectic interests that help in his work, justifying Walt's intuition.
Played by: Adam Bartley
- Acrofatic: Downplayed, but he can show a surprising turn of speed for a man his size when pursuing fleeing suspects. The party scene in "Election Day" reveals him as light on his feet on the dancefloor as well.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Ferg generally acts as an adorable, sweet, and eventually surprisingly competent investigator. However, both positively and negatively, he’s shown to have a hidden mean streak. He can envious at times, but also is shown to be downright furious whenever one of his friends are insulted or threatened-for example, when a rape suspect sexually harasses Vic, he throws the man against the wall of a jail cell and roars at him to shut his mouth. There's also his downright vengeful killing of Eddie Harp.
- Clueless Deputy: Ferg gets treated like this, especially in the first season. By S2, he has
Growing the Beard and repeatedly demonstrates his competence. - Cool Car: His blue Pontiac Trans Am.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Doesn't seem especially useful at first, even to himself, but he gets a lot better.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Phlegmatic. Ferg is calm, good-natured, and generally even-tempered. However, he does tend towards a submissive, almost timid mindset, especially early on in the series. His passive and meek nature is slowly shaped by the more mentoring characters around him, specifically Vic and Walt.
- Green-Eyed Monster: His biggest flaw throughout the series is his tendency of envy towards other characters, first showing towards Branch's relationship with Cady and in calling out Vic and Walt for ignoring him. It leads him to be hard on Zach at first due to Zach's instant competence, and eventually ends his relationship with Meg because he falsely accuses her ex-boyfriend of being Cowboy Bill.
- Nice Guy: The guy's a big teddy bear.
- Only Sane Man: He tends to act as the voice of reason whenever Walt, Vic, Branch or Zach are acting irrationally.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: The only Absaroka County lawman to carry a wheelgun.
- The Smart Guy: What he becomes.
- Turn in Your Badge: After inadvertently giving information to a Mafia hitman posing as a Federal agent, Ferg follows up with the Feds, discovers his mistake, and immediately warns Walt. Afterwards, he is very hard on himself and offers his resignation, saying that he knows Walt only hired him as a favor to his dad. Walt replies that that was actually one of two reasons, and that he's still waiting to find out what the other one is. Then he gives Ferg's badge back to him.
Deputy Zach Heflin
Played by: Barry Sloane
- Crusading Brother: Was badly injured in a drive-by shooting four years earlier that claimed the life of his brother. This motivates him to become a cop.
- Last-Minute Hookup: With Cady in the final episodes of the show.
- Leeroy Jenkins: While very intelligent and analytical, he is also hotheaded when provoked, something Monte Ford exploits.
- Replacement Goldfish: Hired after Branch's death.
- Retroactive Recognition: Barry Sloane plays Captain Price in the Modern Warfare reboot.
- Turn in Your Badge: Walt has to fire him after he breaks into Monte Ford's hotel room and physically assaults him.
Ruby
Walt's secretary. Occasionally helps out with investigations.
Played by: Louanne Stephens
- Cool Old Lady: Sweet old gal with a snarky sense of humor.
- Only Sane Employee: Among the snarky Walt, the snippy Vic, the aloof Branch, and the comically beleaguered Ferg, she is definitely this.
- Team Mom: Looks after everyone at one point or another, Walt included. She can put Walt in his place when she feels like it with a stern "Walter Longmire!"
The Cheyenne
Henry Standing Bear
"It is a beautiful day at The Red Pony and continual soiree."
A Cheyenne who is Walt's best friend and confidant. Their friendship goes back to their early school days together. He is the proprietor of the Red Pony Cafe, a local tavern and restaurant, and an expert tracker.
Played by: Lou Diamond Phillips
- Anti-Hero: Gradually fills this role as time goes on, especially after taking up Hector's mantle.
- The Bartender: Owns the "continual soiree" at the Red Pony Saloon.
- Boxed Crook: During the fifth season, Mathias tries to use him as such by blackmailing him over his involvement in the murder of Tyler Malone. Henry quickly asserts himself and they end up in a more equal partnership.
- Character Catchphrase: "It is always a beautiful day at the Red Pony and continual soiree." It's how he answers the phone there.
- The Cowl: In his Hector II persona.
- Deadpan Snarker: Naturally.
- Foil: A subtle one with Nighthorse in Season 5, especially in Episode 8. Both he and Nighthorse despise Malachi for corrupting their businesses, but Henry is made far more sympathetic for being forced into it and angrily telling Malachi about how his drug trafficking essentially killed Mingan Pine. Malachi believes that Nighthorse is just exiling him so he can shift the blame away from him onto Malachi.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Walt.
- Just a Flesh Wound: Very much averted when Henry catches a bullet in the upper thigh. He's barely able to walk and obviously in excruciating pain, and is visibly sweating when he has to conceal the injury from Cady.
- Parental Substitute: It’s made growingly clear with how busy and emotionally unavailable Walt is to Cady that Henry is essentially taking the role of her mother, attempting to comfort and guide her through her troubles, such as killing JP to protect his girlfriend Asha from him. He also serves as one for Mingan Pine, who loses his father though unfortunately it’s not enough: Mingan is so traumatized that he commits suicide. It is also implied that through coaching Gab Langton and other Res kids through basketball that he also serves as a parental figure to them.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: A rare heroic example, and also downplayed. Henry is very well-spoken and articulate, carefully enunciates every word he says, never uses contractions, and rarely swears. When he confronts Jacob Nighthorse about goings on at the casino, Nighthorse says the accusation sounds like something Walt Longmire would say, only not as well.
- Shot in the Ass: Courtesy of Walt, who couldn't see who he was aiming at in the darkness, after Gab killed her second rapist. Luckily just a ricochet, but obviously extremely painful and definitely not funny.
- Sixth Ranger: Often helps Walt with cases, but sometimes his allegiance to the reservation puts him at odds with Walt as well.
- Vigilante Man: Takes up Hector's mantle in Season 4. This is one of many sources of growing tension in his relationship with Walt.
Jacob Nighthorse
Jacob Nighthorse
A local businessman representing the interests of the Cheyenne.
Played by: A Martinez
- Arch-Enemy: Deconstructed. Walt views him as his Arch Enemy for most of the show and blames him for all the organised crime in the county, and all the acts of violence that target Walt and his family or friends. It is eventually revealed that, although he has done some shady things, he is innocent of all of the more serious crimes Walt accuses him of.
- Characterization Marches On: In his first appearance in Season One's "Dog Soldier", he is presented as much more of a political activist and less of a businessman. The later version of Jacob would probably also have done something to expose the anti-Indian conspiracy in that episode, but it's hard to imagine him personally dressing up as a legendary Cheyenne warrior and covertly reclaiming children.
- Condescending Compassion: Nighthorse sort of wants to do the right thing. He's just arrogant enough to think that he knows better than everyone else what the "right thing" for them is. Henry eventually compares him to the U.S. government in this way. Emphasized when the reservation's casino is finally complete; he wants to invest the money in infrastructure and public resources for the reservation rather than doling it out to the residents.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: While his morality might be questionable, his shadiness is not. Even the most charitable possible reading of the man must admit he's compromised a lot to achieve his ambitions for the reservation, even if it wasn't all for his personal gain. And he also has muscle ends of his business, including David Ridges.
- Embarrassing Last Name: His birth name is Jacob Blankenship. He changed it to sound "more Indian."
- Even Evil Has Standards: He may be a two-faced self-serving scumbag who sells his tribe out for personal gain without a second thought, but Nighthorse is disgusted by corrupt social workers who take Cheyenne children from their homes on falsified charges of neglect so that they can embezzle extra money from the federal government. Not that it stops him from trying to spin the whole thing against Walt.
- He visibly struggles to not kill Malachi after kidnapping him, especially after the man insults his mother, but he refuses and instead only banishes Malachi after cutting his face to mark him as a traitor.
- Horrible Judge of Character: When it comes to Malachi. He hires a convicted criminal who committed corruption to try and root it out in his casino. He retroactively justifies it as a “flu shot”-him attracting small fry like Malachi so he can prepare to defend his casino against bigger players like the Irish Mob. Even if this is true, he seems to believe when he tells this to Malachi that that Malachi will just up and leave after being kidnapped, threatened with having his empire destroyed by having his money trafficking evidence handed over to the Feds, beaten and then having his cheek cut open to mark him.
- Humble Pie: Jacob Nighthorse seems to have eaten a generous slice of this pie by the end of Season 4. When he discovers that Malachi has been using his casino to launder money, greatly jeopardizing everything he has worked for, he realizes that everything they have said about the man is true. He sits down with Cady and tells her how all he ever wanted was to help his people. So he tells her that her client has his job back, back pay, paid vacation, and he wants to hire her so his people have good legal counsel.
- He's eaten a Heel-Face Turn-sized pie by Season 6, especially in "No Greater Character Endorsement".
- Hypocrite: Goes on and on about how the Cheyenne have been screwed over by the White Man, while shamelessly exploiting his people.
- It's Personal: It’s revealed all the way in Season 6 that he was wrongfully (or so he alleges) taken from his home into adoption, which makes his fury against the Department of Child Services doing the same thing all the more palpable.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Gold is probably too precious a metal, but while Nighthorse is a shady dick and an unquestionable asshole, he does sincerely want to use his methods to help his people. He's just very, very arrogant and cynical. Notably, while an earlier season suggested he might just oppose raising purity requirements due to not have a high enough "blood quanta" to get a cut of the reservation's casino, when it opens the conflict is about his high-handed treatment of the proceeds rather than corruption on his end.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Emphasized in his introductory episode. Walt is unhappy that he's turning the abduction of three children into a political issue, but admits that Nighthorse is absolutely right that the social worker and group home were running a racket to get government money fabricating neglect accusations for Cheyenne children.
- Malcolm Xerox: An Indian version. He is always quick to blame white people or call Walt (or anyone against him) a racist. In fact it is revealed in Season 4 that he used to belong to the militant American Indian Movement
as a young man. - Native American Casino: Jacob's the primary driver behind the development.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Unlike almost all the other characters, white or Native, he is usually seen in various nicely-cut suits.
- Smug Snake: In the earlier seasons, though he rounds out in time.
Chief Mathias
The current Chief of the Cheyenne Tribal Police.
Played by: Zahn McClarnon
- Break the Comedian: The normally suave and snarky Mathias is utterly broken by the suicide of young Mingan Pine, viewing it as a personal failure for him to protect Cheyenne children, and a result of the impossible task of ending the despair Cheyenne children feel.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: By the end of Season 1, even if they aren't friends, his grudge against Walt has faded a bit, as the two come to respect each other somewhat. By Season 3, he's quite friendly with Walt's deputies.
- Dirty Cop: Ambiguously implied, but we never know for sure one way or another. Leads in several cases pointing to him turn out to be red herrings, and by Season 4, he's at least opposed to most of the villainous characters. The general implication is that he was forced to participate in corrupt activities as a subordinate to Malachai, but prefers to be honest himself, although like Walt he sometimes takes questionably legal short-cuts.
- Good Is Not Nice: While he is a huge jerk to the Absaroka Sherriff's Department, he engages in fewer morally ambiguous actions than most of the main characters, with his biggest one being making a deal to not have Henry arrested in exchange for illegally searching drug dealers and eventually decides to let him go.
- Irony: The Bureau of Indian Affairs is visibly better funded than the Absaroka County’s Sheriff Office, with more officers and dispatchers/clerks, better patrol vehicles, and larger offices (including actual interrogation rooms and vending machines), but in practice, they are far less effective than the Sheriff’s Office not due to any incompetence, but because they are essentially prohibited from investigating felonies; only the federal government may do so, and they are very reluctant to do so unless handed a slam dunk.
- Jerkass: Mathias is a world-class asshole with a massive chip on his shoulder who tends to hinder Walt's investigations.
- Jerkass Has a Point: He sometimes has legitimate reasons for interfering with Walt's investigations.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though "heart of gold" is a stretch as he is ruthless in his ways, he is undoubtedly devastated at the suicide of Mingan Pine.
- While he gives Cady a small amount of grief for it, he seems to genuinely back her effort to help clear cases that the federal government won’t take.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Gets in the way of Longmire's investigations in early seasons, almost exclusively citing the rules of jurisdiction.
- Pet the Dog: At the end of Season 5, he lets Henry off the hook with no strings attached.
- Took a Level in Kindness: By Season 4, he has mostly gotten over his Jurisdiction Friction issues with Walt, recognizes Malachi Strand as a scumbag, and willingly works with the Sheriff's Office. The disgust he and Walt share over the Loophole Abuse that allows two white men to get away with raping a Cheyenne girl becomes their common ground.
- When the final season comes around he's finally on friendly terms with Walt and the others and willingly cooperates with them throughout the season both on and off the Res, up to and including arresting Jacob Nighthorse, and later in taking down Malachi.
Hector
A principled vigilante-for-hire on the Rez, Hector is a high-school dropout and former boxer who makes a meager living punching the teeth out of those who have horribly wronged others. It may not be justice, per-se, but sometimes it's the best the people of the Rez can get.
- Flaying Alive: Is scalped, shot, and seconds from death when Longmire and his deputies find him.
- Killed Off for Real: By David Ridges.
- NobleSavage: A former boxer, Hector makes his living roughing up people who've wronged someone else, charging $200 per knocked-out tooth. However, he is not a killer, and will only take a job if the target has done something to deserve it.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Hector's job description. Back in the day, when Malachi would only investigate crimes if he got paid, and would let perps go if they paid more, a brutal beating from Hector was the most justice people could hope to get.
- Spanner in the Works: For both the good guys and bad, Hector's refusal to kill the man who killed Walt's wife derails a lot of well-laid plans.
- The Stoic: Even being brutally scalped and murdered doesn't crack his emotional wall.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: He utterly refused to actually take a life, even for Walt's wife's killer, because he firmly believes that it's not up to him to make that call, only the Great Spirit.
- Vigilante Man: Though he doesn't work for free. A man's gotta eat...
Malachi Strand
The former Tribal Police Chief, in prison for using his office to run a protection racket.
Played by: Graham Greene
- Arch-Enemy: Arguably Henry's, given that his drugs killed the Pine family and he tries to torture Henry to death in the Season 5 cliffhanger.
- Big Bad: One of three in Season 5. Eventually promoted to the Big Bad of Season 6.
- Dirty Cop: He ran a protection racket on the rez until Walt caught him and sent him to prison.
- Evil Running Good: He eventually buys the Red Pony out from a desperate Henry to use in his money-laundering operations. Downplayed in that Henry only sells it after almost burning it down and using it as a chip to force a few vital clues out of Malachai, then manages to claw it back in Season 5.
- Faux Affably Evil: He's quite cheery, but always in a rude and insulting way.
- Karma Houdini: Throughout Season 3, he likes rubbing Henry's face in the fact that he's on the loose and back to his old crooked schemes having not even served half his sentence, while Henry himself is about to go to prison for a crime he didn't commit and probably be brutalized and murdered there for his friendship with a white sheriff.
- Kick the Dog: On top of the actually evil and criminal things he does, he also pays a desperate Henry a pittance for the various stuffed and mounted animals around the Red Pony, then discards them out in the desert.
- Law Enforcement, Inc.: He never investigated crimes unless paid by the victims, and would let criminals go if they paid more.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Malachi is played by Graham Greene, who is a First Nation Canadian rather than Native American. There's a hint of Not Even Bothering with the Accent mixed in, because he's doing little to hide their rather thick Native Canadian accent, probably on the assumption that most viewers except Canadians and Natives from both countries can't really tell the difference.
- Pet the Dog: Malachi has a surprising but genuine soft spot for children. In one episode he shows sincere concern for the well-being of a little girl whose father left her at the casino, and admits to Walt that it's because he has a granddaughter whom he rarely gets to see.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Hoo boy. Despite being Cheyenne himself, he often refers to other Native Americans like Hector and Henry with a very contemptuous “Indian”, and within the same sentence refers to Nighthorse as a “half-breed” and calls the Irish Mob “dirty Irishmen”-within the same sentence. Later on, he calls Nighthorse the “smug, arrogant son of a white whore.”
- Villain with Good Publicity: Despite his many crimes against his own people, he's still surprisingly popular on the reservation in many sectors. As security chief of the Three Arrows Casino, he gets on surprisingly well with a young child.
David Ridges
A Cheyenne man who works as an enforcer for Jacob Nighthorse and dabbles in black magic.
- Back from the Dead: Branch goes to the rez to interrogate Ridges for sabotaging Cady's car, only to learn he's committed suicide and Jacob Nighthorse has ceremonially burned the body. However, when Branch goes to collect ashes for DNA testing, he's assaulted and shot by someone he swears is David Ridges. During surgery, a peyote-laced feather is found inside Branch's wound and DNA tests on the ashes confirm they belong to Ridges, so Longmire thinks Branch simply hallucinated his shooter's identity. However, Branch conducts a test of his own, using a rabbit, his own blood and hair samples, to create more ashes that come back positive as belonging to Ridges. On top of that, Hector positively ID's Ridges as his killer before he expires. However, both Branch's mental state and Hector's condition—scalped, shot, and bleeding to death—cast doubt onto whether or not Ridges really is alive or if the power of suggestion is in play. Ultimately proven right at the end of "Harvest."
- Calling Card: Puts crow's feathers soaked in peyote in the people he kills. This helps link the man who killed Longmire's wife with the man who attacked Branch.
- The Dragon: To Nighthorse, who fatefully lent him to Barlow to arrange Walt's wife's murder.
- Evil Sorcerer: Henry instantly identifies some of the tapestries in his house as "seriously bad medicine." He claims to have returned to "count coup" with his enemies, and that he has "touched" Branch three times before intending to kill him: first, with the peyote-laced crow feather after shooting him to take his courage, then in his dreams to trick him into strangling Cady by hallucinating she is Ridges, and finally with a disappearing photograph in a bar that took his soul. It's handled in a very Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane way, though.
- Faking the Dead: Branch is convinced that Ridges did this before shooting him. Season 3 episode "Harvest" reveals that this is true.
- Walking Spoiler
Darius Burns
Darius Burns
Malachi's top enforcer.
- The Brute: For Malachi after he is released.
- The Dragon: More or less ascends to this role for Malachi after Nighthorse kicks him off the rez.
- Red Herring: He's a top suspect in the investigation of Walt's wife's murder, but it turns out to be someone else completely.
Gab Langton
Gabriella "Gab" Langton
A young Cheyenne woman who lives with her mother. Henry was her high school basketball coach.- Broken Bird
- Darkest Hour: After she shoots and kills her rapist, Henry recognizes that she's as good as dead if she stays on the Cheyenne reservation, where Browning's goons will surely find her. His solution: take her to a Crow reservation across the county (Cheyenne and Crow have never gotten along all that well; even when both tribes were fighting the US Army in the 19th Century, they still fought each other), where a mysterious Crow medicine woman who doesn't like visitors will (hopefully) help her. The medicine woman does help, but not before Henry gets the butt of her rifle to the back of the head for daring to cross Crow land.
- The Dog Bites Back: Shoots one of the men who raped her. He later dies in the hospital.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Crow medicine woman says that she turned into a hawk. For all we know, she could be right.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: She gets raped by two Newell Energy roughnecks after a night of partying at Nighthorse's casino. Because it happened on the reservation, but the rapists were not tribal members or spouses, neither Walt nor Mathias have jurisdiction, and the Federal prosecutor declines to press charges due to lack of evidence.
- That One Case: Becomes this for Walt, Mathias, and Henry over the course of Season 4.
Walt's family
ADA Cady Longmire
Played by: Cassidy Freeman
- Affectionate Nickname: Walt often greets her with, "Hey, Punk".
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: Midway through Season 2, loses her job at the law firm, and ends up working at Henry's bar (much to Walt's disapproval).
- The Heart
- Hello, Attorney!
- Last-Minute Hookup: She and Zach start a relationship in the final couple of episodes of the show.
- Morality Pet: To Walt.
- Unexpected Successor: In the series finale, she decides to run for Sheriff after Walt retires.
- White Man's Burden: In the fifth and sixth seasons, she sets up a law clinic on the rez with funding from Nighthorse. She initially wins the trust of the Cheyenne, becoming adopted into the family of her main assistant, but ends up permanently wrecking her reputation by aiding and abetting Catori Long in abducting Tate Dawson and getting him medical treatment against his parents' wishes.
Martha Longmire
Walt's wife, who died shortly before the first season and whose death drives the overriding arc of the first three-and-a-half.
- The Lost Lenore: Martha had terminal cancer and died a year before the pilot episode takes place. Walt keeps her ashes in a tea box in the house and has been wallowing in grief and depression ever since, until Absaroka County's first murder in years forces him to get out of the house and go back to work again. It turns out that she was actually murdered, and that Walt and Henry went to Denver to go after her killer.
- Posthumous Character: As noted above, she's been dead for a year before the series starts.
Branch's family
Barlow Connally
Played by: Gerald McRaney
A ruthless local businessman and rival to Jacob Nighthorse.
- Big Bad: Of the first 3 and a half seasons. Can be seen as this of the entire show since he is the mastermind behind the murder of Walt's wife which sets into motion all the major events of the series.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive
- Driven to Suicide: Draws an unloaded revolver on Walt, goading Walt into shooting him after Walt figures out he's behind Branch's death, then stabs himself several times to seal the deal.
- Green-Eyed Monster: His Motive Rant reveals this toward Walt for becoming Branch’s Parental Substitute and that, plus the shame and guilt of killing his own son and being discovered by Walt, leads to his Thanatos Gambit
- Jerkass: Has a very nasty attitude even when doing things like trying to free his son.
- Offing the Offspring: Murders Branch to cover up his role in Martha Longmire's murder.
- Suicide by Cop: He attempts to provoke Walt into shooting him, but ends up stabbing himself to death when the bullet wound is non-lethal.
- Thanatos Gambit: Tries to pull one with Suicide by Cop from Walt to get some spiteful payback for his son, who became a (mostly) good man under Walt’s influence, and who he murdered himself, looking to Walt as a Parental Substitute. It fails.
Sheriff Lucian Connally
Played by: Peter Weller
The retired former Sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt's mentor, and Branch's uncle.
- Actually Pretty Funny: When he murders a chair in a retirement home, Branch tells him to just ask Barlow for a room in his home, to which Lucian retorts Barlow could open up a whorehouse, and he’d still refuse, prompting a giggle from Ferg.
- Broken Pedestal: After Walt finds out that he had an affair with the wife of a man he sent to prison, who later turned out to be innocent. Though it wasn't really a Uriah Gambit, just Lucian's Rabid Cop nature blinding him to some things he should've noticed.
- Cain and Abel: A nonlethal variant. Lucian and Barlow are brothers who hate eachother's guts. He's none too fond of his nephew Branch, either, as he considers Branch to be far too much like Barlow.
- Cool Old Guy: He likes poetry, and is so bored by retirement that he really wants to get out and get shot at some more.
- Driven to Suicide: Kills himself rather than be arrested for killing Tucker Baggett.
- Grumpy Old Man: He's introduced firing his shotgun into the wall just to mess with the staff of his retirement home, and spends several days at the Sheriff's office while Branch sorts things out with them. When Walt locks up two meth addicts in the holding cell, Lucian (who had been sleeping in the cell) complains that "You got the damn hippies in my guest room!"
- Rabid Cop: No wonder Absaroka had so little crime when he was Sheriff! He calls Walt a "softie" for shooting for the tire of a fleeing van rather than the windshield.
- Reckless Gun Usage: Lucian is introduced living in a retirement home ("facility," not "home"), bored out of his mind and frustrated that the staff has been ignoring his complaints. Lucian decides to fire off a couple of rounds from his shotgun out the window, with a third through an unoccupied chair for good measure.
- Retired Badass
- Would Not Hit a Girl: Which is why Walt sends Vic into his room first when he's firing off his shotgun, though, uh, he did kill eight men during his career. Lucian doesn't mind shooting a nearby chair to freak her out just for the hell of it, though. Vic is definitely not amused.
Absaroka residents
Lizzie Ambrose
Lizzie Ambrose
The owner of a small hotel who is attracted to Walt.
- Love Interest: For Walt in the first two seasons.
- Not What It Looks Like: Both Walt and Vic try to tell her this when she come's to Walt's cabin to Vic spending the night on her couch. Unfortunately, due to Walt's reluctance to commit to her, she does not believe them, breaks off with Walt, and has been off the show since.
Bob Barnes
Bob Barnes
Played by: John Bishop
The town drunk who has worked a variety of odd jobs.
- The Alcoholic
- Face–Heel Turn: The cost of his son's rehab stay causes him to become the notorious bank robber "Cowboy Bill".
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He passes out drunk in the storeroom at the Red Pony, where he was working at the time, and gets locked in overnight, then calls his son to pick him up in the morning because Henry thinks he's still too drunk to drive. Because his son had been drinking the previous night as well, and is texting at the wheel, he runs down and seriously injures Cady while she is changing her car tire, then flees from the scene. Bob feels so guilty over this that he makes a false confession to being the driver and goes to prison. More distantly, if Bob's son hadn't run over Cady, Branch might not have become so aggressive about finding out who sabotaged her tire, and many of the events later in the show might have happened differently and possibly with a lower body count.
Jamie De Bell
Jamie DeBell
Played by: Robert Clendanin
Absaroka County's local weed dealer, who runs a pizza delivery business as a front organization.- Butt-Monkey: He often experiences comic misfortunes.
- Harmless Villain: He's completely unthreatening, avoids harder drugs, and is very timid.
- Indispensable Scoundrel: Walt tolerates him because his product relieved Martha's symptoms when she had cancer, because he occasionally provides information on more serious criminals, and because he's pretty harmless.
- Insistent Terminology: He's a cannabis enthusiast, not a drug dealer.
- Lovable Coward: He's easily intimidated.
Meg Joyce
Meg Joyce
A nurse who catches the Ferg's eye, then his heart.
Played by: Mary Wiseman
- Fiery Redhead
- Has a Type: In season 6, we meet her ex Reggie, and he's the Ferg's doppleganger. Hilariously, it is never mentioned.
Omar
Omar
A local hunter and gun enthusiast who helps Walt in many of his investigations.
- Abhorrent Admirer: To Vic, who finds his constant hitting on her annoying.
- Everyone Has Standards: He loathes poachers, who he sees as having no respect for laws and nature.
- Hunter Trapper: Is loathed by the local environmentalists for his desire to shoot a bear.
- Mountain Man
- Out of Focus: Is barely in season 3, something he lampshades when Walt and Henry hitch a ride in his plane in one scene.
Sean Keegan
Sean Keegan
Played By: Michael Mosley
Vic's husband, who works for an oil and gas extraction company.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: After he forces Walt to serve divorce papers to Vic, he vanishes from the show with no further explanation.
- No Guy Wants an Amazon: His marriage to Vic collapses partly because he's ashamed that she's tougher than he is.
Travis Murphy
Travis Murphy
Played By: Derek Phillips
A boyhood friend of Branch Connally who wants to be a sheriff's deputy.
- Dogged Nice Guy: To Vic in Seasons 5 and 6.
- Heroic Wannabe: He desperately wants to be a deputy despite being disqualified by his criminal record and generally unreliable personality. Downplayed by the fact that he does occasionally show some real detective instincts, and inspire Walt or Branch to make a breakthrough with one of his comments.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: A drunken tryst with Vic makes him one of two possibilities for her baby’s father. Travis is willing to take his best shot at fatherhood either way, with or without a relationship.
- Mama's Boy: He still lives with his mother, who is extremely protective of him.
Tucker Baggett
Tucker Baggett
- Asshole Victim
- Big Bad Ensemble: In season 5 along with Malachi Strand and Shane Muldoon, even if their motives are entirely different. He also seems to be set up as a Big Bad in season 6, as he is seeking to use the lawsuit to oust Walt as sheriff, take his land away, and build a golf course on top of it.
- Faux Affably Evil
- It's Personal: Part of the reason for his lawsuit is because Barlow was his best friend. Even though he knows the truth about Barlow's death, he completely empathized with Barlow's dream of a golf course directly on the Longmire residence.
- Small-Town Tyrant: Walt discovers that he is deliberately withholding evidence in his civil suit against him, as he wants to build his new golf course right on top of Walt's land.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He's Barlow Connally in all but name.
The Irish Mob
Shane Muldoon
Shane Muldoon
Played by: Dylan Walsh
- Big Bad: One of three in season 5. He's quickly dealt with by Longmire, though if the Season 6 trailer is any indication, we haven't seen the last of him.
- Disc-One Final Boss: In season 5, but we haven't seen the last of him.
Eddie Harp
- Back for the Dead: In Season 6.
- Boom, Headshot!: Courtesy of Ferg.
- The Dragon: To Shane Muldoon.
- Faux Affably Evil
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: While investigating Harp, Walt talks to his estranged parents and discovers that Harp has been sending them checks for large amounts of money for years. Walt uses this information to try to talk Harp down during a standoff, noting that any man who sends money to his parents can't be all bad. Harp reveals that the bank account linked to the checks is empty, and that he's only been sending them checks so that if they ever get hard up enough to need the money, there will be nothing for them.
- Pet the Dog: He actually seems to be running a genuine clinic on the Rez, and while it is obviously a front for drug trafficking, he genuinely helps cure young Tate of his scarlet fever using his piecemeal medical school training.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Is apparently killed by the Irish Mob to prevent him from any sort of testimony about their dirty dealings.
- Subverted: Turns out in Season 6 he faked his own death... but then ends up getting killed anyway by Ferg.
Other characters
Ed Gorski
Ed Gorski
Played by: Lee Tergesen
A former Philadelphia police officer with a grudge against Vic for multiple reasons.
- Abhorrent Admirer: Is one for Vic after it's revealed they carried on an affair when they were both on the force in Philadelphia.
- Casual Kink: Did this to Vic during their affair to the point where it freaked her out and made her want to stop the whole thing. He decided otherwise.
- Dirty Cop: Gorski was a homicide detective with Philadelphia PD, and was very crooked.
- Enemy Mine: He and Walt team up to save Vic and Sean from a Crazy Survivalist compound.
- Evil Is Petty: Has a serious vendetta against Vic for turning his partner in and cutting off their affair.
- Stalker with a Crush: He denies it repeatedly in the episode where he and Walt team up to save her... before repeatedly grousing about her husband being a Non-Action Guy and commenting on how she outta be with him instead.
Detective Fales
Detective Fales
A homicide detective in Denver who worked on the death of Walt's wife and the subsequent killing of the prime suspect.
- Everything Is Racist: He makes this assumption about Walt, though he's wrong.
- Freudian Excuse: Fales grew up in a small town in the Deep South whose Sheriff was a corrupt, racist white man in a cowboy hat. Since Walt is a small-town white Sheriff in a cowboy hat, Fales assumes that he's corrupt and racist as well.
- Hypocrite: Says that Walt is corrupt and he'll enjoy taking him down. Then we find out that he's not exactly squeaky-clean himself.
- Inspector Javert: Played with. He mix-and-matches the evidence to arrive at predetermined conclusions.
- Rabid Cop: Downplayed. Fales is very enthusiastic and malicious in his vendetta against Walt, but not to the point of ever quite completely losing his composure. He also still loves Henry's burgers even as he tries to put the man in prison.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Fales thinks that his misplaced Freudian vendetta against Walt Longmire is a righteous crusade against a corrupt Sheriff, and he is surprisingly unscrupulous about it.
Miller Beck
Miller Beck
The man who killed Walt's wife.
- The Addict: A meth junkie.
- Posthumous Character: The details of his death are shrouded in mystery from the audience for most of the first two seasons, then the mystery of his death is the focus of the third, but he himself is long in the ground by the time the show begins.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He kills Martha Longmire on Barlow's orders, and subsequently murdered by David Ridges.
Chance Gilbert
A survivalist who leads a devoted cult of freedom worshipers.
- Arch-Enemy: Gradually becomes this to Vic.
- Born in the Wrong Century: He says he should have lived 200 years ago, as should Walt.
- Characterization Marches On: He seems to live alone in his introduction, and is very focused on the "letter of the law" as he threatens Walt. In the follow-up, he has a family and an army of "disciples" who live on a big compound with him, and they've murdered a census agent and murder a highway patrolman without provocation over the course of the episode.
- Crazy Survivalist: Even modest interaction with him shows him to be a bit unhinged.
- Death Seeker: After losing his second trial and being sentenced to 20 years to life, he decides he would rather die than spend his life in a cell. He begs Walt to help him get the death penalty for murdering the census taker, but Walt refuses. Vic, on the other hand...
- Even Evil Has Standards: Chance promises a prison guard that if the guard helps him escape, Chance will murder the guard's wife. He doesn't even attempt to do so once free.
- A Fool for a Client: He defended himself in a murder trial and won. He tries again in his trial for the kidnapping and torture of Vic and Sean, but loses this time.
- Hidden Depths: While being The Brute and often Faux Affably Evil, he shows a surprisingly contemplative side, not wrongly telling Walt that they were both Born in the Wrong Century, and showing enough grasp of the law that he can half-competently defend himself not once but twice in court for pretty serious criminal charges, even making a decent argument about his capture of Vic actually being an attempt by her to bypass getting a search warrant because of Walt’s supposed grudge of him.
- Immigrant Patriotism: A dark example. He has an obsession with American principles of liberty, law and history, which he all but states is because he escaped an unidentified fascist country that is now dead to him. Peter Stormare is Swedish, and it's possible that Chance was already so politically extreme that he thought Sweden was fascist.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Makes this claim about Walt, who finds it offensive. He brings up a few good points to back it up, too, but Walt is ultimately much more moral than Chance.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: He mentions leaving a fascist country to find freedom in America, and his accent is pronounced, but where it is never comes up. His actor, Peter Stormare, is Swedish, though he adds a noticeable drawl to suggest his character has been in the United States for quite a while.
- You Killed My Father: Hates Walt for shooting his brother.
Dr. Donna Monaghan
Dr. Donna Monaghan
Played by: Ally Walker
An overworked psychiatrist specializing in PTSD whose program is underfunded. Becomes a Love Interest to Walt in Seasons 4 and 5.
- Love Interest: To Walt in Seasons 4 & 5.
- The Shrink: Works with veterans to help overcome PTSD, but her program isn't getting near the amount of attention and priority that it desperately needs.
Jim Wilkins
Sheriff Jim Wilkins
Played by: Tom Wopat
The sheriff of the neighbouring Cumberland County, who occasionally co-operates with Walt on overlapping cases.
- Dirty Cop: He allows the large campaign contributions he receives from Newell Energy to influence him to be soft on their employees.
- Face–Heel Turn: Initially introduced as an honest cop and buddy of Walt's, he ends up shielding Walker Browning for his various misdeeds.
Eamonn O'Neill
Deputy Eamonn O'Neill
Played by: Josh Cooke
A deputy for Cumberland County who helps out Absaroka County for a time while Walt is under investigation for Barlow's death and then on leave, and also co-operates with them on cases that overlap their territories.
- Honor Before Reason: He escorts Walt to confront Walker Browning and Sheriff Wilkins at Wilkins' home, admitting that he's probably burning his bridges with Cumberland County in the process.
- Love Interest: To Vic in Season Four.
- Master of the Mixed Message: He plays hot and cold a lot with Vic, sometimes having wild sex with her and sometimes standing her up and ignoring her messages. He finally breaks up with her when she torpedoes his application for a permanent job with Walt by saying that they're in a relationship, when he cared more about getting the job than her.
Walker Browning
Walker Browning
Played by: Callum Keith Rennie
The manager of an oil-drilling site near the Cheyenne Reservation, who encourages his employees to sexually exploit Cheyenne girls as a "reward" for their labor.
- Big Bad: of Season 4, eventually.
- Jerkass: He's an obnoxious, self-centred, sexist man who bullies his employees in their job and brings the worst out in them off-duty.
- Karma Houdini: After the Gab arc ends, he is released by Sheriff Wilkins and taken back to Cumberland County to escape Walt's custody, and never faces any real consequences for his actions.
- Would Hit a Girl: He viciously beats up Mandy to try to get her to tell him where Gab is, and then tries to kill Gab.
Monte Ford
Monte Ford
A candidate for sheriff's deputy who was note-perfect on the textbook of policing, but seriously lacking in personality.
- Evil Is Petty: Is actively seeking to bring down Walt simply because he wouldn't hire him.
- Felony Misdemeanor: He becomes obsessed with destroying Walt’s life because Walt gave him and Zach a Secret Test of Character about supposedly not being hired, which seems to go exactly as planned, given that he almost immediately begins threatening and insulting Walt instead of dealing with the setback maturely-a skill that the Sheriff’s office may actually need, given how they often seem to be at dead-ends in their investigations and encounter uncooperative witnesses quite frequently.
- Private Detective: He takes up this role in season 5 to help Tucker Baggett's civil suit against Walt.
- Stalker without a Crush: Take one look inside his place, and it's clear he's absolutely obsessed with bringing down Walt.
Tamar Smith
Tamar Smith
A severely Shell-Shocked Veteran and a patient of Dr. Donna Monaghan who kidnaps her because she thought she was being abused by Walt.
- Anti-Villain: No one bears her any ill will after it's revealed she was responsible for kidnapping Dr. Monaghan.
- Driven to Suicide: Though she is saved in the nick of time by Walt, Vic, and Ferg.
- Rape as Backstory: Her commanding officer frequently violated her, and only made her more of a...
- Shell-Shocked Veteran
US Marshal Hammond
Marshal Hammond
A U.S. Marshal that starts aiding the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Office after Chance Gilbert escapes during his second trial.
- Good Counterpart: Compared to the other federal agents. Agent Towson is so incompetent that he is implied to have been fired by the FBI, and it is shown that after lambasting Ferg for letting Eddie Harp get away, he instead sits at Nighthorse’s casino playing slots instead of pursuing him. Agent Decker, on the other hand, is in Malachi’s pocket and implied to actually be a criminal instead of an FBI agent.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: He allows Vic to postpone her questioning after shooting Chance Gilbert and losing her pregnancy, out of understanding for her grief, and also lies by omission to the media to have it seem like Walt was the shooter in order to prevent the Gilbert family from going after her.
