"Interrogator" is an animated Film Noir series set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It was released in 2022 as a Warhammer+ exclusive series.
The series is centered around an Inquisitorial Interrogator named Jurgen, who has become a drunken junkie since the death of his former mistress, Inquisitor Bellona, at the hands of his traitorous colleague named Heroth. For years he has been searching for the traitor in the Hive City of Gheisthaven in order to avenge Bellona, but his search had proved fruitless...Until one of his colleagues approaches him with a lead.
The show provides examples of the following tropes:
- Anti-Hero: Jurgen is, to put it lightly, not a nice person. He is gruff, dour and quite a pottymouth. He has done terrible things during his time as an inquisitorial agent, and has killed many people whether they were deserving or not. One of his earlier actions were the killing of children who may or may not have been mutants. By the time of the present, he has become a washed out drunk and drug addict due to being wracked with guilt and suffering from PTSD.
- The Cartel: Aedo, A former primus medicae turned narco-lord and Jurgen's supplier of drugs, is the leader of one in Gheisthaven.
- Character Tics: What leads Jurgen to believe that Baldur does have a lead on the traitor, Heroth. Heroth was known to play with his gold coin by rolling it around his knuckles. Jurgen has this confirmed when he scries the mind of a thug who had met with Heroth doing the same gesture.
- Civil War: Gheisthaven is on the brink of civil war ever since the assassination of the planetary governor. Two major houses battling for control being House Klore (which has the most troops under it's command) and House Sedimere (which has the most support of the houses and the people).
- Continuity Nod: Along with giving us a timeline for the show, Sortha mentions the Great Rift that was formed after the events of the Gathering Storm.
- Cyberpunk: The setting has always had Cyberpunk elements, but this show leans into the aesthetic a lot more than most. The hair and fashion especially.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The series has a monochrome color palette to fit with it's noir theme.
- Double Agent: Jurgen scries a dead Heroth's mind and discovers that he was working as a double agent for a puritan inquisitor after deeming Bellona a radical due to her extremist plans.
- Downer Ending: The series ends with Jurgen accomplishing nothing. Baldur is dead, Jurgen feels guilt over killing Heroth after discovering his true intentions and his faith in Bellona is shattered. Jurgen is left contemplating his failures and with no idea on what to do now. Not to mention the imminent civil war between the Noble Houses of Gheisthaven which will result in untold death and destruction.
- Dramatic Irony: Jurgen's mission in the story is to avenge Bellona's murder at the hands of Heroth, unaware until the end of the season that she viewed him ultimately as just one more sacrifice in her plan to kill billions, Heroth's actions being the thing that saved his life.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Jurgen has become addicted to amnasec and drug pills, majorly due to his guilt in failing to protect Bellona.
- Electronic Eyes: Occular augments are common amongst the imperial populace. A notable feature of Baldur is a bionic right eye.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Despite being a smug jerkass and something of a psycho, even Heroth was horrified at the extent of Bellona's extremist plans, which is why he turned against her.
- Face Death with Dignity: During their final encounter, Jurgen has Heroth's escape route blocked and the former pointing his gun at the latter. After exchanging a few words, Heroth faces his impending demise with grace before Jurgen fatally shoots him in the head.
- From Bad to Worse: Jurgen and Baldur find themselves in Duke Klore's prison and awaiting their executions. Baldur rags at Jurgen to think of a way to get them out of their predicament by any means. With no options left, Jurgen drinks the Psyker enhancing drug, figuring that things couldn't get worse than they are. Jurgen realizes too late that things can always get even worse. Drinking the drug causes Jurgen's powers to go haywire. While Jurgen does blast an exit from his prison cell, he accidentally causes Baldur's death in process, much to Jurgen's horror.
- Foreshadowing:
- During a flashback when the two are idling in a bar, Heroth slyly lampshades that Bellona and her retinue seem to be finding a lot of guilty nobles in the sector, to which Jurgen handwaves as being the nature of power and corruption. As the end of the season shows, the "corruption" of said nobles was just an excuse from Bellona since she needed to destabilize a number of planets through choice killings, Heroth himself being aware of this and might have been trying to lightly clue Jurgen in.
- Human Resources: Those drugs that Jurgen takes? A main part of their ingredient are the ashes of Psykers that Aedo kills by vaporizing them. Aedo mentions that with the creation of the Great Rift, there has been an increase in the Psyker population, and with the inquisitorial black ships no longer arriving to collect them in Gheisthaven, he took advantage of this to increase production and profits.
- It's Personal: The main plot point is Jurgen seeking out a traitorous member of his retinue, Heroth, so that he can avenge Inquisitor Bellona's murder.
- Kick the Dog:
- When Aedo's thugs arrives at Jurgen's apartment, one of them pushes a random citizen off the balcony to his death for no other reason than they can.
- Troopers of House Klore are shown attacking and killing protestors, with one of the troopers sporting a sadistic grin after gunning one down.
- Morton's Fork: Jurgen and Baldur are captured by Duke Klore's troops and brought to him. As he explains, the situation in Gheisthaven is spiraling out of control, and he is losing the war against House Sedimere and the support of the people. He intends to execute them as the ones responsible for the death of the planetary governor and hopefully sway the masses to him. He offers them two choices: 1) Cooperate and admit their guilt and they will be given swift and painless deaths or 2) Resist and he will ensure that their deaths will be agonizingly painful.
- Neutral No Longer: Sortha initially wants nothing to do with Jurgen, but is (begrudgingly) forced to team up with Jurgen after his investigation causes her bar to be turned into a ruined wreck.
- Posthumous Character: Inquisitor Bellona, who is long dead during the present events of the series, and is seen several times in Jurgen's flashbacks.
- Precision F-Strike: Even in the 41st Millennium, a lot of modern day swear words are still in usage. Jurgen in particular is probably the first character in the setting to say the word "Fuck", and more than once.
- Shame If Something Happened: Jurgen and Sortha manage to enter the Voidport by threatening the lead guards after showing them a data slate containing pictures of them and their families.
- Slashed Throat: The leader of Aedo's thugs sent to Jurgen's apartment has her throat slashed by Jurgen via the broken edge of his drinking glass. The woman spends most of the fight desperately keeping the pressure on her slashed throat before finally expiring from blood loss.
- Stress Vomit: After using his psyker powers to read a thug's mind, Jurgen vomits on the latter's boot.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: For all of his skills, Jurgen gets dominated in a fist fight against Heroth's cybernetic bodyguard on account of him facing the bodyguard alone and without the proper equipment, along with said bodyguard being a larger and armored foe with enhanced strength. It's only by Sortha's timely arrival that Jurgen survives, albeit battered and bruised.
- Tempting Fate: Back when Jurgen was the leader of a gang, he came up with a plan to steal inquisitor Bellona's rosette, her symbol of authority. He assures his gang that the plan will go without a hitch and they'll all make it out alive. The scene transitions to Jurgen bloodied and the entirety of his gang dead.
- The Needs of the Many: Bellona's ultimate plan to seal the Great Rift involved the simultaneous deaths of a billion psykers across an alignment of planets, requiring in itself the assassinations of the planetary Governers so that the worlds would fall into civil chaos (causing even more untold deaths), allowing the psykers to grow in number and power. When asked by Heroth what she intends for Jurgen given that he's a psyker, Bellona casually writes him off as just one more sacrifice, him and billions of others dying so that trillions might be saved.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Baldur, horrified after discovering that Jurgen's drugs are partly made of the ashes of Psykers, proceeds to physically assault Jurgen, angry at the interrogator over him knowing what the drugs were made of and still taking them anyway. Jurgen defends himself by claiming that he's not happy about it, but it's the only way to suppress the pain his Psyker powers bring him.
- Villain Has a Point: Downplayed with Aedo. On one hand, it is clear that he is killing live psykers and using their ashes to make his drugs purely for profit and not out of altruism. And on the other, he is correct that if the psyker population breeds out of control, since the black ships stopped coming by, then there will be dire consequences that will affect the whole planet. note
- Your Head A-Splode:
- The fate of one of Aedo's thugs when Jurgen shoots a messer round to his head, causing the thug's top half to explode and splattering the wall of Jurgen's room with blood, bone and brain-matter.
- Just when Jurgen is about to be finished off by Heroth's bodyguard, Sortha shoots the bodyguard's head from behind and taking out a large chunk of the bodyguard's head.
