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William "Will" Savage was a fictional character and major antagonist of the British soap opera Hollyoaks. He served as one of the main protagonists from 2011-2012, before becoming a major antagonist from 2013-2015.

Originally he debuted from April 2011 to February 2015, making his first appearance on 7th April 2011 and his last on 4th February 2015. In his time on the show, Will killed two people: his mother Anna Blake and his wife Texas Longford respectively.

He was portrayed by James Atherton, who also played Jamie Bowman in Coronation Street.

Biography[]

Will Savage first came to Hollyoaks in April 2011. He is the son of Dirk Savage and Anna Blake, the brother of Liberty Savage, and the half-brother of Dodger Savage. At some point, he befriended serial killer Silas Blissett, who was lining Will’s gradual love interest Theresa McQueen up to be his next victim. This friendship would ultimately result in Silas killing Will’s good friend Rae Wilson.

The following year, Will found himself in Brendan Brady and Simon Walker’s bad books when he became a suspect in the Who Killed Lynsey Nolan? storyline, as were Brendan and Walker, although Lynsey’s murderer was later revealed to be Doctor Browning.

In 2013, Will slowly went from being a nerdy, awkward, polite, honest and caring young man to an unhinged, cold, violent and manipulative murderer, mostly due to his extreme jealously towards his brother Dodger being the apparent favourite of their family, as well as Dodger being considered far better looking and far more confident than Will. There is also the implication that Will's time with Silas caused Will's descent into insanity and evil, since Silas had very likely played on Will's insecurities and weak-willed nature and even mentored him on how to lie and manipulate people. Silas' influence on Will caused him to slowly become something worse than even Silas. Will sleeps with Dodger's girlfriend, Texas Longford, and after revealing their affair to Dodger and the rest of the family, Will, in a fit of upset, throws himself down some stairs (presumably trying to kill himself), making Texas believe that she had pushed him. The incident left Will paralysed from the waist down, and Texas supports Will and even gets into a relationship with him, largely out of guilt for thinking that she's the reason that he is paralysed.

On their wedding day, it is revealed that Will can in fact walk and had been pretending to be paralysed (either the entire time or his paralysis was only for a short time at the beginning). He angrily accused Texas of never loving him and loving only Dodger. During the argument, he accidentally pushed Texas out the window, killing her. Though shocked by this, Will soon gets over her death and tries to pin her murder on first Dodger and then Leanne when the former gets released by the police. Leanne is later released as well due to Will's mother, Anna Blake, confessing to killing Texas, as a way to protect Will. However, Will eventually decides to murder his own mother, both because he suspects that she will tell everyone the truth and because he wanted revenge on her for abandoning him when he was a child. Later on, he also tries to kill his new girlfriend, Ash Kane, when she discovers that he had murdered Texas and Anna, but she is killed in an explosion instead.

Later in 2013, Will kidnapped his whole family and held them at gunpoint, including his half-sister Sienna Blake, his niece Nico Blake, and their father and grandfather respectively, Patrick Blake. He accused his father Dirk for loving Dodger (a "stranger") more than loving Will (his own flesh and blood), but Dirk adamantly claimed that he loves Will just as much as he loves Dodger (and Liberty) and he always has. Dirk desperately tried to reason with Will, but Will proved to be too far gone and refused to believe that Dirk loves him just as much as he loves Dodger, so he still planned on killing Dirk and everyone else, except for Dodger, whom Will wanted to watch as a way of emotionally destroying Dodger. This situation resulted in both Will and Dodger falling off of the roof of the house that Will had kept everyone hostage in. Will became paralysed again, this time presumably for good, and he was arrested and charged with the murders of Texas and Anna, as well as the abduction and attempted murders of the rest of his family and Ash's mother, Martha Kane. Dodger pointed out to Will that Will had everything, including family, friends and women who loved and cared about him, but he was so jealous and selfish that he couldn't see it, and because of his irrational, wicked behaviour and actions, he now has nothing and nobody.

Will returned in 2015, having recovered from his paralysis once again and manages to break out of prison, and he had become even worse than he was before: he no longer cared about anything or anyone other than getting sweet revenge on his half-brother and father, targeting the people close to them and trying to kill those people to emotionally destroy Dodger and Dirk. He kidnapped and tried to murder Maxine, Theresa, and Nico, the last of whom managed to push him off of the hospital roof, injuring him and putting him into a coma. Dodger takes the blame for trying to kill Will in order to protect Nico and goes on the run out of the country. Dirk visits the comatose Will in hospital and says his goodbyes to him, while also expressing his huge disappointment in Will for bringing so much shame on the family and for ruining so many people's lives, as well as Will ruining his own life, with his stupid petty jealousy, and Dirk wonders why Will couldn't see that Dirk and other people loved him. Because of Will's monstrous and unforgivable actions, Dirk reluctantly admits that he wishes that Will had never been born and he hopes that Will never wakes up from his coma.

Unfortunately for Dirk, Will does wake up from his coma and had heard everything that his father had said. As revenge, Will tried to kill Cindy, whom he knew was in a loving relationship with Dirk, by injecting her with a large dose of morphine, smiling in sadistic satisfaction that Dirk witnessed the whole thing. Dirk furiously confronts Will later on, saying that Cindy did nothing to Will, but Will does not care and says that it was worth it just to see the look on Dirk's face. When Will angrily accuses Dirk for putting another person's kids before his own again, Dirk angrily says that he is not taking any sort of blame for the evil things that Will has done (which Dirk is right about since Will is a grown man responsible for his own choices and actions, but also that Dirk has always been a good father to Will, or at least done his best to be). Will, however, refuses to apologise or accept any responsibility for his actions and states that he absolutely hates Dirk. Dirk points out that Will wasn't born the way that he is now and was a sweet, loving little kid who never hurt anyone and loved Dirk and the rest of the family, so he desperately tries one last time to reach out to Will and see if that good little boy is still in there somewhere. However, Will coldly says that that little boy died a long time ago and that all he has left now is the pain that he causes and the lives that he destroys, such as Dirk's, Dodger's and Nico's. Dirk states that's not who Will is and that's not the way that he brought Will up, but Will proves that there is none of his old self left and is nothing but a nihilistic, petty, sadistic monster who will never stop trying to destroy his family's lives, much to Dirk's heartbreak.

Eventually, Will met his demise when he was murdered by The Gloved Hand Killer. Dirk witnessed Will having convulsions, but chose not to call for help from the doctors that could have saved Will and instead let him die, as Dirk realised that Will was psychologically beyond saving to the point that he wasn't Dirk's son anymore and that Dirk needed to protect Dodger, Nico, Cindy and everyone else from Will's reign of terror. Even though Dirk did show immense remorse over his decision to let his son die, he ultimately knew that he did the right thing, not just for everyone else's sake, but also for Will's, since if Dirk had chosen to save Will, then there's the possibility that Will would have spent the rest of his life behind bars, which would have been a fate far worse than death (which is no less than what he deserved after all the deplorable things that he did). Therefore, in some way at least, Dirk actually did Will a favour by putting him out of his misery.

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Trivia[]

• He made a total of 255 appearances throughout his time on the show.