 ✓
| ||
|
This Villain was proposed and approved by Villains Wiki's Pure Evil Proposals Thread. Any act of removing this villain from the category without a Removal Proposal shall be considered vandalism (or a futile "heroic" attempt of redemption) and the user will have high chances of being | ||
| “ | You see, Captain Jones? These are my friends now. I have been besieged by enemies for too many years. It has been too long. But now, the land will be safe. We will crush the intruders out and wash the Earth with their blood! Their deaths will cleanse us. Their screams from the stake, will allow us to sleep. For it is such a purity death has, such a perfect beauty... | „ |
| ~ Mattias Targo confiding his plans to Indiana Jones, Maria Straussler and Nicholas Hunyadi. |
General Mattias Targo is a minor antagonist in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, serving as the main antagonist of the Season 2 episode "Transylvania, January 1918".
He is a Romanian separatist general who operates in Transylvania, Romania during World War I. However, as the American soldier Indiana Jones finds out, Targo is actually a vampire believed to be the reincarnation of Vlad Tespes who preys on the blood of his victims. This makes Targo the first supernatural threat Jones faced throughout his adventurous lifetime.
He was portrayed by the late Bob Peck in his only villainous role. When talking through Maria Straussler, he was portrayed by Simone Bendix.
History[]
Past[]
Mattias Targo was an enigmatic Romanian noble who lived in a castle in Transylvania, Northwestern Romania, which he used as his personal headquarters. However, Targo didn't have a positive reputation, given the rumors that he was the reincarnation of the fearsome Vlad "The Impaler" Tepes, a legendary vampiric warlord from the 15th century who was renowned for his singular viciousness and his love to drink blood from his enemies, which may have had some truth given Targo's genuine vampirism. Around World War I, Targo became a separatist general bent on conquering his home country for himself, possibly to fight his own war for Romanian independence. To do so, Targo attacked a Southeastern Austrian military camp full of prisoners of war and abducted all the POWs there, in spite of Romania's allegiance to Austria-Hungary.
Instead of freeing the POWs, however, Targo brought all the prisoners to his castle and proceeded to prey on their blood: he brainwashed most of them into undead soldiers whom he sent to a campsite full of other German, Austrian, French, British and American soldiers he had turned into vampires. As for the rest, Targo had them killed by impaling them on sharpened poles at his castle's grounds. His activities soon became of interest for the American army and the French Intelligence, resulting in them sending agents François Picard, Frederick McCall and Evan Thompson to investigate, but Targo got rid of them through unimaginable ways as the Allies would later learn in a package Targo sent to them as a warning.
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles[]
In January 1918, towards the end of World War I, the American soldier Indiana Jones and his superior Colonel Waters are dispatched to Romania in search of Picard after Ministry of War Carlo Paretti and Ambassador Henry Stanfill received a box with body parts of the Ally agents, incidentally shortly after Indy received a premonition from a Venecian tarot reader about him possibly facing death. Both men accept the task with some reluctance, so they go to the small town of Istrita near the Transylvanian border, where the Allies have three agents waiting for them: Picard's fianceé Maria Straussler, Nicholas Hunyadi and the undercover Austrian captain Adolf Schmidt posing as Dr. Franz Heinzer.
Indy, Waters, Straussler, Hunyadi and Heinzer go to Targo's castle and sneak inside the castle, soon becoming distraught over the paranormal and supernatural sounds they hear as they explore, the blood that rains from one room's roof or heated doorknobs that lead into strange rooms, all while hearing Targo's evilly laughing at their expense without knowing from where he is. Running from one side to another, their fears intensify when Waters gets pulverized in a snowy room, leaving nothing but his boots with his leg bones. Targo finally appears to "welcome" his guests, accepting to take them to meet the agents he abducted in the dining room as Jones holds him at gunpoint.
Indy and his friends are led to the dining room, where they find François, Frederick, Evan and three other men eating and drinking, but they no longer act like themselves, leading the party to realize that Targo has indoctrinated them into drinking blood as his undead servants. An undead François blows Schmidt's cover, so he reveals himself and shoots François to no avail, leading Maria to kill Schmidt with a knife. Having thrown his weapon beforehand, Indy tries to retrieve his pistol but Targo has his servants subdue him, Maria and Nicholas and take them to the highest tower after revealing his intentions to wash the world with the blood of his enemies.
Once at the highest tower, Targo has his men strap Nicholas into an operation table and chain Indy and Maria near them, proceeding to vivisect Nicholas alive and drink his blood, much to the horror of Indy and Maria. After finishing Hunyadi off, Mattias takes a liquor-like drink and forces Maria to drink it, drugging her into unconsciousness and placing her into a nearby bed. He then prepares to repeat the process with Indiana. Indy breaks free and punches the general, but Targo simply drags him to the operation table and straps him to it to vivisect Indy as well, but Maria reveals herself to have faked drinking the liquid and throws a knife at Targo's back, temporarily incapacitating him enough to free Indy and for the two to break out from the tower.
Unwilling to let the two Allied agents escape, Mattias recovers and reaches them at the tower's bridge, leading Indy to face him with the axe he and Maria used to escape from the room. Targo takes the axe and the two struggle before Targo tries to stab Indy with the knife, but Indy flips Targo off the bridge's ledge and then stomps on his fingers to knock him off to his death below. Knowing that Targo previously survived her knife and that he will possibly survive the fall and resume his activitiesafter they escape, however, Maria insists Indy to take Targo to a place in the Romanian forests where four roads meet to stake his heart. Just as they are ready to do it, Mattias suddenly weakes up and grabs Maria's hand, but Indy nails the stake on Targo's heart, finally killing him for good. With his last strength, Targo asks Indy and Maria what they did and slumps dead over the ground. The two Allied agents then cover up his corpse, which quickly burns and blows up out of nowhere, with Targo's face appearing in the smoke to scare them one more time before vanishing forever, which also allows the undead soldiers he killed to die for once and move on to the afterlife.
Trivia[]
- Mattias Targo is easily the most supernatural human villain of the Indiana Jones franchise: most of the titular protagonist's enemies are simple humans who may or may not acquire powers from the artifacts they seek, but Targo is already a vampire by the time Indy crosses paths with him.
- Despite the nature of their encounter and Indiana Jones himself telling three Halloween trick-or-treaters if they believe in ghosts after hearing his story in 1993, it looks that around the time of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Indy didn't quite believe in Targo being supernatural given how he says during that adventure that he doesn't believe in magic if the film's trailers are of any indication.
- Interestingly, Bob Peck worked with Steven Spielberg, one of the two creatives behind the Indiana Jones film series, as Robert Muldoon in Jurassic Park, which was released months before his appearance as Targo in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
- The episode ultimately leaves ambiguous on whether Mattias Targo is Vlad Tespes reincarnated or not, but if he isn't, at the very least he may be a descendant of his. Either way, regardless the option, it can be easily concluded that no matter what, Targo is undoubtedly a vampire.
External Links[]
- Mattias Targo on the Pure Evil Wiki
- Mattias Targo on the Indiana Jones Wiki
[]
 Villains
| ||
|
Nazi Party Thuggee Soviet Union Others | ||