  |
This article's content is marked as Mature Henry Blackburn contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature articles are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
 |
Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: "With great power comes great responsibility."
Spider-Man has declared that this article is still under construction. |
| “ | Jesus Christ, the nuke is still out there. Solomon's still out there! You can't just walk away from the threat! | „ |
| ~ Henry Blackburn to Agent Gordon. |
Staff Sergeant Henry "Black" Blackburn is the main protagonist of Battlefield 3, and is mentioned in the Battlefield 2042 codex lore for the Dark Creations and Dark Protocol seasons.
During the campaign he and his team track down a man known as Solomon, who has a plot to use WMDs on NYC and Paris. In the end, Henry and Soloman get into a brawl in the streets of NYC. Henry gets the upper hand and beats the madman with a brick, putting an end to Solomon's plans.
He was modelled after and voiced by Gideon Emery, who also voiced Fergus Reid in the MachineGames Wolfenstein series, Gideon in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Poseidon in God of War: Ghost of Sparta and God of War III, Carlos Oliveira in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, and Laurence Nelson in The Wonderful 101.
Biography[]
Background[]
Henry Blackburn was born in Buffalo, New York and is the son of Michael Blackburn, a Vietnam War veteran, and is the grandson of George Blackburn, a World War II veteran. According to Henry, his father often had random outbursts due to his trauma from the Vietnam War. Either around the age of eighteen or during adulthood, Blackburn joined the United States Marine Corps and reached the rank of staff sergeant. He also had a fiancé named Charlene back home.
Battlefield 3[]
Henry is a US 1st Recon Marine who propels the narrative of the story through his flashbacks. He is the player character for the majority of the game's singleplayer missions.
Operation Swordbreaker[]
On March 15th, 2014, Blackburn and his squad, Misfit 1-3, were sent to Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan in order to find and extract a Marine squad, who had gone missing while investigating a possible IED in a market occupied by the People's Liberation and Resistance, an Iranian insurgent group who had evidently crossed borders from Iran to Iraq. He, along with his squad, found themselves ambused by the PLR, forcing them to leave Private Jack Chaffin, one of their squadmates, behind for extraction, due to him being critically wounded by a sniper.
Blackburn and Misfit 1-3 eventually found the missing Marine squad, with Blackburn defusing the IED, but while the squad was fending off PLR insurgents closing in on their position, a massive earthquake wrecked the city, knocking him, and presumably the rest of his squadmates, unconcious.
Several hours later, Blackburn woke up, catching a glimpse of Solomon and a PLR insurgent talking to, and capturing, a nearbyMarine, who had heard his cries for help. He also heard a military frequency, announcing to all surviving Marines that the earthquake had affected operational capabilties in the Iran-Iraq region and that updates would become available, before he pushed away chunks of rubble, and began moving through the wrecked city. Sneaking past, and eventually having to fight through, many PLR insurgents, he eventually found himself meeting one of his squadmates, Private David Montes, who had briefly mistaken him for a PLR insurgent, before realizing it was his squadmate, and the two began moving down an alleyway, where Montes would inform him about the PLR's coup d'état, where Faruk Al-Bashir, the PLR's leader, had taken control of Iran as the leader of a military dictatorship. Eventually, Blackburn and Montes arrived at an extraction point, where they, along with their squadmates and the remaining Marines, would evacuate Sulaymaniyah.
Weeks later, the US would undergo an invasion of Iran to topple Al-Bashir and the PLR.
Operation Guillotine, and Discovering a Russian Nuke[]
On October 31st, Blackburn and his squadmates, including Misfit commanding officer Quinton Cole, took part in Operation Guillotine, where-in they would do battle damage assessment in Tehran and try to capture Al-Bashir in the aftermath of a US air strike earlier that day. During the battle, he and Misfit 1-3 were temporarily attached to Captain Joseph Brady's Haymaker company. The squad would fight through PLR soldiers and eventually arrived at a bank, where Al-Bashir was suspected to be by US intelligence.
It was during a sweep of the bank that Blackburn and Misfit 1-3 found themselves in an underground vault, where they would discover maps of New York City and Paris, along with train time tables. They had also found a large green box, and Blackburn, Sergeant Steve Campo, and Montes opened it, where they discovered a Russian suitcase nuke. Campo and Montes noted how there was only one nuke, even though there were room for three in the box, before Private Christian Matkovic, who stayed behind to watch the security monitor, yelled at them to come back to him, telling them that "[they] need to see this." The three Marines ran over to the monitor, and the squad watched Al-Bashir, a PLR soldier, and Solomon (then unknown to the Marines) near the entrance of the bank. While Montes suggested bringing the intel along with them, with Solomon entering the bank, and the building's instability becoming apparent, the squad decided to simply get out of the bank with the nuke, with Campo telling Cole about the discovery of a nuke, and Misfit 1-3 sending a distress signal.
Extraction from the Bank[]
The distress signal was answered, and later that same day, the 1st Tank Battalion was sent to help extract Misfit 1-3. Amongst the personnel in the group was Sergeant Jonathan Miller, an operator of a tank with the call-sign "Anvil 3-4." Miller and his tank crew eventually reached Tehran, where, on the way to the bank, Miller's tank suffered severe damage and was disabled, crashing near the front of the bank. Despite this, Miller successfully held off a PLR attack long enough for Blackburn and Misfit 1-3 to be extracted from Tehran with the nuke. This came at a cost, however, as Miller and his tank crew were eventually overwhelmed by the PLR's incursion on the bank, where they had captured him, and he was subsequently executed by Solomon in a snuff film filmed by the PLR and uploaded onto the Internet.
Capturing Al-Bashir[]
Two days later, on November 2nd, Blackburn, Campo, and the rest of the Misfit units, with the exception of Montes, were sent into Tehran once more, this time to capture Al-Bashir, due to him potentially having intel on the nuke. During the mission, Blackburn and Campo would evade and fight through PLR patrols in the city, and they eventually found the room where Al-Bashir and Solomon had killed Miller, with Campo notifying Cole of this. Moments later, Campo would realize why Cole was leading the mission to capture Al-Bashir: he had sought glory and to prove to the high brass in the military that he was not a "f-ck-up," due to being stuck as a Captain for years. Despite this, and Campo calling a Cole a "f-ckin' gloryhound," he and Blackburn would provide cover fire for Misfit 1-4 in a sniper's position as the latter went to capture Al-Bashir.
During the engagement, Al-Bashir would get into a truck in an attempt to escape. However, Campo and Blackburn would catch on to this, and the latter fired upon the vehicle, destroying it, and critically injuring Al-Bashir. The two would get Al-Bashir into a nearby mall, where Blackburn would protect Campo as he struggled to keep Al-Bashir alive. During the PLR onslaught, Al-Bashir went on rather cryptic ramblings, including one where he claimed that "[they could] not stop Solomon any more than [they] could stop the sun from rising," before an Osprey arrived to picked up the Misfit squads and Al-Bashir. They got on board, but Al-Bashir was found to be on the verge of death, despite Blackburn and Campo giving him medical aid.
However, as he was dying, Al-Bashir asked Campo and Blackburn how they found him, before realizing that Solomon must have betrayed him, using him as a pawn to get the suitcase nukes, before giving the US intel on where he was via the video of Miller's execution, and condemning Solomon, who had "[used] everyone." Just before dying, Al-Bashir alluded to Blackburn the day and time on which Solomon was planning to detonate one of the nukes, along with the method of transportation he was using, before telling everyone to "burn in hell." With Al-Bashir dead, the Misfit squads were left with only his cell phone for intel on his ramblings.
Encounter with the VDV[]
Seven days later, Blackburn and the Misfit squads were being deployed to the Araz Valley. This time, their mission was to capture Amir Kaffarov, a Russian arms dealer who had ties to the PLR and was possibly the one who gave them the nukes. However, on the way to Kaffarov's villa, Blackburn and his squad found themselves attacked by mysterious soldiers, whom they eventually found out to be Russian paratroopers, who were also after Kaffarov. Telling Cole about this, the Captain, who had erronneously assumed the Russians were covering up their cooperation with the PLR, had the Misfit company fight the VDV throughout the valley. As the engagement went on, the Misfit company would find themselves being wiped out, with only the Misfit 1-3 squad remaining. Campo and Montes would express concern over continuing to fight through the valley, due to them not being well-equipped for the engagement. However Cole would pressure the squad to continue, and Matkovic found a Russian jet that was aiming to kill them in a bombing run.
Eventually, after the squad reached a bridge after dodging the jet's bombing run, Blackburn found some Stingers, and used them to destroy the Russian jet. However, he, Cole, and Montes would discover that Campo and Matkovic had been killed during the bombing run. Despite the near-complete destruction of the unit, Cole would tell Montes and Blackburn that they would need to continuing moving forwards, and the two Marines, now at odds with with their Captain, would continuing moving towards Kaffarov's villa.
Arriving at the Villa, and Meeting Dima[]
Blackburn, Montes, and Cole eventually arrived at the villa, with the three splitting up. There, Blackburn would find damage done to the villa along with multiple corpses, indicating that someone had beat them to the arms dealer. Sure enough, in the pool house, he found Kaffarov's body, along with Dimitri "Dima" Mayakovsky, a Spetsnaz GRU operative who had been part of a three man team sent to capture Kaffarov, and were being covered by the VDV that the Marines had fought in the valley. It was revealed here that Dima told Blackburn about Kaffarov selling the nukes to Solomon, how he had been using the PLR, and most importantly, that he was going to activate the two remaining nukes in Paris and in Times Square in New York City. Dima asked for Blackburn's help to stop a "war between [their] nations," but as they were talking, Cole had entered the room, and Dima told Blackburn that millions of people would die if he didn't shoot Cole. He complied, killing his own commanding officer to protect Dima and the mission, with the latter telling him to do whatever it took to do stop Solomon, before leaving the villa.
Interrogation at Hunters Point, and Subsequent Escape[]
Blackburn killing Cole resulted in him and Montes being arrested, and Blackburn being interrogated by CIA agents Gordon and Laszlo "Whistler" Kovic. Blackburn would tell the agents everything concerning his involvement in the situation, while the agents would later tell him about Dima and his team's failed attempt to stop the PLR from activating the Paris nuke, resulting in 80,000 people dying. Despite his best efforts, Blackburn failed to convince the agents about the existence of Solomon's threat, with them instead pinning the blame on Dima and the Russians, due to Solomon being a CIA informant and Blackburn not having much in the way of physical evidence and only one witness in the form of Montes. Blackburn expressed frustration at the agents' disbelief, telling them that Solomon was a "murderer," and that they couldn't walk away from the threat, with Gordon telling him that "the Russians [were] a clear and present threat."
However, Gordon took a call on his cell phone, with the caller telling him that they had "lost a train," causing him and Kovic to leave the room. Blackburn took a look at a nearby bulletin board, where he had begun connecting the dots from everything he had seen and was told from the whole situation. Asking Montes what the time written on the train map in the bank was, he asked Montes if he trusted him, before telling him to "follow [his] lead." The two knocked Kovic and a guard out, and escaped from the interrogation room by jumping out a nearby window. Moving through an alleyway, Montes told Blackburn to get on the train, and that he had one shot to stop Solomon.
Confronting Solomon[]
Blackburn evaded the NYPD, before jumping over an overpass onto an incoming subway train. Breaking into it, he began fighting the PLR operatives inside, who had apparently planted explosive charges throughout the train. He later found himself ambushed by Solomon, with the latter asking him if he was alone, before grabbing a nearby PLR operative who had his hands on a detonator, activating it and detonating the bomb in the car behind them, derailing the train and knocking the two men out of it.
Blackburn would soon give chase to Solomon in the sewers, engaging with PLR operatives along the way, before climbing out of a manhole. Montes arrived with a police car he stole and picked up Blackburn, and the two began giving chase to Solomon, who had stolen an SUV. During the car chase. while Blackburn had been shooting at Solomon's vehicle, Montes rammed into it, causing both vehicles to crash at Times Square. However, while he and Montes came out of the crash alive, so did Solomon, and the latter left his vehicle, preparing to execute Blackburn. Montes tried to stop him, but was shot in the head, causing some pedestrians to run away in fear.
Just as Solomon was about to shoot Blackburn, however, it turned out that him shooting Montes had used his final bullet, and the two engaged in a brutal fist fight that ultimately saw Blackburn the victor, when he bludgeoned Solomon to death with a nearby brick. He grabbed the nuke and disabled it, and with the remaining PLR operatives either arrested or killed, he had successfully stopped the nuclear threat in New York.
Battlefield 4[]
Blackburn is not mentioned in Battlefield 4, but it's assumed that he was freed from the CIA for stopping Solomon and the terrorists.
Battlefield 2042[]
While not physically appearing in Battlefield 2042, lore codex's found during the Dark Creations and Dark Protocol seasons note what happened to Blackburn after the events of Battlefield 3. Despite stopping Solomon and his plans, Henry was court-martialed for killing Captain Cole and was dishonorably discharged. Afterward, Blackburn started his own private military corporation since the world started to depend on them, and later created the Arkangel Corporation during the 2020s. With Arkangel, he focused on developing robots and artificial intelligence to help humanity.
Trivia[]
- It's implied that Clyde Blackburn from Battlefield 1 is Henry's great-grandfather.
- He is similar to Alex Mason from Call of Duty: Black Ops:
- Both are interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency and recall past operations that led to their current predicament.
- Both are allies of a Russian protagonist (Dima and Viktor Reznov).
- Both stop the main antagonist from destroying the United States (Solomon and Nikita Dragovich).
- He is the Battlefield 3 US team announcer for Battlefield Portal.