Michael Vaughn

Michael C. Vaughn is a fictional character on the television series Alias. Played by Michael Vartan, Vaughn is one of Sydney Bristow's co-workers and her ongoing love interest. He, like Sydney, is skilled in a variety of areas. His language abilities, shown in various episodes, include French, Spanish, Italian, and others.

Throughout the first three seasons, his code name was BoyScout; from season four on, it was Shotgun. In season five, Vaughn's birth name was revealed to be André Micheaux. His relationship with Sydney was included in TV Guide's list of the best TV couples of all time.

Michael Vaughn was originally Sydney Bristow's handler while she was working as a double agent for the CIA within SD-6. But gradually, the two agents developed romantic feelings for each other as they worked closely together to bring down this corrupt espionage organization. This did little to endear him to Sydney's father Jack Bristow, another double agent within SD-6. Vaughn and Sydney's relationship became openly intimate after SD-6 was destroyed during the show's second season. When Sydney was apparently killed in a fire a few months later, a heartbroken Vaughn left the CIA and found work as a French teacher. He also became involved with NSC liaison Lauren Reed and married her some time during Sydney's two-year disappearance. Once he discovered that Sydney was still alive, Vaughn returned to the CIA and quickly saw his feelings for her reignite, a fact that caused a great deal of tension in his marriage to Lauren. Eventually, it was revealed that Lauren was a double agent for The Covenant and that Lauren seduced him in order to gain information on Sydney.

Vaughn became obsessed with her capture and was even encouraged by Jack Bristow to kill her. He eventually captures Lauren and she tells him that she fell in love with him, but then Sydney came back and he didn't need her anymore. She also claimed that the Covenant hadn't been in contact with her for two years by that point. Her 'confession' is ambiguous as she does appear to have developed feelings for Vaughn, as is evident by her reaction to Sark's earlier observation that it killed her when Michael dropped his gun, which was trained on her, to save Sydney. He plans to douse her in hydrochloric acid but is thwarted by Katya Derevko. Despite this, he ends up killing her at the end of the third season. This act continued to haunt him into the fourth season even though he shot Lauren to prevent her from killing Sydney.

Following Lauren's demise (and between the third and fourth seasons), Vaughn appeared to go into an emotional tailspin that culminated with him setting fire to his own house. He went through a month of psych evaluations before informing his best friend and fellow agent Eric Weiss of his resignation from the CIA. In reality, Vaughn had been recruited into a black ops division of the CIA called Authorized Personnel Only (APO), along with Sydney, Jack, and Marcus Dixon (Weiss and Marshall Flinkman would soon follow). One of his new duties was to keep an eye on Arvin Sloane, who had been appointed director of APO despite his long history of criminal activities as the head of SD-6. Vaughn successfully resumed his romantic relationship with Sydney during their first mission for APO.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.