Herrick

Herrick is a vampire in Being Human whose importance lies less in a detailed biography than in the claim he has over Mitchell’s identity. He is the maker who created Mitchell on a battlefield, the representative of vampiric violence that Mitchell wants to escape, and the intimate adversary whom Mitchell nevertheless cannot wholly abandon. Through Herrick, vampirism becomes not only a supernatural condition but also an inheritance, an addiction, and a continuing moral obligation.

Identity and Function

Herrick embodies the older, harder form of vampire existence against which Mitchell defines himself. Mitchell has spent much of his afterlife killing people, yet he is attempting to reclaim his humanity; his success repeatedly ebbs and flows as the story progresses. The conflict is therefore not between a purely good Mitchell and a purely evil Herrick, but between competing accounts of what a vampire must be. Herrick treats blood-drinking as the natural expression of what vampires are, while Mitchell struggles to preserve moral boundaries that his own instincts continually threaten to destroy.

Herrick’s authority comes from creation as well as ideology. The narrative distinguishes between the language used for his relationship with Mitchell and that used for Mitchell’s treatment of Lauren: Herrick “made” Mitchell, whereas Lauren says that Mitchell “took” her. The contrast gives Herrick’s act the status of a formative, considered making, while Mitchell’s attack on Lauren is marked by brutal sexuality and abandonment. Herrick is consequently not merely another vampire; he is the origin point of Mitchell’s condition and the figure through whom Mitchell’s responsibility to his own past remains active.

Relationship with Mitchell

Mitchell outwardly hates Herrick and everything he represents, but the attachment between them is more powerful than simple opposition. When Herrick is in need, Mitchell cannot quite bring himself to leave his maker behind. He instead keeps a deranged Herrick in the loft, where the older vampire becomes a particularly troublesome and murderous presence. The arrangement turns the home that Mitchell shares with George and Annie into a place where his rejected past remains physically present, unable to be safely expelled.

This relationship reveals Mitchell’s divided moral life. He believes that he stands on the side of good while continuing to commit evil acts, and Herrick is the clearest reminder that Mitchell’s self-image cannot erase his history. The maker he despises is also the being who made him what he is. Mitchell’s refusal to abandon Herrick therefore carries no simple heroic triumph: it may express loyalty, guilt, dependency, or an inability to sever the bond of vampiric creation. The result is a relationship in which hatred and attachment coexist, each making the other more damaging.

The Vampire-Human Conflict

Herrick helps define the larger struggle between vampires and humans. When he tells Mitchell that he must decide whose side he is on, Mitchell answers, “I choose them.” The declaration identifies George and Annie, rather than the vampire community, as the people to whom Mitchell gives his allegiance. Yet the choice cannot make him human. He remains neither fully a man nor entirely a beast, and Herrick’s challenge makes that permanent in-between condition unmistakable.

The moral pressure surrounding Herrick also appears in Mitchell’s attempts to stop other vampires from feeding on patients at the hospital where he works. Seth insists that Mitchell cannot stop because killing is what vampires are, and invokes Mitchell’s earlier victims as evidence that his restraint is temporary rather than transformative. Herrick’s presence gives this argument personal force: he is the living proof of a world in which vampiric identity is accepted as destiny, while Mitchell’s friendships represent his effort to turn that destiny into something else.

Narrative Significance

Herrick’s significance lies in how he prevents the series from treating Mitchell’s struggle as a private matter of willpower. Mitchell’s bloodlust is tied to a maker, a history, and a social world that continues to claim him. At the same time, Mitchell’s attachment to George and Annie gives him a link to humanity even though both friends are themselves paranormal. Together they attempt to “be human,” but Herrick demonstrates that humanity cannot be recovered simply by adopting ordinary domestic routines or making a moral promise.

As a character, Herrick belongs to the tradition of the vampire as creator and corrupter, but the series uses that familiar role to complicate rather than settle Mitchell’s identity. He is the shadow of Mitchell’s past, the advocate of instinct over conscience, and the unwanted dependent housed inside Mitchell’s attempt at a normal life. His power comes from the fact that Mitchell can oppose him without becoming free of him: every act of resistance is also a confrontation with the being who made Mitchell, and with the possibility that the monstrous part of him may never disappear.