Mitchell–Lauren relationship

The Mitchell–Lauren relationship is one of the clearest demonstrations in Being Human of how intimacy, violence, and moral responsibility collapse into one another under vampirism. Lauren begins as a lively young woman, but Mitchell’s sexual encounter with her becomes an act of irreversible creation: he bites her in the throes of passion, leaves her without explanation, and condemns her to discover undeath alone. Her transformation exposes the gap between Mitchell’s belief that he is trying to be good and the damage produced by his appetite.

Identity and Origin

Lauren is introduced as a young woman whose personality remains bubbly, fun-loving, and energetic after death and rebirth. Transformation does not erase those qualities, but it overlays them with panicked malice. Her fear of what she has become drives her to enter the vampire world recklessly, with little concern for other people or even for her own safety.

The circumstances of her creation make the relationship unusually unequal. Mitchell does not deliberately establish Lauren as a companion or guide her through a chosen transition. He bites her during a one-night stand that goes disastrously wrong, then leaves her to wake among strangers. The contrast between an ordinary sexual encounter and its supernatural consequence gives the relationship its central violence: Lauren is not merely abandoned by a lover, but abandoned by the person who has remade her existence.

The Turning and Its Immediate Consequences

Lauren’s first response is an accusation directed at Mitchell: “It should have been you.” The statement makes the ethical structure of the relationship unmistakable. She understands that Mitchell has transferred the burden of vampirism onto her while escaping the immediate consequences himself, and Mitchell recognizes that her accusation is justified. His failure is therefore not limited to the bite; it includes the refusal to remain present for the aftermath.

Lauren’s apparent malice cannot be separated from this abandonment. She may look like a newly created antagonist, but the narrative keeps the injury that produced her in view. Her recklessness is presented as the behavior of someone frightened, disoriented, and denied any responsible introduction to her new condition. The relationship thus reverses the usual maker-and-progeny hierarchy: Mitchell possesses the power to create, while Lauren bears the psychological and practical cost.

Responsibility, Desire, and the Maker’s Guilt

The wording used for Lauren’s transformation intensifies the sexual violence implicit in the scene. Herrick “made” Mitchell on a battlefield, a phrase that suggests a deliberate act of supernatural manufacture. Lauren, by contrast, says that Mitchell “took” her. Her word presents the encounter not as a considered creation but as an act of brutal possession, linking the bite to the failed sexual intimacy that preceded it.

Lauren becomes another source of Mitchell’s self-reproach. He wants to remain on the side of good, yet his conduct has created a person who is endangered by her own instincts and dangerous to others. His guilt is not abstract: Lauren embodies the consequence of his inability to control the animal impulse in his blood. Through her, the series turns Mitchell’s moral struggle into a relational one, because the harm he fears in himself has already entered another person’s life.

Contrast with Mitchell’s Other Attachments

Mitchell’s response to Lauren is shaped by the same contradiction that governs his attachment to Herrick. He outwardly rejects Herrick and everything his maker represents, but he cannot bring himself to abandon Herrick when the older vampire needs him, eventually keeping the deranged and murderous man in the shared loft. Mitchell therefore remains entangled with the vampire who created him even while regretting that he himself has created Lauren.

The two relationships form a grim generational pattern. Herrick’s making of Mitchell belongs to the history Mitchell would like to escape; Mitchell’s taking of Lauren reproduces that history in a more intimate and sexually charged form. He condemns the violence of his own inheritance, yet passes its consequences onward. Lauren is consequently not an isolated mistake but evidence that vampiric creation repeats itself through desire, dependence, and failed responsibility.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The relationship gives concrete form to Being Human’s larger question of whether a vampire can choose morality while remaining governed by vampiric appetite. Mitchell’s wish to be good does not protect Lauren. His conscience arrives after the decisive act, when another person is already trapped in the condition he fears. Lauren’s existence exposes the limits of remorse that does not prevent harm.

At the same time, the relationship resists a simple division between innocent victim and monstrous villain. Lauren’s “panicked malice” makes her frightening, but the narrative insists that viewers remember how she was treated. Mitchell is handsome, tragic, and capable of empathy, yet those qualities do not cancel the violence of his action. Lauren’s transformation makes visible the cost of turning vampirism into a metaphor for addiction: the addict’s struggle is never confined to the addict, because another body may be forced to carry the consequences.