The Rise and Fall of Harry McDowell and Important Lessons Learned

Is what we can learn from the characters.

What I enjoy the most is that even the villains in this story teach important life lessons. Not all of them are deep but still relevant.

For example, Bob Poundmax teaches the dangers of not thinking forself and also being too paranoid. Because Bob kept everything to himself it hurt him and the organization tremendously.

You thought I was going say something like fat can kill ya which is what Bob ironically says.

Of all the characters who we can learn from, Harry Bloody McDowell’s is the best one. Harry is a very interesting character in that he starts with simple aspirations to make in the world.

But he ultimately falls to his own insanity and makes countless mistakes along the way.

So I am dedicating this article to the rise and fall of Harry McDowell and what we can learn from his mistakes.

Harry makes several key mistakes which lead to his downfall and I am going to cover the main ones. These include: forgetting those that helped you along the way, mistreating those loyal to you, allowing Paranoia and Jealousy to cloud your judgment, and crumbling under pressure.

I want to go over the events that led Harry to start his path to join Millennion. It won’t be a long recap but to understand the mistakes we have to first discuss how we got there.

Harry McDowell since day one has been for scraps. His best friend Brandon was with his first gang. Which was really just a bunch of punks.

Harry and his gang messed with a rival gang that has harmless members. Unfortunately for Harry one of the member’s brothers named Ladd Carabel happened to be a lethal killer and wiped out every member except Harry and Brandon Heat.

Bear Walken a millennium sweeper killed Ladd Carabel. After these events, Harry goes berserk and kills everyone who is associated with Ladd Carabel including his cowardly brother who had nothing to do with Harry’s men’s deaths.

This is the start of Harry’s descent into madness. Because you really see here what Harry is willing to do to those in a rage and unhinged state.

Time moved on and Harry and Brandon’s Heat ended up working on jobs together and fighting local gangs. One local gang leader was not pleased with the disrespect that Harry and Brandon Heat showed him. Thus he orders his men to kill the bastards.

Harry and Brandon are at the cemetery where their former members are buried and at the same time Big Daddy the leader of Millennion was going to pay his friend and former guardian of Maria a visit.

So, a shoot out occurs involving the gang member sent to kill Harry and Brandon along with the targets. The Millennion limos that were driving by were caught in the crossfire. Randy a member of Millennion saves both Brandon and Harry.

Harry was impressed by the organization skills that wanted to join. Randy explained to Harry to not kill the leader who attacked him but rather squeeze which is what Harry ultimately does.

This act of ruthlessness gets him an opportunity to join Millennion and since Maria is with Big Daddy (founder of Millennion) Brandon joins him.

Alright now that the foundation has been set let’s begin with Harry’s first mistake forgetting those that helped him along the way. After Harry’s friends are buried he makes a promise to build them real monuments.

As Harry rises among the ranks he took frequent trips to visit the graves with Brandon. Despite Harry earning more money the topic to build proper burial sites never comes up.

The only exception is later on in the show where Brandon suggests they visit the grave of Kenny, Harry forgets who Kenny is for a moment while discussing it in the car. A second later he remebers Kenny and they go to the graves.

When they visit the graves Harry then remembers his promise and suggested that could just buy the whole cemetery. While there is nothing wrong with this, except that Harry forgot his friends and where he came from. Building proper graves would not fix this because he would still forget about them.

It’s ironic because Harry wanted a better burial site to honor the memory of his fallen friends but if he builds the burial site the opposite would probably happen.

Contrast this with Brandon who never forgets Widge and Gary. He constantly helps them out even after he became a top member and joined the family. While it is true that Harry “cared” about Bob, Lee, and Bunji that was only because they were useful to him and they were around often.

To prove this point in episode 18 Harry says that he had not thought of Brandon Heat in ages. If Harry forgets about his best friend after 13 years you can bet he forgot about his old gang as well.

This whole aspect of forgetting people and ignoring your roots ties perfectly with the mistreatment of those loyal to you. Harry starts on with a caring attitude towards those close to him but starts moving away from that.

let’s start with the paranoia, so once Harry finally reached his goals and became head of Millennion he asked Bob Pundmax for help. He wanted Bob to figure out who would oppose him now that he is in charge.

There is nothing wrong with evaluating the loyalty of your subordinates but this was excessive. Millennion’s members at the time were loyal to Harry and wanted him to succeed Big Daddy when he was stepping down. Instead, Big Daddy chose someone else and everyone was shocked by this decision.

Obviously, Harry would eventually become head of Millennion anyways but at that point the majority liked him. But Harry did not realize this or was too power hungry to care. Ironically it was Harrys paranoia that drove everyone away from him.

Harry paranoia went too far when stalked Biscoe and invading his private family life. Biscoe ended up leading the charge in removing Harry from power.

Big Daddy and Brandon Heat discussed the idea of Harry becoming Millennion new leader. Harry overheard the conversation and his jealousy tooks over and caused him to make the biggest mistake of his life.

Harry believed that Brandon his best friend favored Big Daddy over him. This is not true considering that Brandon went along with Harry even though he knew of his awfule dealings.

He even refused to shoot Harry after presenting his proposal to kill Big Daddy himself. But regardless Harry saw things differently and killed Brandon.

This was obviously the biggest mistake because Brandon came back thanks to necrolization and took down Harry and his henchmen.

If Harry and acted with a cool head then he could have led Millennion with Brandon Heat as his main man.

Instead, he threw it all away.

When Brandon came back and started destroying Harry’s Orgman Harry started to think with his emotions and leave logic at the door. He basically went into panic mode.

While it might not have been the most critical part of his downfall, these things were the straw the broke the camel’s back.

Harry’s actions were always calculated and he always found creative solutions for his problems. Harry failed at both of these when fighting Brandon Heat.

I know this was in the video game but it still makes no sense why he let Bob Poundmax go first in fighting Brandon. Here are a couple of reasons why.

1. Brandon can kill Orgman so his weapons are anti Necrolization. So why would Superiors which are just enhanced Orgman with their own mind fair any better? Harry does not even bother trying to figure out how Brandon is killing Orgman and making sure it would not harm his own men.

2. Bob Poundmax is Harry’s most vital person on his team. Balladbird Lee said that Bob was the only one who had access to his intelligence network. If this was public knowledge why would you ever have Bob in the front lines if he was this vital? If Harry wanted to see if a Superior could kill Brandon then he should have had Balladbird Lee go first.

3. Bob was not ready. Earlier in episode 17, Bob states that he was still getting used to his power. He even tells Lee before fighting Brandon that he would show off his new abilities. All signs point to Bob being unprepared to fight an experienced former sweeper like Brandon.

It was obvious from the fight that Bob was inexperienced and needed more time to practice using the new powers. He could have killed Brandon had he done that.

To expand further on this point on miscalculations, it has always bothered me why Harry continued to send his men to fight Brandon. If Brandon killed Bob then he can certainly kill the rest of the inner circle. If Brandon had weapons that could kill a superior then Harry should have learned how they work instead of needlessly sacrificing his own men. Harry also had anti necrolization weapons but never armed any of this men with them why?

It is also strange that later on that Harry was surprised to see an Orgman being killed in front of him. For context, Brandon was the first to kill an Orgman. So, why was Harry surprised if Brandon can do it surely others could do the same.

Harry thought that he could use his Orgman to regain control like he always did but again if Brandon could kill them then others could as well. These are both great examples of Harry panicking and not thinking straight.

In addition, this shows how Harry became too complacent. Even though his method might have worked in the past they were not working now. Harry could not handle the situation and it led to his early death as well as the deaths of his inner circle and wife.

They say experience is the greatest teacher and we can learn much from Harry McDowell’s experiences. Here are the best lessons we can learn from Harry.

1. Trust your friends and allies
2. Never make important decisions on emotion think it through even it takes several days, weeks or months
3. Do not forget the people that helped you get to where you are today
4. Your subordinates are people to who have families and friends do not mistreat or throw away their lives so easily
5. There is always a second chance to make amends just do not wait until the last minute to do so

Were there other lessons or mistakes that I forgot to mention about Harry McDowell? Let me know in the comments.

What is the greatest mistake that Harry MacDowell made and what can we learn from it?