Antwon Mitchell

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)

Antwon Mitchell is a fictional character from the FX television show The Shield, portrayed by Anthony Anderson.^[1]

Character overview

Mitchell is a former drug lord who, having been released from prison after a lengthy sentence, tried to reinvent himself as an upstanding community activist. However, he has secretly secured power as the most powerful drug boss in the district, leading a gang called the One Niners.^[2]

Early life

Mitchell's childhood was not a pleasant one. He was an overweight loner who was too frightened to protect his young sister from their sexually abusive father. His mother later shot and killed his father, for which she was sentenced to life in prison. After his mother killed his father, his sister ended up in a mental hospital and never recovered from the sexual and emotional abuse. Monica Rawling reveals and uses this information against Mitchell during an interrogation. While imprisoned, his mother was impregnated by a prison guard and bore Antwon's half-brother, Jason Porter.

Relationship with police

Mitchell has a longstanding feud with Captain Monica Rawling, the officer who sent him to prison. The two square off at a community meeting regarding the new implementation of Rawling's seizure policy. The events of the fourth season unfolded from this confrontation.

Detective Shane Vendrell, attempting to emulate his former mentor Vic Mackey, actively pursues a possible partnership with Mitchell. With Vendrell on Mitchell's payroll, he and his partner, Armando "Army" Renta help Mitchell eliminate his rivals and ultimately become head of the One Niners. Not satisfied with simply paying cops to do his dirty work, Mitchell seeks to dominate Shane and his partner. After being provoked several times by Vendrell, Mitchell's thugs attack him and Renta in a warehouse. With his foot on Vendrell's neck and using his police issue pistol, Mitchell murders the 11-year-old girl who had informed on his drug ring, costing him a great deal of money and heroin. He uses the body to blackmail the two into murdering Mackey, whom Mitchell sees as the biggest threat to his drug business; the bullets in the body would be traced to Vendrell's pistol, implicating him in the killing. However, instead of doing as he was told, Vendrell asks for Mackey's help. After finding the girl's body with a hidden camera, they catch footage of Mitchell restating his offer of "a body for a body." This ultimately forces Mitchell to plead guilty to the girl's murder and attempting to order the death of a police officer.

Attempt at immunity

After helping Councilman David Aceveda murder a prison inmate, Mitchell tried to free himself from his sentence by using information regarding the inner workings of a Salvadoran drug cartel in order to get a DEA immunity. However, Captain Monica Rawlings sacrificed her job by ordering Vic to build a case against the Salvadorans himself. Although the DEA was enraged, Mitchell's deal was voided and the drug lord will never get a chance to leave prison.

Prison life

Since his imprisonment, Mitchell has risen to a place of power within the prison, essentially running it, to the extent that he is depicted in one scene enjoying an illicit encounter with a female admirer in a prison storeroom, with prison guards speaking to him deferentially. He also supports a revival of the fading One Niners gang and even attempts to run his drug ring from inside. He also makes a deal with Internal Affairs Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh to give up information on the Strike Team in exchange for their incarceration at his prison. However, he makes a separate deal with Mackey to provide financial assistance for the One Niners in exchange for Curtis "Lem" Lemansky's protection in prison. The deal goes through, but only pulls in a small haul of cash. Combined with Kavanaugh's investigation of the prison system that puts a cramp in Mitchell's personal comfort, Mitchell declared the deal off and vowed to have Lemansky murdered, no matter which prison he was sent to.

In the aftermath, Mackey and the Strike Team hid Lemansky in a trailer park. The heat brought on by IAD led to Lemansky's murder at the hands of Shane Vendrell. Determined to wreak bloody revenge on Lemansky's murderer, Vic paid a visit to Antwon in prison. Although the drug lord was flattered that Vic blamed him for all the ills in the world, he admitted that he had nothing to do with it and gloated over Vic's situation, realizing that Vic would only be questioning him about the murder if he didn't have any real leads.

References