Maxwell Finnwich

Maxwell Finnwich (stage name "The Amazing Finnwich") is a magician, hypnotist and one of the founders of Mann, Wurst and Finnwich.

He was first mentioned in "Dudes of Darkness" and since then has played a part in Lee's unravelling of the conspiracy surrounding The Prank. Lee finally meets him face to face in "Finding Finnwich".

Prior to the series start
Maxwell Finnwich was one of five members of a group seeking to open The Pyramid underneath A Nigma High the others being the future Dr. R. Wurst, Elizabeth Mann, Alexander Nigma and Lo Ping. When they finally succeeded they freed a creature they would come to know as His Eminence and accidentally trap Alexander in his place.

His Eminence subsequently marked each of them granting, each of them and their descendants special powers and a link to the Pyramid. At some point in time Lo had a falling out with the others and left the group before they could found their corporation Mann, Wurst and Finnwich.



Finnwich was the next to leave the group resigning from his position as Co-director and faking his death in a fire that claimed his manor. Sadly he also left behind his numerous inventions to the company that would be improved over time with newer technology and be used for various nefarious schemes by the company that according to it's current CEO Cassandra McAdams eventually got them control of the world.

Maxwell's will proclaimed that all his belongings would be given to the poor and that his vast literary collection would be donated to A Nigma High, including his peculiar Book later found by Jenny Jerkins.

Finnwich claims to have acquired his powers from a Prussian Nomadic Vagabond who mentored him in the use of stage magic and hypnotism, whom cursed him when he accidentally got his dog killed by a fox claiming that he too would be killed by a man named Mannifestum.

Finnwich was hired by Mr. Ping to entertain at his son's, Lee Ping's tenth birthday party where he used the Trigger word Butterscotch and the additional Trigger words Queen of Hearts to make Lee's friend Camillio Martinez believe that he was a monkey.

Sadly he forget to de-hypnotise him and as a result whenever someone says Butterscotch around Camillio he would uncontrollably act like a monkey and he left the door open for Camillio to be further hypnotized. Finnwich also mentioned that he had been waiting one hundred and twelve years to open The Pyramid, apparently augmenting himself with early prosthetic cyborg technology to keep himself alive in the century long gap.

Season Two
While at the carnival with his parents Lee would learn that Finnwich was working there as an entertainer, hypnotizing volunteers from the crowd for the amusement of the others. Finnwich attempted to hypnotise Lee and even with the added help of his hypnotist song failed. He thusly realized that Lee couldn't be hypnotised and thought he was the fabled Manifestum come to kill him.

Lee and Camillio, with the added help of Holger Holgaart providing lookout from a ferris wheel, gave chase to Finnwich across the amusement park. Finally cornering Finnwich Lee explains that he means Finnwich no harm, he just wanted to de-hypnotize Camillio and learn what he knew of the Prank. Finnwich complied and gave Lee a newspaper clipping about the party proving that pretty much anyone could have hypnotized Camillio.

Season 3
When Lee, Tina Kwee and Jenny Jerkins go to the fairgrounds to find Finnwich it is revealed he has taken Lynch Webber as an assitant, protecting him from the Council in exchange for the location of the Pyramid. Lee tells him it's under the school, apparently put there by Alexander Nigma. When Lee revealed the Book, Finnwich got scared and proclaimed he believe it to have been burned in the fire that destroyed his home.

He is apparently the only one who can read it, too. He invaded the school in During the Eclipse making everyone believe the aliens had arrived and that it was the end of the world. His Steam-Mats overpowered one of the Council Members. Unfortunately Lynch double crossed Finnwich and attempted to tap the pyramid himself, Finnwich foresaw the betrayal and set all of Lynch's clocks ahead by one minute and thus Lynch suffers the "Sleeping Curse."

Finnwich offered Lee the chance to open the pyramid with him, an offer which Lee ends up accepting.

Season 4
After opening the pyramid Finnwich decoded some of the information inside for himself and Lee only, getting the information he wanted and seeking to keep it out of The Council's hands he subsequently destroys the pyramid. Sadly he is taken prisoner by the Council followed up by being shipped off to Coral Grove but not before he covertly gives Lee the book, Minus one page, and the Cypher needed to read it.

He was able to buy himself a place of relative luxury at Coral Grove with the promise of answers for Cassandra, from here he covertly aided Lee's group when they sneaked into Coral Grove and was eventually able to reawaken Lynch using the information from the page he stole from the book and instructed him to bring Lee to him with the fate of the world in the balance.

Once he had Lee he attempted to kill him and himself in order to halt the Council's plans for the Pyramid. Though he failed to kill Lee he was still able to help him take down Cassandra and His Eminence resolving the conspiracy for the time being.

Personality
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Appearance
Finnwich dresses in fashion of a "British gentleman": he wears a suit, a top hat, and has a rather prominent grey handle-bar mustache. He possesses numerous clock-work and steam-powered cybernetics, at least all of his limbs and several augmentations to his torso.

Powers and Abillities
Finnwich is gifted with numerous powers and abilities as a result from years of tutelage from what he claims to be a Prussian Nomadic Vagabond.


 * Intelligence - Finnwich is a genius inventor, many of his inventions, with added innovations, being the basis behind much of The Prank conspiracy including Cleaners and The Prank Song.
 * Steam Punk Prosthetic - Most of Finnwich's body is augmented through the use of Steam punk technology he invented himself, and he may use them to disappear in a puff of steam. Additionally his limbs are jack-hammer like pistons giving him the ability to jump higher, run faster or hit harder. However Finnwich's body is not made for stressful situations, one of his legs came off mid-battle against Lee Ping.

Beyond his stage-show abilities Finnwich does seem genuinely capable of some sort of supernatural power (possibly a bi-product from his mark). Furthermore Finnwich is highly knowledgable in various things even seeming to have the upper hand on even His Eminence in certain topics; he knew how to awaken people from the pyramid induced coma as he did to Lynch which is something that the rest of MWF failed to accomplish.
 * Magic - Finnwich is a master stage illusionist, able to create smokey shapes, a mini rainstorm over his head, and summon his cloaked minions in a puff of smoke.
 * Hypnotism - One of Finnwich's most prominent abilities is his mastery of hypnotism, most commonly making people believe that they're animals allowing them to push farther then they normally would be able to (ex: Camillio Martinez who admitted that he's afraid of heights is easily able to perform acrobatic feats while in "Monkey mode") and occasionally augmenting his powers with the Prank Song.

Trivia

 * He is implied to make and install Barrage's cyborg prosthetic parts ("Pyramid Scheme").
 * He hid from Lee Ping's sight after learning that the teenager couldn't be hypnotized, referring to him as "The Great Manifestum" who according to prophecy "would be the end" to the man.
 * Even after he and Lee developed a friendly relationship, Finnwich would still refer to him as "Manifestum".
 * Finnwich has numerous and many deep connections to The Prank, his technologies are the base for many of the technologies used by The Council:
 * His servants, the Steam-Mats are quite similar to the Cleaners and Reaper Mats, dressed in a cloak and mask instead of a hazmat suit and utilizing the same inhuman determination. They are also revealed in Fence-O-Palooza to be robots like their more advanced counterparts.
 * Later on during the siege of the school they're also shown using the same crystalization technology as the Cleaners.
 * This could be because he was the former co-CEO of Mann, Wurst and Finnwich, probably having originally made the technology for them.
 * According to Finnwich he had waited "long 112 years" for the chance of opening the Pyramid again. This makes him the eldest living person (aside from the Tatzelwurms and His Eminence) on the show, as well as the only last survivor of the original Mann, Wurst and Finnwich founders (as both Elizabeth Mann and Wurst are confirmed deceased by the present storyline, while Ping defected and his death is only implied by his lack-of-presence).
 * In "Date With Destiny" Finnwich states, "I know what I read on the wall, all that time ago, while you [His Eminence] were locked in." This might be an error as Finnwich was never shown to look inside the pyramid (until Season 3). However, as he never actually said what he was referring to (the Tatzelwurms being the ones who truly knew when the pyramid was "truly to be opened") he might've seen it elsewhere. Alternatively this could be a scripting error and he was referring to information he had learnt in the Pyramid. One image reffered to the Tatzelwurms seemingly constructing the pyramid (although it was the Reptilian Race that was shown actually placing the language).