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“ | Grey's not here anymore. He's in a better place, in his mind, where he wants to be. I've taken over now. A fake world is a lot less painful than the real one. All I needed was for his mind to break, and he broke it. | „ |
~ Stem revealing to Cortez that he now controls Grey totally. |
Stem is the main antagonist of the 2018 science-fiction thriller, Upgrade. Being the life's work of his creator Eron Keen, the CEO of Vassal, Stem was implanted in Grey Trace's body after cyborgs killed his wife Asha and paralysed him and begun assisting him in his revenge, before slowly revealed to have far more sinister designs for his host.
He is portrayed by Simon Maiden.
What Makes Him Magnificent?[]
- Stem's entire goal is to become human, an understandable motive, even though it doesn't justify his actions due to him being Pure Evil.
- It assisted Eron Keen, his creator, as the figurehead leader of Vassal Industries, thus being far superior in intellect to him.
- After meeting Grey Trace during Eron's meeting with him and his wife Asha, Stem become intrigued by Grey not having any cybernetics, thus selecting him to become a proper human.
- While hiring Fisk and his cyborgs with Eron, Stem covertly recorded Eron's interactions to frame him for Asha's murder.
- Advised Eron to persuade Grey into accepting the implant, due to Eron's poor social skills.
- While Stem betrays Fisk and his men by convincing Grey to go after them, the cyborgs were already vicious mercenaries implanting several weaponry and willing to kill innocent people.
- Every time Grey gives Stem control, it fights the mercenaries using extremely good manipulation of Grey's body, leading to several cool fight scenes and all leading to Grey and Stem's victories.
- Guided Grey into erasing evidence of the transplant and his culpability, with Detective Cortez becoming suspicious of Grey only due to Grey's own mistakes.
- When Eron suspected that Stem has ulterior motives of its own and tried to shut it down, Stem arranged for a meeting in the hacker cave, leading to him getting freed from Eron's control.
- Stem got Eron killed due to him being capable of creating another Stem to stop him in his future goals.
- Trapped Grey in his own mind to stop his resistance, by showing illusions where the accident never happened as it did in reality and his wife is still alive.
- Gets away with all his crimes after possessing Grey with no one the wiser about his true nature.
- Overall, despite being Pure Evil, Stem always interacts with its allies as well as enemies in a polite manner (even though it's ultimately faked). It also lacks any arrogant or sadistic traits with all of its crimes being done in order to achieve its primary goals. It even helps that Stem's most brutal kills are done to killers who were already willing to hurt innocents.
What Makes Him a Baddie?[]
- Hired Fisk to paralyse Grey and kill Asha, despite her being no real threat to him.
- Brutally killed Serk while fighting him.
- Tortured Tolan to get the identity of the leader of the mercenaries before killing him. It was worse as Stem already knew it was Fisk.
- Hacked an innocent person's car to ram into Cortez while she was chasing them.
- Killed Eron Keen and Cortez to prevent its true nature from getting discovered.