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Brother Justin Crowe is a fictional character in the American television series Carnivàle, inspired by the historical Charles Coughlin. The drama, set in the 1930s American Midwest, aired on HBO from 2003 to 2005. He was played by Clancy Brown.
History
Crowe is born Alexi Belyakov, son of Lucius Belyakov. As children, he and his sister Irina (later Iris) are orphaned after their mother died in a train crash that Justin and Iris were the only survivors of. They are rescued by Reverend Norman Balthus, a Methodist minister who raises the two children as his own.
Even as a child, Crowe is apparently gifted with strange powers. Once, shortly before coming under the care of Reverend Balthus, he telekinetically snaps a man's neck. His memory of this incident was repressed, but Iris remembers, and keeps the knowledge from him throughout most of his life.
As a young man, Crowe becomes infatuated with a gypsy woman named Apollonia Bojakshiya. Sensing his true nature, she repeatedly spurns his advances. Eventually he forces his way into her home and brutally rapes her. Unbeknown to Crowe, Apollonia would later give birth to a child, Sofie, before falling permanently into a catatonic state.
As an adult, Crowe follows in his adoptive father's footsteps and becomes a minister, eventually tending his flock in Mintern, California.
The Avatar of Darkness
In 1934, Crowe once again exhibits supernatural abilities, including the power to force people to relive their greatest sins in the form of visions that he himself would also experience. Despite the anger and self-interest that often lay at the heart of these episodes, he initially believes himself to be doing the work of God.
After his church is destroyed in a fire that took the lives of several innocent children (a crime, unbeknown to him at the time, committed by his sister), Crowe becomes a drifter, keeping company with migrants and hobos before finally ending up in a sanitarium following an unsuccessful suicide attempt. While hospitalized, he discovers he has the ability to manipulate and control those around him through sheer force of will, eventually commanding rooms full of people to fall silent simply by uttering the words "be still". After using his powers to secure his release and return to Mintern, Crowe quickly begins rebuilding his ministry.
Shortly thereafter, during a service, Reverend Balthus attempts to baptize Crowe, who wants to be "reborn" in the eyes of God, and is shocked to see the water from the baptismal font turn to blood as it touched Crowe's forehead. Suspecting that Crowe might be possessed by a demon, Balthus confronts his surrogate son, but Crowe becomes enraged and tries to make him relive his worst sin. To Crowe's horror, Balthus' "greatest evil" turns out to be saving his life as a little boy. Devastated, Crowe begs the priest to kill him, but Balthus could not bring himself to do it.
After discovering his true nature, Crowe embraces the evil within him, reasoning that "perhaps God has a different plan for some of us." He gathers a huge flock of worshippers (mostly migrants and Okies) outside Mintern via his nightly radio sermons and newfound abilities of persuasion. He is soon approached by a scholar named Wilfred Talbot-Smith, who identifies him as "the Usher" and tells him that, in order for him to gain his full measure of power and fulfill his destiny, he must find and kill a man named Henry Scudder (who is secretly the father of his counterpart, Ben Hawkins, and the previous Avatar of Darkness). With the help of escaped convict Varlyn Stroud, whom he influences telepathically via radio transmissions, Crowe eventually kills Scudder.
Meanwhile, father and daughter are reunited, as Sofie Bojakshiya comes to work at Crowe's house in New Canaan (the site of his growing ministry) as a chambermaid; neither knows their true relationship to the other.
Shortly thereafter, in a cornfield outside New Canaan, Crowe at long last meets his adversary, the Avatar of Light, in a battle in which his enemy is badly injured and Crowe himself is killed. However, Sofie, the Omega, the Final Avatar, quickly arrives and places her hands on Crowe's chest, causing the corn stalks around them to wither and fall away highly reminiscent of what happened when Ben healed a crippled girl's legs in the show's first episode.
The Usher of Destruction
According to Wilfred Talbot-Smith (as well as Daniel Knauf, the show's creator), Crowe is not only the final Avatar of Darkness, but also the Usher of Destruction, a figure whose coming is foretold in the Gospel of Matthias (an ancient book filled with Avataric lore and mythology).
The show was cancelled before the ultimate purpose of the Usher (as well as that of the Omega, Justin's daughter) could be explained. During a recent convention appearance, however, Knauf revealed that had the show continued, Crowe would have come back, with Sofie and Iris apparently still at his side. He also claims that Crowe would have continued to struggle with the darker side of his own nature, and that ultimately the audience would have been left in doubt as to whether he was truly evil or his counterpart truly good. Knauf followed up in an online forum that Crowe and Sofie would be married by the time the third season began, and that a child would be involved. Future plot development would revolve around the parentage of the child and Sofie's coming into her own as the Omega to Justin's Usher.
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