Jeremy Johnson (Red)

Jeremy in "The Curse of the Incredibly Bad News"

**Jeremy Johnson** was the version of Jeremy who lived in the Red World. He was Veronica's second husband and Ben's adoptive father.

He was the only version of Jeremy to not be described as a "troublemaker."

## Biography

When Veronica arrived in the Red World, having fled the Blue World to escape the Welkins and her sister Betti, she was already pregnant with Ben. Jeremy took her in and gave her a home and a job at his restaurant, the Old Country Inn. They eventually fell in love and got married. Ben was raised believing that Jeremy was his biological father.

At the beginning of his relationship with Veronica, she warned Jeremy that she might have to leave one day. She and Jeremy agreed that he would not ask questions if and when the time came. After 13 years together, Veronica finally revealed the truth about her origins to Jeremy when she learned that Betti was getting close. He was initially reluctant to believe her story about the Parallax but ultimately decided that he had no other choice.

It was then that Jeremy confessed to Ben that he was not his biological father while Veronica told her son that his father was in fact Stefan. Ben was extremely upset and travelled to the Blue World so that he could have some time alone to think. While there, he ran into Stefan and told him that he was his son.

Francis was warned about Betti by his Yellow World counterpart Francis Zapmeister and passed on the message to Jeremy. He was surprised to discover that Jeremy had learned about the existence of the Parallax. When Betti arrived at his house looking for her sister, Jeremy told her that Veronica had left him and that they never had any children. He was very upset when he discovered that Veronica had revealed her presence to the Welkin in the hope that Betti would be distracted long enough for Ben and Katherine to escape detection.

Several days later, Jeremy was overjoyed when it appeared as if Veronica had escaped. However, Francis realised that she was in fact Betti when she offered him an apple, which Veronica knew that he hated. Fearful that Betti would learn about Ben, Jeremy told Francis to remove everything from Ben's bedroom that looked like it belonged to a boy. By convincing her to pick fresh mushrooms for a risotto, Jeremy kept Betti distracted long enough for Francis, Una and Melinda to clear everything out of Ben's room. He claimed that the noises were caused by a possum infestation. Ben's room was converted into a sewing room and Melinda claimed that Veronica had promised to give her lessons.

Having grown tired of holding down the fort, Jeremy sought to play a more active role in the fight against Betti and accompanied Ben to the Green World. It was there that Jeremy met Stefan for the first time. The two men took an instant dislike to each other, largely because Stefan was Ben's biological father but Jeremy had raised him. They began sniping at each other over everything with Stefan going so far as to compare Jeremy to his Blue World counterpart, a lawbreaker who was run out of town years earlier. Stefan also believed that Ben had gotten his impulsive nature from Jeremy and wasted no time in telling him so.

Accompanied by Melinda, Jeremy and Stefan then travelled to the Silver World as it was there that Veronica had last been seen. While there, they witnessed Enforcement Officer Garcia about to arrest Francis Zapmeister on the charge of being a truant minor and staging his own disappearance as he had mistaken him for his Silver World counterpart. In order to prevent Francis from falling into Betti's hands, Jeremy and Stefan confronted Garcia and demanded that he stop harassing him. Jeremy was able to use his own Silver World counterpart's reputation as a troublemaker and a thief to his advantage. He and Stefan threatened and intimidated Garcia, providing a distraction which gave Francis the opportunity to escape.

After they returned to the safety of the Green World, Jeremy told Stefan that he was glad to have him aboard and the two men shook hands, putting aside their differences. As no one had ever seen another version of Stefan, Jeremy speculated that he was part of the grand plan in some way.

While being held prisoner by her sister, Veronica managed to surreptiously activate the transmitter on Betti's stave. As Ben had recently discovered Otto's stave in the Green World, he, Katherine and Mundi were able to receive the transmission. Unbeknownst to Betti, Veronica sent a coded message to her children. She denied that she had ever had children and claimed that her pots were the centre of her universe. Jeremy pointed out that Veronica never allowed either him or Ben to move the pots.

Betti eventually discovered that Veronica had been using her stave to send coded messages and decided to set a trap. She hid her stave under her hat and told her sister of her plan to send the Krellicks to the Silver World as a prelude to blandishing it. Mundi and Ben heard Betti's plan over the stave and informed Katherine. Equipped with Super Soakers, Jeremy, Ben, Katherine, Francis Zapmeister, Una, Due, Melinda, Mundi and Stefan were able to defeat the Krellicks with the help of the Mr. Short of the Silver World. A senior municipial employee who worked in Werrinup's park, he turned on the sprinklers in the park at Ben's request and the water killed all the Krellicks. Although the Parallax gang had won the battle, Betti won the war as she enacted her plan to infect the Silver World Werrinup's entire water supply with the blandishing substance. Aberrants, including Mr. Short, began disappearing.

After the battle in the Silver World, Jeremy, Katherine, Francis and Stefan tried to decipher what the position of the pots meant but their efforts were fruitless until Katherine and Ben located Otto. Using the diagram of the pots created by Stefan, Otto realised that they formed a map to the Reading Room, the fount of knowledge for the entire Parallax.

Stefan built a 3D schematic model of the configuration of the pots in the hope that it would help him to determine the location of the Reading Room. To Melinda's annoyance, he claimed that he and Jeremy had a better sense of spatial orientation than either herself or Katherine because they were men. Using the model as his guide, Stefan accessed hitherto unknown skills and devised an advanced mathematical formula which he believed would lead him and Jeremy to the Reading Room. He claimed that the two of them could reach it by pressing 1 and 7 on the Parallax symbol. It instead led them to the Orange World. Tiffany followed them through as she was concerned that they would discover the secret forest - in other words, the Green World - and Ben would be annoyed. While Stefan headed off in search of the Reading Room with Tiffany, Jeremy became lost in the desert.

When Ben found him some time later, he explained that he felt inadequate compared to him, Veronica and Katherine as they were all Guardians and wanted to prove that he was useful. Jeremy then said that he wasn't even Ben's real dad. Ben reassured Jeremy that he thought of both him and Stefan as his dads and that he had failed himself when Veronica sent him on a training mission to the Orange World. Once they had returned to the Red World, Stefan admitted that he and Jeremy had gotten in over their heads and the two men promised to leave Parallax travel to the experts in future.

After Veronica was rescued from her captivity in the Purple World, Jeremy was thrilled to be reunited with his wife. However, his elation was short-lived as she was injured by the fireball that Betti had released to destroy the Johnson house. He remained by Veronica's side throughout her convalescence.

Shortly afterwards, he was delighted when he learned that Katherine had fooled Betti into blandishing herself as, with Ben and Katherine being the only other people in the Orange World, she was the aberrant.

## Appearances

* "One Big Happy Family"
* "A Rare Find"
* "Achey, Breaky Heart"
* "Lost in Paradise"
* "One Man's Rubbish"
* "Artes Veritas"
* "The Battle of Mundi's World"
* "The Big Sleep-Over"
* "The Martin Crimes"
* "The World According to Betti"
* "The Curse of the Incredibly Bad News"
* "Decoy"
* "Too Many Chiefs"
* "Ex-Ben"
* "Dad Meets Dad"
* "The Krellick War"
* "The Reluctant Guardian"
* "Seek and You Shall Find"
* "Sand Witch"
* "The Reading Room"
* "Clownin' Around"
* "It Ain't Over"

## Behind the scenes

All versions of Jeremy were played by Luke Hewitt.

With 22 appearances, he made the most appearances of any adult character.

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