Eleanor McCallister

> I failed to protect the Earth and I watched it die. And there is only one person who may have the resources to stop the Greys, an Air Force General named Eleanor McCallister. But I killed her. Do not make the same mistake.
>
> Goliath to Harry Vanderspeigle, "I Believe in Aliens"

**General Eleanor McCallister** is originally the main antagonist of the science fiction comedy television series *Resident Alien*, later turned possibly ally to main protagonist Harry Vanderspeigle. She is a high-ranking official who is looking for aliens. McCallister is portrayed by Linda Hamilton and also by Alix West Lefler as the young girl **Eleanor Wright**.

## Character overview

General McCallister is officially described as "a high-ranking official who seemingly plays by the rules and runs a tight ship but secretly oversees a covert operation looking for aliens." She seems to be rather high-strung, chewing out Lieutenant David Logan for saying "little green men" and suggesting that the pressure is getting to him when, in fact, she was the one who said "little green men." This, however, turns out to be a cover for her to hide the fact that she knows that what Logan is saying is exactly right. Afterwards, she secretly approaches him and admits that there was, in fact, a crashed spaceship and tasks him to find it and its pilot, pairing him with Lisa Casper in the role of his "wife."

She is determined that the truth of the discovery of an alien by the military not be sucked into a "classified black hole." She is willing to use extreme methods to achieve her goals but states that she is not a member of the "men in black," claiming that if she had wanted them involved, she would have told her superiors what she was doing. She also tells Logan that what is happening is bigger than anything he could imagine. She is later revealed to be running a secret black site in Wyoming where she has captured a number of individuals she believes to be aliens, some of which have been held for decades. She is killed by Harry Vanderspeigle in an alternate timeline in which The Greys desolate the Earth. Harry later returns as Goliath and warns his past self to not make the same mistake. The two then form a potential alliance against The Greys.

## Appearance

General McCallister is a straight-laced Caucasian woman of middle-age with a furrowed brow, close-cropped haircut and a military uniform.

## Plot summary

### The search

As a child, McCallister, known at the time as Eleanor Wright, was watching television with her father inside a lighthouse. An apparent storm disrupted the reception on the television, but much stranger still was the sudden stopping of all of the clocks. Then, the power goes out. She and her father make their way to the roof and discover the lighthouse's light has gone out and then suddenly the rain simply stops. Looking out into the sky, the two see a massive alien spaceship and McCallister returns with a camera, snapping numerous photographs, which blow away in the wind.

As an adult, McAllister is present at a briefing by Lieutenant David Logan, in which he reports something truly odd. He reports that fighter pilots in the strait of Hormuz engaged with an unidentified aircraft, which vanished into thin air. He then picked up the same signature over Colorado and as far as he knows, there's only one explanation for that, teleportation. He continues that the aircraft lost altitude and he believes it crashed over New Mexico. Hearing this, she asks him if he's talking about "little green men." She suggests that he's being overwhelmed by pressure and suggests he needs medical leave. Not knowing what else to do, he tells her "Yes, General" and exits the room, heading back to his car.

McCalister then follows him and surprises him at his car. She tells him that he's exactly right, that the vessel is an alien ship and they all know it. She orders him to investigate off-the-books, as otherwise the evidence will all be swallowed up and classified, never to be seen again. She then introduces him to Lisa Casper, telling him that she's his new "wife" and that the two of them are going to investigate together.

A few months later, McCallister arrives to meet Logan and Casper. "Where is it?" she asks them and Logan tells her "It's right here." Annoyed at not seeing any visible spacecraft, she warns Logan that she has spent decades searching for life on another planet and she won't have him play games with her. In response, he turns on a blue light, revealing the spaceship and starting to explain how the vessel's cloaking ability is neutralized. McCallister examines the ship in awe and compares it with her photo, but it is not a match for the ship she saw as a child. She then orders them to secure the craft and states that whatever creature was piloting the vessel will be coming back and she wants them to bring it to her.

### Closing in

Standing before the spaceship, Casper asks why they don't just use a crowbar to pry open the door. Logan counters that they've never seen this type of material before. Casper suggests dynamite, leading Logan to remind McCallister that Casper killed someone and saying that this is the sort of thing he was talking about. He asks her for more time and she agrees, but warns him to not make her regret it. Sometime after this, Logan again reports to McCallister, showing her ancient history books. He tells her of the ancient civilization of the Quimbaya and how UFOlogists believe that they were wiped out by extraterrestrials. He indicates within the book an amulet that looks just like the spacecraft, saying that he believes the alien is there to kill them all.

At some point following this incident, the group is together in front of the spaceship when suddenly the lightbulbs in the room crack and spaceship lights up green. Logan receives an indicator on a map on his computer monitor and reports that he knows where the alien is.

### Capturing "the alien"

Logan loses the indicator on his map, due to the deactivation of the alien's device. With this lead lost, McCallister orders Logan and Casper to get back out into the field and capture the alien. Their journey takes them to Patience, Colorado, where they are tricked by the boy Max Hawthorne, who tells them that the alien is the "town doctor." They then capture Dr. Ethan Stone at the Patience Health Clinic, unaware that the real alien is Harry Vanderspeigle. McCallister then shows up, having been called in by Lisa Casper. Logan tells her that he got her the alien and he's officially done with Casper, describing her as "an unhinged psychotic." McCallister replies that she couldn't agree more as a team secures Stone. Logan asks if they're "Men in Black." McCallister replies that they're not called that, that he's been watching too many movies, but if she had wanted them involved, she would have called her superiors. "And then we wouldn't have an alien, would we?" she asks. Logan asks who "we" is and she replies that it's bigger than anything he could imagine, then says that he won't be there to see how it all plays out, ordering Casper to "get rid of him." Casper raises her gun, reminding him of her previous statement about having "different orders." Before she can fire, however, a group of civilians, including children, walks by. "Kill ya' later," she says, lowering her gun. Everyone then takes off, leaving Logan alone and confused.

### Signal

65 days later, General McCallister also orders the abduction of a certain man who was already abducted by the Greys back on a bus from his parents in New York City around the early 1990s but then returned to Earth. She then meets up with Lisa Casper, where the two monitor the various individuals who are being held within their black site, some for as long as 31 years. Casper asks what she thinks about the latest one and McCallister admits that she's not sure yet, but promises to get to the truth about all of them. On that same day, she interrogates Ethan Stone and invites him to a formal dinner with him to have steak, potatoes and red wine. Ethan keeps trying to tell McCallister that he really is a genuine human just like her, but McCallister claims he's lying. She reveals that she is holding a vendetta against all alien life because it cost her her father's life, her father having committed suicide when nobody would believe his story about having witnessed aliens. She stabs Ethan in the hand with a fork, expecting that doing so will make him revert back to his alien form. When it does not, she leaves in disgust, telling him "You're a doctor. Fix it." Afterwards, she again meets up with Casper, who informs her that they've encrypted a signal of encrypted code with an alien signature. Unknown to either of them, the signal is intercepted by a radio built by the alien Harry Vanderspeigle.

### Meeting

McCallister sends Lisa Casper to New York to investigate the signal. Unknown to her, Casper discovers an alien egg, as well as Harry Vanderspeigle. When she confronts Vanderspeigle, however, he kills her. Not long after this, McCallister is contacted by David Logan. He has her meet him on a bridge inside a nature reserve and reveals that is in possession of an "alien ball" with unusual properties formed from Harry Vanderspeigle. He offers to turn over the ball to her in exchange for his freedom and an honorable discharge from the military with a full pension. Before he can complete his thought, however, he is shot by an alien sniper perched up above, causing him and the alien ball to fall to the water below. McCallister withdraws her service weapon and attempts to fire back, but only manages to barely escape with her life.

McAllister later discovers that Logan has survived, the alien ball having protected him. She hides him out in a cabin, telling him that the two of them are now both on the same side. She explains that there must be a mole somewhere within her organization that is working against them both, trying to obtain the alien tech.

McCallister and Logan continue their investigation, McCallister realizing that Ethan Stone is most likely not actually an alien. The two of them then decide to re-center their search on Patience in the hope of finding the alien. McCallister implants herself in Max and his friend Sahar's school as a new lunch lady named "Agnes." As Max goes through the lunch line, he asks her for "nothing healthy, please," and she tells him "Ah, come on, Max, you gotta eat everything on your plate." Though Max thinks nothing of the encounter, Sahar wonders how it was that she knew his name. He claims that it's because he's famous in school for breaking a taco record, though Sahar is skeptical. Later, the alien baby that Harry Vanderspeigle hatched from an egg laid by Goliath (an alternate time version of himself) and brought to Patience from New York, is captured in the woods by McCallister and her agents.

### Contact with an alien

McCallister brings the alien baby back to her secret facility, but to her, he simply appears to be the boy Bobby Smallwood. She takes a report from an underling who tells her that their first battery of tests have not detected any extraterrestrial DNA. The underling starts to talk about a second round of tests, but McCallister tells her to forget it, that she's going in. The underling tells her she'll inform the guards to prepare the restraints. "Don't bother," despairs McCallister, saying that the boy is not an alien. "None of them are."

She enters the room and sighs, telling the boy she remembers being a kid and playing pranks. She tells him she knows he'd do anything to fit in. She pulls out a newspaper clipping, saying it's clear he looks like a dead boy, but asking whose idea it was for him to pretend to be an alien. She tells him he won't get in trouble, but he just stares. She then shouts at him to "cut the fake alien shit!" Scared, he backs away, and she sits and tells him that aliens are real, that she saw them with her father when she was his age. He gets up and presses his hand to hers, seeing a flashback of her seeing the spaceship and then her father being confronted by a man who asked him about his experience. She then witnessed him being forced to jump to his death.

The boy releases his hand from McCallister. His skin begins bubbling. General McCallister stares in shock and awe as he appears in his alien form. She shudders.

Peter Bach, known as the Alien Tracker, pays a visit to McCallister's secret black site. The soldiers at the gate at first deny her existence, but when he reveals Harry Vanderspeigle in his alien form, one of them shouts to get the general. She comes out and asks him where he found Harry. He tells her that they need to talk inside, but she says that she runs the base and he doesn't get to dictate anything. Harry growls, and he tells her that he has the alien, so he will dictate whatever he wants to dictate. McCallister agrees to give him 20 minutes, telling him to make it count.

### Prison break

After twelve minutes, Peter has yet to reveal anything of significance to McCallister and she is starting to grow impatient. He tells her that his sources tell him that this is where she keeps information on alien activity on Earth and he wants it. She tells him that he should stop listening to people in tinfoil hats at the conventions he attends. He expresses surprise at how much she knows about him and she tells him she likes to know who the threats are. He says that he's not a threat. Alarms then start blaring as Harry invades the base and starts running riot. McCallister says to Peter that this was his plan all along, asking what he's doing working with an alien. Peter claims he would never do this as Harry gives him two thumbs up from one of the security monitors and laughs.

Peter gets the drop on McCallister and restrains her. He then fiddles with one of the terminals and releases the prisoners, despite McCallister's protests that he has no idea what he's doing and that any of them could be a dangerous alien. He ignores her warnings, claiming to be an expert. He is then shocked when he discovers that one of the prisoners is Robert Hutchins, his own son who was abducted by the Greys. Shocked, he tells her that she has his son and she tells him to uncuff him, that she can help him. "Forgive me if I don't believe you," he tells her, leaving the room.

After finding his son, Peter is killed by a Grey/human hybrid, Joseph Rainier, who has infiltrated McCallister's black site and is asserting his claim on Robert. Harry then attacks Joseph and claims custody of Robert, fleeing along with his alien baby. Along the way, he encounters McCallister, who tells him that he can't take the baby and to put him down. He chokes McCallister into unconsciousness, but does not kill her, as he received a warning from his future self, Goliath. In the warning, Goliath told him that he had killed McCallister in the other timeline and warned him not to make the same mistake, as her knowledge and expertise could be vital to stopping the Greys.

### Alliance

In the aftermath of the incident, McCallister declares the black site compromised. She orders the site to be cleared out and for everyone to move to another site at Farmington 5. When one of her underlings objects that they haven't used it in years, she replies simply that they'll have plenty of room. Before clearing out, McCallister watches footage of Joseph Rainier going for the safe containing the alien ball, but not getting what he wanted. She realizes that Joseph was the mole, but can't do anything about it, as he is already long gone.

Later, Harry Vanderspeigle allows himself to be captured in his cabin in order to be brought before General McCallister, hoping that Goliath was right about her being the key to saving the world. McCallister's agents bring him before her, bound and chained. "Do you want me to take those off, or do you want to do it yourself?" she asks him and he tells her that he can do it himself, breaking the chains. She then chastises her agents as idiots before dismissing them. He asks her what this place is. She tells him it's nothing, then reveals a secret high-tech elevator behind her. "A quarter of a mile down, there's a lot," she explains as they board the elevator and descend. He tells her that she owes him money for the cabin doors that her agents broke.

## Trivia

* According to *Resident Alien* creator and showrunner Chris Sheridan, General McCallister was originally scripted to die in the first season finale, "Heroes of Patience." This changed when Linda Hamilton was cast for the role, as "you can't kill off Linda Hamilton."
* Many of General McCallister's scenes for the first season were already written when Linda Hamilton was cast for the role. As such, in the second season Chris Sheridan wanted to give her more "meat to play" and write to Hamilton's strengths. Hamilton stated regarding the role that no matter what happens with her character she is enjoying the ride, that "I come home and go, 'I got to push a guy off a cliff today!' or 'I got to stab a man in the hand with a fork!' It's just so well written, and it’s so much fun to read.”

## Quotes

"*No, I completely understand, this post comes with a lot of pressure, and there's no shame in admitting that.*"

- McCallister to David Logan, "Sexy Beast"

"*The UAP is an alien ship. You know it. I know it. The Navy just admitted it. But if crash evidence goes up the chain of command, it will be swallowed up into a classified black hole. I'm not gonna let that happen.*"

- McCallister to David Logan, "Sexy Beast"

"*Wait, are you... are you guys men in black?*"

"*Oh, would you stop it? They're not called that. You've watched too many movies. And if I wanted them involved, I would have told my superiors. And then we wouldn't have an alien, would we?*"

- David Logan and McCallister, "Heroes of Patience"

"*What do think about the new one?*"

"*I'm not sure yet, but I'll find out. I'll find the truth about all of them.*"

- Lisa Casper and McCallister, "Radio Harry"

"*Nothing healthy, please.*"

"*Ah, come on, Max, you gotta eat everything on your plate.*"

- Max and McCallister disguised as the lunch lady "Agnes", "The Alien Within"

"*He's not an alien. None of them are.*"

- McCallister, despairing, shortly before receiving definitive proof of alien existence, "Cat and Mouse"

"*Do you want me to take those off, or do you want to do it yourself?*"

"*I can just do it.*"

"*Idiots.*"

- McCallister and Harry Vanderspeigle regarding the useless restraints her soldiers placed on Vanderspeigle, "I Believe in Aliens"

## Gallery

### Videos

SYFY's "Resident Alien" - Linda Hamilton First Look - on SYFYLinda Hamilton, Terry O'Quinn & Giorgio Are coming To Town - Resident Alien - SYFYHarry's Ship Is Discovered - Resident Alien - SYFYDr. Ethan’s Fate Finally Revealed - Resident Alien (S2 E4) - SYFYBehind the Scenes of Episode 4- How To Stab Someone With a Fork - Resident Alien (S2 E4) - SYFYBehind the Scenes- How the Alien Baby Gets Abducted by a Helicopter - Resident Alien (S2 E12) - SYFYBEHIND THE SCENES- Linda Hamilton Was Most Surprised by THIS - Resident Alien (S2 E16) - SYFYAre Harry & General McCallister... Teaming Up? - Resident Alien (S2 E16) - SYFY
## Navigation

Mayor Ben Hawthorneportrayed byLevi FiehlerKate Hawthorneportrayed by Meredith GarretsonMax Hawthorneportrayed by Judah Prehn**General Eleanor McCallister**portrayed byLinda HamiltonDavid Loganportrayed byAlex Barima
*Browse all*

## References

1. ↑ In "I Believe in Aliens," Goliath tells Harry Vanderspeigle "And there is only one person who may have the resources to stop the Greys, an Air Force general named Eleanor McCallister," confirming she kept the first name "Eleanor."
2. ↑ Linda Hamilton Mandell Maughan, and Alex Barima Join the Cast of Resident Alien. February 5, 2020.
3. ↑ YouTube - Behind the Scenes of Episode 4: How To Stab Someone With a Fork | Resident Alien (S2 E4) | SYFY
4. ↑ *Resident Alien*'s Linda Hamilton Unpacks McCallister's 'Mad Vision and Rage,' and Teases What's Ahead by Nick Caruso, March 13, 2022.