Gwen Hayes (Eden Rising)



"I single-handedly sculpted the idea of New Venice. Helped bring that  idea to life, in spite of the civil wars that are out there.  I've created many enemies.  And you've gone out of your way, come out to my room at the crack of dawn to tell me that my life might be in danger? Understatement of the year, man. You've wasted your time."

- Gwen, to Robert.

Gwendolyn "Gwen" Hayes is a main character in Eden Rising. She is a former city planner who was once in charge of the post-apocalyptic metropolis New Venice. She has been best friends with Kitty for a very long time, including the time when Gwen was raped and was stripped of her confidence as a leader. Gwen became hypersexual as a response to her sexual assault, a condition that led to her having an affair with Xander, Kitty's husband, costing her their friendship. Gwen often challenged Tom's decisions, showing off the reckless, outspoken personality she had as a leader in New Venice. When it came time for Gwen to step up and show leadership to the group in Tom's absence, she failed spectacularly as an attack from an enemy within led to deaths under Gwen's watch, including her friend Sidney. This incident caused her to mellow out with repressed feelings of guilt.

Upon the group's arrival at Eden, a withdrawn Gwen became interested in carrying on her deceased friend's interest in the science of the infected due to intense guilt, sneaking zombies into her suite for her own personal diagnoses. Gwen was discovered by the corrupted Ed MacPherson, who convinced her to relocate to an island owned by a maniac named The Serpent and assist him in his experiments on the infected. Gwen was held prisoner here, and Ed decided to cover up shipping her away to prevent any bad blood with The Serpent, by making it look like she simply vanished from the dome. Gwen was finally rescued and returned to Eden, where she confronted Ed and successfully deflected an attempt on her life by killing him in self-defense.

Personality
Gwen is outdoorsy, precocious, adventurous, and a comfortably successful academic who also knows how to handle herself in the real world. Her knowledge and fiery attitude came in handy while transitioning into the post-outbreak world, her experiences allowing her to build her own visionary paradise in New Venice. When watching it all fall down, Gwen began to mellow out, but is often one to respectfully challenge authority when she truly believes something is off-putting.

Not letting anything bother her on her rough n' tough exterior, on the inside Gwen is incredibly self-deprecating, deeming responsibility for things that others may not blame her for. Ironically, she is also often too stubborn to admit when something truly is of her fault. Her love life has always been complicated and a reflection of her own complex nature. Men find her attractive and she likes qualities of each of her suitors, but is looking for the whole package.

History
Pre-series= Gwen was once a swim team champion in high school.

After the outbreak hit, the city of Cincinnati, Ohio managed to keep things running. They flooded the city and created a high-rise paradise to protect themselves from zombies. Gwen's father was in charge of this operation, and as a city planner herself before the 'end of the world', she was very active in the city's efforts of rebirth. When her father fell ill, Gwen took over the reigns as the city's leader. Gwen was raped by a mysterious assailant at a party she attended with her best friend Kitty Drake. The rape turned Gwen into a darker person, with an intense need to overcome the males in her life. The rapist was caught and hung in a public trial, giving Gwen some source of closure but she still fought to retain some sort of dignity in her life and she succeeded in overcoming the rape, not letting it define her as a person. Gwen is introduced in the series as a diplomat from New Venice, arriving to one of the large metropolis's "sister cities", the small town of Glenley, in order to present her own plan of order once hearing of the arrival of a mysterious stranger. Gwen finds herself the target of The General, who wants to murder her and take over New Venice by luring her to Glenley, which he and his regime plan on burning down with her inside. Gwen escapes with a ragtag group of survivors led by Tom Snyder, one of Glenley's most well-respected sheriffs. When New Venice is taken and Gwen is left broken, she joins the small group of survivors on their journey to the potential paradise that is Eden. It takes her a long time to open up to her fellow survivors, and she begins to hollow out after watching her metropolis fall apart. Gwen starts to stand up and show off her leadership skills again as Tom begins to unhinge in the aftermath of his ex-wife Kate's death and his daughter Darla getting bitten in the arm by a zombie, resulting in her amputation. She begins an affair with best friend Kitty's husband Xander, which initially begins during a drunken spiel, but occurs again in her lust for sex. Their second go around inside the under-construction side of the airport, where biters climb up and attack them, leads to Xander's death. Gwen barely escapes the biters herself, but when she does, it exposes her affair with Xander to the other survivors. This leads to a silent fallout with Kitty, who refuses to talk with Gwen following this.
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Four months later, Gwen has taken a more vocal role with the group, trying to prove herself. She starts to gain support, especially from Sidney. Gwen's angry, hot-headed temperament also leads to many siding with her just because they are intimidated by her. When a traitor attacks the airport, murdering Phoebe, Regis, and Sidney all in one night under Gwen's watchful eye, Gwen grows completely hallow and refuses human contact. She feels she's failed the group and slowly begins to stop questioning Tom's methods, realizing she was too confident and this confident has left three of her people dead.

Gwen manages to escape the airport, boarding the rescue plane to Eden with the other survivors. An indeterminate amount of time since the season two finale has passed. Gwen has gone missing between the timeframe of the season two finale and the season three premiere, with Ash, now a member of Eden's security team, feeling guilty that he wasn't there for her. He and Gareth examined her suite, finding that the place is completely trashed with many blood stains and strange scientific notes strewn around her room.
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It was since revealed that Gwen wanted to experiment on the biters to live up to Sidney's work. The guilt surrounding her responsibility over Sidney's death continued to haunt her, until Ed MacPherson made a "deal with the devil" by agreeing to let Gwen work on experiments at The Serpent's island. Gwen was residing there. Her frame of mind is still frazzled, due to her intense grief and guilt, but she had since helped The Serpent learn how to control the fragment of the brain that is still functioning in a biter. She was not treated as a guest here, but a prisoner who is unable to escape alongside the girl who assists in her experiments, Tamsin.

When Ash and PJ are captured by The Serpent and brought to the island, Gwen seemed to snap back into the right frame of mind, demanding that The Serpent not do any harm to them. Gwen ended up reuniting with Declan, who was on a mission to rescue Ash and PJ alongside Tom, Leigh, and Victor. She escaped the island, and set up a date with Declan.

While waiting on her date at the dock with Declan, alarms and gunshots rang out. When Gwen saw news footage on TV of Simon reporting that Kitty, Rory, Darla, and Séverine were being held hostage by a deranged shooter. Gwen ended up evading lockdown protocols and rushing to the scene due to news that her old friend Kitty was one of the hostages. When she arrived at the scene, Kitty was released and she comforted her. When Kitty mentioned that the shooter mentioned MacPherson, Gwen asked Touch Star employee Victor for security clearance. He hesitantly gave it to her and asked her not to fuck anything up.

Using Victor's clearance, Gwen stormed into Ed MacPherson's office and found him trying to pack up and escape. He confessed to the crimes that she knew he was guilty of: shipping her off to The Serpent's island in order to do experiments on infected, in hopes of controlling them for his own purposes, but The Serpent double-crossed him and he left Gwen on the island in hopes that she'd never return. Ed considered Gwen a loose end, who knew too much, and he attempted to murder her to silence her. During the struggle, Gwen was thrown into a wooden table, and using a plank with a nail stuck in it as a self-defense weapon. This impaled Ed in the eyeball and his body stumbled through the glass window of his office into the greenhouse below. Gwen was later taken into custody, personally by an irritated Victor, who felt she betrayed the trust he placed in her by asking her to simply "not fuck anything up".

She is interrogated by United Nations official Vijay Dasari, who has her placed into a cell. Gwen's cell is next to Gareth's. The two discuss what they did to end up here, with it being apparent that Gareth is going to be shipped off to the United Nations for his involvement in authorizing illegal missions outside of the dome's jurisdiction, something Ed framed him for. Victor taunts Gwen outside of her cell, for her arrogance when it came to Ed's death. When the United Nations suddenly decides to stop sanctioning Eden's operations, one of their representatives, Emily Astrange, unlocks Gwen and Gareth's cells. The power soon goes out after they are freed.

Gwen and Gareth meet up with a suspicious-looking Tom. When Gareth follows Tom, he discovers that Tom is dumping a body in the flooded alpha sector. Gareth meets up with Gwen, and the three of them come up with an idea to turn on the emergency power generator in the alpha sector. They must swim to it, however. Ash agrees to sanction the mission, supplying the trio with weapons. Gwen and Gareth separate from Tom as he prepares to dive, with Gareth feeling like Gwen is trying to babysit him; she reminds him of what he did to her in Valhalla, and replies with a snark "Sorry." While accompanying the two, Gareth ends up locking Gwen behind in another room on her own while he and Tom carry on into the next one. Gwen fights off the infected that attack her underwater in this flooded room.

Gwen manages to get into the room Gareth locked her out of. Someone from above tosses her a harpoon, Gareth's weapon. She grabs it and finishes off the infected that attack her. Gwen surfaces, assuming that her savior was Gareth, thanking him but questioning why he locked her out. It turns out that her savior wasn't Gareth, but Tom, who claims that Gareth tried to kill him. Tom pulls out a pair of dog tag's, they're Rory's. Tom claims that Gareth confessed to murdering Rory and tried to kill him. Gwen knows the actual truth though, something that ended up being Tom's kink in his plans.

As Rory gets a memorial, Gwen tells Kitty the truth. The two decide to plan on bringing Tom to justice, breaking into his suite and forcing him to send Darla to Manila's suite to keep PJ company. He does so, and Gwen demands to know why he killed Rory; Tom admits to everything, saying Leigh forced him to kill Rory in promise that she would spare his daughter. Kitty remains stoic, while Gwen does most of the talking. The two decide on a plan; they will find out where Leigh is. Turns out, Manila implemented a tracking device and rigged the bomb to backfire on Leigh when she smuggled it in for her, having a mini explosion and not the true detonation she intended. So Manila tracks the bomb down, to the ventilation shafts above Eden. Here, there's a final showdown with Leigh where Tom is shot - unbeknownst to Gwen, by an enraged Kitty and not by Leigh - and Leigh is killed in the explosion she detonated. However, Tom is convinced that this was all part of her plan and based on warnings she gave of Darla's safety, her true plan involved spreading the infection through Darla.

Gwen, Kitty and Manila followed Tom back to Manila's suite, where Darla had just fled. PJ had no idea where she went, saying she was acting strange and just ran out. While Gwen stayed behind with the others, Tom ran to the greenhouse, where he found his infected daughter and put her down.

Killed Victims

 * Numerous counts of infected
 * Sidney Strauss (Reanimated)
 * Ed MacPherson

Trivia

 * Gwen's theme is "Venus" by Lady Gaga.
 * Gwen has only appeared in one season premiere, the season two premiere, "Home".
 * She also holds the distinction of being the only main cast member from the first season to have not appeared in the pilot episode, as she was not introduced until the second episode.