First appearance: S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel · watch it on YouTube
Nigel Night Louis is a “BAFTA award-winning actor” and a changeling who sculpted his own chin. He was pulled into The Void to fight the gentle halfling Sprinkles in S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel. He treated the Deathmatch as the role of a lifetime: he coached his opponent like an acting student, lost his face, died inside the Box of Chaos on purpose, and still delivered the killing blow from inside his own corpse. The match had no winner, but few champions have committed this hard to a bit.
Story
Nigel came through the Grandmaster’s portal into the throne room of The Shadow King at The Dread Fortress sipping a cherry bubbly, his sponsor. He announced himself in a husky voice and a stream of credentials. Before the fight he demanded that his Teen Choice Award be waxed, as his contract required, and asked for raw asparagus (“I like to eat it crunchy”). He signed Sprinkles’ grappling hook after the halfling recognized him from There Won’t Be Blood. When the Shadow King hosed both champions down with a cannon of goblin-laced blood, Nigel noted that “eating goblin is illegal in most places here.” He also adopted a goblin servant who happened to share his name. He strapped little Nigel the Goblin to his back in a homemade baby carrier (“You can be my Mandalorian”) and swore to protect him with his life: “My life is meaningless. My life is about the art.” He even accepted a red-and-blue friendship bracelet from Sprinkles. His two colors were “red, like blood, and blue, like the sky,” because he weeps at the sky once a day.
In the dank, glowing-dirt forest of the arena, Nigel offered Sprinkles a free acting lesson and promised, “You’re gonna hate me by the end of this.” His magic tickling failed when Sprinkles shrugged it off with a perfect roll. Nigel then shrugged off the arena’s deadly dirt with a perfect roll of his own. Apparently he had once done a movie where he ate nothing else, and the dirt only energized him. He blocked Sprinkles’ attempted hug by grabbing him by the face and explained his method: “It’s projecting trauma.” He ordered the pacifist halfling to hit him and lay down to make it easier, then cast a spell of truth and let himself fall under it. Sprinkles confessed to a “dark passenger” living inside him. Nigel confessed that he hates his own work and watches his movies to cry and yell at himself. He also admitted, “Sometimes I don’t know who I am.” When a horde of zombie grandmothers clawed up from the ground, Nigel told Sprinkles to unleash the passenger. The demon took over the halfling’s body, and Nigel got exactly the bloodbath he had asked for. He used his famous face-shifting to dodge a claw aimed straight at it, shoved his opponent into a meemaw’s corrosive kiss, and swung his Teen Choice surfboard trophy. His Paddington insult barely dented the demon’s next critical blow, and the demon’s infectious fury tore 40 points of psychic damage out of his “fragile ego.”
When the Box of Chaos crashed into the arena, Nigel shoved his head inside “going full Nicolas Cage” and offered up the skin of his face. Clawed hands sawed it off, and the spirit in the box wore it like a mask. In return he got an Ioun Stone of Fortitude. “I’m gonna win this Oscar without a face. You try acting without a face.” He snapped his Teen Choice Award over his knee to wield both halves, and the soul of SpongeBob visibly left it. He pounded Sprinkles with his SAG award. Then he gave a gyrating, blood-flinging performance so overwhelming that the Grandmaster invented a new damage type for it, “Nick Cage damage,” and the Acolytes were left stunned in their seats. The demon struck back with a cloak sewn from Nigel’s own face and Sprinkles’ friendship bracelets. Nigel welcomed it: “Me versus me. I’m killing myself. This is art.”
For the finale Nigel cast himself as the villain, so his nemesis could be the hero. He kicked the box open and jumped in whole, declaring that “all the best performances happen after you’re dead.” The box’s shadow spirit flayed him, and he died inside. The spirit walked out wearing his skin and slashed Sprinkles with a filthy toe knife from Danny DeVito. Then the dark passenger revealed its true name, Melchizedek, and abandoned Sprinkles to seize Nigel’s “more worthy vessel.” The fight moved inside Nigel’s body, where Melchizedek threatened, “I’m gonna make Nigel piss. It’s gonna smell like asparagus!” There Nigel’s essence appeared as a bright-eyed little Newsie, the high schooler who had just done his first musical and been told for the first time that he was worth something. Melchizedek, a nine-headed horror, froze him in place, and an avalanche of chunky vomit and stomach acid from Nigel’s earlier Chinese food washed them both across the body. The child tap-danced free singing “Let us seize the day.” He charmed Melchizedek into dancing to Footloose and gently encouraged her new passion for yodeling. Melchizedek beat him with “awards you have not yet won.” Finally, as the Shadow King split the giant body open for the crowd, the child picked up a broken bone from his own corpse, imagined it was an Oscar, and stabbed Melchizedek in the heart three times, “almost like killing myself… ego death style.” He lay beside her watching a phantom acceptance speech. Declaring that the ending deserved an award, the Shadow King then rained green slime from the sky, the same honor Nigel’s Teen Choice win had come with, until both champions drowned.
Personality and Abilities
Nigel has long white-gray hair slicked back, a salt-and-pepper beard, big sunglasses and a permanently hung-over look. He wears a huge coat like Tommy Wiseau’s in The Room over a Renaissance shirt, “half Shakespeare and half Tommy Wiseau.” He measures his life in trophies. He holds a BAFTA, a Cable Ace, a Tony for best actor in a play, a SAG award, an Emmy, and a Teen Choice Award for Sponge, the CW’s gritty live-action SpongeBob, which came with a sliming he called “a ritual of humility.” He still wants his EGOT and his Oscar. His other credits include There Won’t Be Blood (“You drink my smoothie!”), a CW Paddington remake, a Britney Spears musical, and the movie where he only ate dirt. He drinks “teardrop” bubbly before performances “to make me really understand the depth of the human experience.” Under the vanity is a man who hates his own work and isn’t sure who he is.
In a fight he is a method-acting barbarian-bard. He flies into berserker frenzies, swings his awards as clubs, and wields spells as directing tools: tickling laughter, compelling suggestions, truth-telling magic, cutting insults that blunt a blow, and illusions he casts on himself to step into a scene. As a changeling he can reshape his face. He used that to mimic Sprinkles and to dodge attacks, and he claimed he made his chin himself. The Box of Chaos gave him an Ioun Stone of Fortitude that toughened him further. His greatest weapon may be pure commitment, the kind that earns its own damage type. As the table joked, “No one’s immune.”
Relationships
- Sprinkles: his opponent and acting pupil, who gave him a friendship bracelet; Nigel coaxed out the halfling’s dark passenger and cast him as the hero to his villain.
- Melchizedek: the demon inside Sprinkles, who tried to claim Nigel’s body and was killed by Nigel’s inner child.
- Nigel the Goblin: the goblin servant he carried in a baby carrier and swore to protect; by the end, the “true Nigel” still riding on the body’s back.
- The Shadow King: backed his demand for a waxed trophy, then drowned him in slime as a final award.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: summoned him and invented “Nick Cage damage” in his honor.
Memorable Quotes
- “You drink my smoothie!” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “Red, like blood, and blue, like the sky. I openly weep while staring at the sky once a day.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “I’m gonna win this Oscar without a face. You try acting without a face.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “All the best performances happen after you’re dead.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “I’m doing this for myself, for my child, the child that is me. Which is my only child because I have a huge ego.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “Since the dawn of time, storytelling has been one of the most important things for people to share with each other.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel, Dried Blood)