This is a long, long time in coming and I apologize for the delay. This took longer for me to finish.
Control is a daunting but important character in the show and she was, for the first half of the series, the shadowy villain that influenced a lot of our beloved character’s lives.
Control is the reason why Nathan Ingram (and a ferry full of people) are dead, why Harold has injuries that still affect him to this day coupled with chronic pain. Control is the reason why Kara attempted to kill John and led to her working for Greer.
Control is the reason why Cole died and Shaw found herself a soldier without a country and Root is now deaf in one ear.
She is not an easy person to like, in fact, she makes it impossible to like her but if there is one thing Person of Interest is good with, it is the ability to turn an antagonist into an ally.
One of the reasons I like Control is that she is a middle aged woman in power. She’s not slim nor blonde and she has lines on her face.
Control is one of the most powerful people within the shadowy halls of the Pentagon. She’s first name basis with the White House Chief of Staff, she’s a political person on her own right but she chose to remain in the shadows and play the Intelligence game because as Sen. Garrison said, there was none better.
Control is completely, and I mean completely, committed to her mission: to protect the United States of America from within and from without.
In the POI-verse she is a necessary evil ( can I also give a shout out to how the story is told? The narrative doesn’t judge nor leads the audience to a conclusion to how we should perceive Control).
Control doggedly pursued a system that can sift through all the intelligence reports. Unfortunately, in the matter of keeping her country safe, she’s also done a lot of questionable stuff.
She can and will discard someone who worked for her because they might get too close to the Northern Lights project (the Machine) or if she deems that their usefulness was at an end. At the same time she still has a possessive view of the people she discarded, Shaw is still and will always be Agent Shaw to Control.
(Control is possessive, full stop. She viewed both the Machine and Samaritan as ‘hers’.)
Hersh was unquestionably loyal to her.
In her personal life there are only a few things we know about Control and one of those things was that she has a daughter named Julia.
All the other things we can extrapolate, this is my take about Control’s career trajectory:
Control probably started out her career during the tail end of the Cold War. She’s seen regimes fall and change within her lifetime, she was probably just graduating from the Farm the moment the Ayatollah took over Iran and she was there to witness the utter catastrophe that was Operation Eagle.
Control was around to see the Berlin wall fall and to see the Cold War end.
She was there to see the CIA meander around in a fog of confusion after the Cold War ended and there was no real enemy to fight. She saw the gaps and the human error in intelligence gathering and analysis.
She saw how that led to the the attack in 9/11 where she saw friends and colleagues die.
It was an event she has no control over, and it might be, and probably was the catalyst to all the things we’ve seen her become. She might have promised that 9/11 would be the last time a major attck ever happen on American soil.
Somehow she moved from Langley to Arlington and made a home for herself in the Pentagon, maybe (definitely) even before 9/11 happened. She pushed and prodded until she was in the position we now see her in and the woman we all know her to be. Control: the head of a covert military agency. One of the shadowiest and most powerful intelligence agencies in the POI-verse. And now I leave you all with one of my favorite Control fics, or actually the lone definitive Control fic.
Bonus Fic Rec:
Title: Fresh White Paint
Author: hedda62
Character: Control
Summary: She's not code-named Control only because she gives the orders.
Spoilers: Episode tag: 4.12 "Control-Alt-Delete."
She can forgive Samaritan’s operatives their arrogant menace, but not their complete lack of humor.
Finch is the only one who daunts Control; he speaks of Shaw in the past tense, and at first she thinks he’s given up, but it’s merely that his thermostat is set as low as hers. And ice burns just as well as heat. Root would have set her heart on fire, recklessly efficient, quick and stupid. Finch, she can’t help thinking, will leave her here in the dark and cold until her sins creep up like rats to chew away her bonds and her bones and her skin. And then make her clean up the mess.
It’s silly, because she has her escape at hand all along, and she’s only slightly unnerved when that’s part of Finch’s plan; she appreciates mastermind gestures, and she knows Samaritan is well-protected. She goes back to work reinvigorated from the encounter. If she’s a janitor, she will be the best one possible; she flies to Canada and tidies her mistake without a qualm. Said looks like the kids in IT, like the older brother of one of Julia’s classmates, like the man behind the counter at the neighborhood mom-and-pop. He also looks like a terrorist. Perhaps she has been lied to—I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken—but it makes no difference to finishing the job.
(Favorite line: ice burns just as well as heat.)
