Merlot

Dr. Merlot (メルロー, Merurō), is both the fictional character and antagonist of the Tales of RWBY series created by Monty Oum and Yoshiharu Gotanda. He is a scientist with an obsession for Grimm due to believing they are a superior species to humanity and desires to improve them even further with his research.

"The Grimm are a superior species, fascinating in their biology, their unbridled, raw aggression and lack of sentience make them the perfect vessel."
 * —Dr. Merlot, to Ozpin on Grimm.

Appearance & Biography

 * Voice Actor: Dave Fennoy (English), Not Known (Japanese), Not Known (Albanian), Not Known (Arabic), Not Known (Basque), Not Known (Brazilian), Not Known (Cantonese), Not Known (Catalan), Not Known (Chinese), Not Known (Dutch), Not Known (Finnish), Not Known (French), Not Known (Galician), Not Known (German), Not Known (Greek), Not Known (Hebrew), Not Known (Hong Kong), Not Known (Hungarian), Not Known (Indonesian), Not Known (Isralian), Not Known (Italian), Not Known (Korean), Not Known (Mandarin), Not Known (Norwegian), Not Known (Polish), Not Known (Portuguese), Not Known (Romanian), Not Known (Russian), Not Known (Serbian), Not Known (Spanish), Not Known (Swedish), Not Known (Tagalog), Not Known (Thai), Not Known (Valencian), Not Known (Brazilian Portuguese), Not Known (European Spanish), Not Known (European Portuguese), Not Known (Latin American Spanish), Not Known (Latin Spanish)

Appearance
Merlot is an elderly man with disheveled gray hair, a matching mustache and beard and prominent eyebrows. His left eye is robotic and glows red and around it are noticeable claw marks, likely from his Grimm experiments. His right arm is also robotic and is dark and metallic and has red inner circuits.

He wears a light gray jacket with a high collar and a red shirt underneath. On each sleeve of the jacket is a dark gray hexagon shape.


 * Hair Color: Gray
 * Skin Color: Not Known
 * Eye Color: Red
 * Age: Not Known
 * Birthday: Not Known
 * Height: Not Known
 * Weight: Not Known

Personality
Merlot is portrayed as a smug and overly confident man who believes even Grimm, the most powerful creatures can be controlled to make the world better for humanity.

He is implied to have a mild god-complex as he firmly believes that nature and evolution has failed to perfect the Grimm and that his science can fix it's failures, with his theme song even having him call himself the "god of the Grimm".

He also seems to have a sarcastic sense of humor, as he recites mocking emulations of a public address system at Team RWBY and Ozpin and refers to the former as "visitors" while they're invading his laboratory.

Enemies

 * Team RWBY
 * Ruby Rose
 * Weiss Schnee
 * Blake Belladonna
 * Yang Xiao Long
 * Team JNPR
 * Jaune Arc
 * Nora Valkyrie
 * Lie Ren

Past
Doctor Merlot was the founder of Merlot Industries, a research and development corporation based out of the ill-fated settlement at Mountain Glenn. At some point, Merlot gained an unhealthy obsession towards the Creatures of Grimm, believing them to be a "superior species" and that due to their "unbridled raw aggression and lack of sentience" they would make "the perfect vessel". Said fascination led to him falling out of favor with Professor Ozpin.

Merlot was personally familiar with Ozpin, whom he called "Oz". However, they were on bad terms, with Ozpin believing that the world would have been better off had Merlot died in the disaster that he had caused. According to Ozpin, the other professors at Beacon Academy had a similarly low opinion of Merlot.

Undaunted, the corporation began performing experiments on Grimm, research which Merlot believed was vital to the future of Remnant. However, when they began running out of specimens to experiment on, they started attracting Grimm to the city in order to acquire more, with disastrous results. After the fall of Mountain Glenn, Doctor Merlot was presumed dead.

Etymology

 * Merlot is a type of grape most notably used in making the red wine that shares its name.
 * The character of Doctor Merlot may allude to the science fiction novel The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells. Apart from the similarity in name, the story features an eccentric doctor living on a remote island and performing morally questionable experiments on animals. The seventh chapter of the Grimm Eclipse's campaign mode seems to support this with the level being titled "The Island of Dr. Merlot".
 * The song "Lusus Naturae" is presumably written from Merlot's perspective, and goes deeper into his motivations and obsession with the Grimm. The song is written and performed by Jeff Williams and plays over the credits of Tales of RWBY: Grimm Eclipse and is in the Tales of RWBY: Volume 4 Soundtrack.

Notes & Trivia

 * The terminals in his lab used to open doors and activate elevators have the text "Process status: 78% completed Mutant Grimm Experiments: -Creep -Beowolf -?? Beacon will fall"
 * In Grimm Eclipse if the player(s) pick up at least 30 artifacts, Merlot's laugh can be heard after the ending credits.
 * One of the Objective Cards in the board game Tales of RWBY: Combat Ready is "The Return of Dr. Merlot", which when selected has the players fight a menagerie of enhanced Grimm.