Kai is played by
Micheal McManus
Character details
Kai died 2008 years prior to the events of the Lexx premiere episode "I Worship His Shadow", defending his home planet Brunnis-2 against attack by His Divine Shadow's personal flagship. This desperate defense failed and His Divine Shadow destroyed the Brunnen-G home world. Knowing all was lost, Kai rammed his small fighter craft into the control pod of the Foreshadow in an attempt to destroy His Divine Shadow. Having rammed into the pod, he was catapulted out of his cockpit and then stabbed by His Divine Shadow.
Instead of having Kai's carcass incinerated, His Shadow had him "de-carbonized" and turned into a Divine Assassin. As such, Kai is virtually indestructible; he is capable of surviving without oxygen, and even when split in half his body will rejoin. When dismembered, Kai's individual parts are capable of independent action; even when his head is separated from his body, he can carry on conversations and his body is still capable of walking.
His favored weapon is his brace, a strange, bladed device that emerges from his wrist, much like Spider-Man's web, and impales his targets. This weapon is attached to a line that can travel enormous distances, giving rise to the question of where Kai stores it all when it's inside his body. Kai can also use the line as a kind of grappling hook, or to lasso objects and people from far away and bring them near. As an undead assassin/ex-assassin, Kai's uniform is a blackened version of the colorful clothing the Brunnen-G had worn; his beehive hairdo, however, remains unchanged.
For 2008 years, Kai was forced to serve His Shadow, killing heretics and revolutionaries, until he was called to secure the Lexx from heretics. The Time Prophet had made a prophecy that the Brunnen-G would destroy the Divine Order and, with Kai being the last of the Brunnen-G, the responsibility fell on his shoulders. The current incarnation of His Divine Shadow refused to believe in the prophecy and called Kai to action as an assassin to mock the prophecy and show his own mastery of the Universe. After a confrontation with rebel leader Thodin, Kai finds Zev Bellringer and Stanley Tweedle on the bridge of His Shadow's new ship, the Lexx. However, before he can eliminate the attempted hijackers, he is called away to help the Divine Predecessors who are under attack by a cluster lizard, a vicious animal which feasts on the flesh of the living. When Kai, having killed the cluster lizard, picks up a piece of the brain of the Divine Predecessor that killed him, he regains his memories and his own will, and joins Stan and Zev.
Kai, accidentally turned into a slasher movie-style psycho killer.Kai is animated by protoblood, a substance secreted by the Gigashadow (the vast insect body of His Divine Shadow). This liquid can only reanimate Kai for a limited amount of time, so he must remain in cryogenic suspension between bouts of activity to prolong his existence. When awoken improperly, his behaviour can be unpredictable and sometimes violent. Although he has free will, he is also capable of being programmed, and once became a sinister, slasher movie-style killer after a teenager suggested it while Kai was sleeping. Normally unflappable, Kai has become very erratic on several occasions: once, when the crew lands on Ruuma, a planet where the bodies of many Divine Predecessors are kept alive in a zombie-like state, Kai begins spouting strange poetry (perhaps reflecting his race's poetic origins). Kai is also briefly turned into a singing tree by the faerie king Oberon, a state he seemed to prefer to being dead. On yet another occasion, the ever-unpredictable Kai is quite ready to spend eternity buried in the dirt before circumstances compel him to get back into the action.
Because he is dead, Kai lacks the ability to perform most bodily functions (as he once tells Stanley, "the dead do not poo.") He is also incapable of (and uninterested in) having sex, a major disappointment for Zev/Xev, who loves/lusts after the dead man, and the many other women (and, in seasons 3 & 4, 790) who lust after him over the course of the series. He also lacks motivation and most emotions, and is unable to love, care or truly feel for others. When questioned about his motivations (or lack thereof), he often begins his answers: "The dead do not..." (See below.) Despite his claims of emotionlessness, however, his dry humor frequently gives the appearance of expressing passive-aggressive disapproval of the other characters' actions and resentment of the fact that they often overlook the fact that he is dead. His actions can be rather ambiguous, as can his emotional claims (ie. care for Zev/Xev near beginning and end of series and his feelings toward his dead race). The question is never directly addressed as to why he goes to such lengths to protect the Lexx crew, but he seems to possess a certain muted affection for them even when dead, and several times he's called Stan and Zev/Xev his friends.
At the end of the final season, Isambard Prince, former ruler of Planet Fire, restores Kai to life after promising it as a prize in a chess game. Prince visits the Lexx as a self-proclaimed omen of death, which Kai "feels" is meant for him. Kai says farewell to Xev and Stan before leaving Earth, apologizing to Xev for never being able to love her, and, despite him not yet being truly alive, the two kiss for the first and only (real) time.
Fulfilling his own omen, Prince restores Kai to life only minutes before he sacrifices himself to destroy the asteroid-ship harbouring Lyekka and her kind. Kai is last seen flying through the interior of the asteroid with a particle collider, singing the Brunnen-G Fight Song, and finally crashing at the asteroid core with the device. Surviving the crash and finally alive, but next to the about-to-explode particle collider, the last shot is Kai laughing for the first time in millennia.
Kai, finally brought back to life by Prince.
