Ben Tennyson (Classic)

Benjamin "Ben" Kirby Tennyson was an average 10-year-old kid, until he found the Omnitrix; an exceedingly strong and powerful watch-like device that allowed him to turn into ten different alien species. Though initially immature and clumsy, he grew as a true hero. By the time he was sixteen, he had become famous in not only his hometown of Bellwood, but on Earth and beyond. Ben has also become a member of the Plumbers.

Physical Appearance
Ben's physical appearance has evolved throughout the series from a ten-year-old to a fifteen and sixteen-year-old teenager. However, he retains some recurring characteristics. He has short brown hair, green eyes, pale skin, and he's quite skinny for his age (though his various future selves are portrayed as quite muscular), though he shows a lot of muscle definition due to being athletic. In the original series, his usual clothes consisted of a black-striped, white T-shirt with short sleeves, deep green cargo pants, and black and white sneakers. Starting with Alien Force, he starts wearing a black T-shirt, blue skinny jeans and a white-stripped green jacket with the number 10 on it, clothes he retains in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Ben wears the Omnitrix and Ultimatrix on his left wrist in a watch-like manner. Like all the other main characters, his physical appearance hasn't changed much.

When the cross over special with Generator Rex occured, Ben's appearance changed according to the animation of that series, becoming sleeker and more mature.

In the new series Ben 10: Omniverse, Ben wears a new shirt that is black and has a green stripe in the middle with a 10 and green accents on the sides of his shirt. He wears dark brown cargo pants and white sneakers with green on the top of them. He wears the Third Omnitrix on his left wrist.

Personality
Ben is initially portrayed as a cocky, arrogant, and immature boy who tends to make jokes even when fighting. He easily gets full of himself and enjoys attention. This attitude can sometimes make him look obnoxious or dumb, often resulting in criticisms from Gwen and later Kevin. It also causes him several conflicts with Azmuth. These traits, however, as hinted in The Forge of Creation, stem from Ben's attempts to hide his own fear about the situation (though he denied it and said he was actually oblivious). Even so, he's matured since the first series and although he can be goofy, he's also capable of great leadership skills and tends to get serious when the situation requires it.

Despite his immaturity, Ben is actually good-hearted, and his actions are motivated above all by a strong and sincere will to help and save others in need. He's shown to deeply care for other's lives, and would choose to save people by himself even when he dislikes them (such as Cash and JT). This causes him to have a strong dislike for sacrifices or life compromises and occasionally act against reason, such as choosing to save half-cured DNAlien Tyler over seizing the key for the Highbreed's invasion (Inside Man) or trying to save the Sentinel while losing the last Map of Infinity piece to Aggregor (Perplexahedron). When meeting an enemy in trouble (like Kevin or the Highbreed), he'll usually attempt to help them rather than win the hard way. While this somehow overly idealistic nature is often criticised by Azmuth, most characters usually consider it as Ben's most important quality. Paradox once even stated he had the gift to make the right choices in right moments.

When seeing people getting hurt by his fault or because of his failures, Ben tends to get mad and acts much more violent and aggressive than he usually does. For example, when Overlord kidnapped Julie, or when Aggregor successfully absorbed the Andromeda Five, Ben went berserk and beat them up with all his strength, and, in Aggregor's case, to the point when Gwen was shocked and stopped him from beating up Aggregor more. Also, when Kevin mutated again shortly after stopping Aggregor, and temporarily went back to his psychotic way, hurting all the Plumbers' helpers, Ben became willing to kill Kevin by any means necessary. He began acting ruthless, aggressive, pessimistic, cold-hearted, nasty, and even ready to fight Gwen when she attempted to get in the way. Gwen, however, was eventually able to convince him to try another way as he was about to kill Kevin. During the episode, Ben confesses to Max he feels guilty for letting fame get to his head, and is trying to act more mature for once.

Though often stated to be silly or unintelligent because of his immaturity, Ben is actually shown to be cunning and resourceful when needed, usually showing good adaptation skills when the Omnitrix doesn't provide him with the form he originally wanted. When he occasionally put his immaturity aside (most especially in the first two seasons of Alien Force), he's shown to be a responsible leader as well as a very competent fighter.

It's also evident that he is actually extremely smart in some respects, possessing advanced intuition, as in Where the Magic Happens where he memorised the writing for the secret true name of Ledgerdomain with just one glance, and in Perplexahedron, he figured out how the Perplexahedron works instantly. It was even stated by Gwen that he really isn't working up to his potential at school, and he replies, "That's what they tell me."

It's also pertinent to note that Ben has inherited both his paternal grandparents' personality. Although Ben inherited his grandmother Verdona's spirit, sense of humor, and overconfidence, he also inherited his paternal grandfather's determination, adventurous and self-sacrificing attitude. He is also as much of a practical joker, just like his paternal Anodite grandmother, Verdona.

Powers and Abilities
Ben is the wielder of the Omnitrix (later the Ultimatrix), which gave him the power to modify his own genetic code in order to turn into various alien creatures, literally making him an alien shape-shifter. Traditionally, he could only transform into 10 aliens at the beginning of both the original series and Alien Force, but he later gains additional forms by either unlocking them or by scanning the DNA of aliens he meets. At the end of the original series, his arsenal included twenty aliens, while his current complete list is sixty-three aliens discovered (Ben 10, Ben 10: Alien Force, and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, Ultimate forms not included).

When transforming into an alien, Ben gets all the creature's features, including its appearance, voice, all of its unique and special abilities and powers, strengths and weaknesses. Though he mostly retains his personality, there are some cases where the transformation causes change in it, such as Rath becoming far more aggressive, Spidermonkey acting more childish, or Big Chill being affected by his reproduction instincts. Two of the aliens, Ghostfreak and Big Chill, even managed to actually take over Ben's personality twice.

Though he usually uses his alien forms to fight, there have been some occasions where he was taken for a real alien by others, humans especially (at least until his secret was revealed). At one point, he intentionally impersonated Bivalvan as Water Hazard to convince P'andor to go home, and though he was unsuccessful at convincing him, P'andor believed him to be Bivalvan.

In addition to transforming into aliens, the Ultimatrix includes what is referred as an "evolutionary function," that allows Ben to make evolve his aliens forms in order to get upgraded, much, much stronger and much more powerful version of themselves, referred as Ultimate Forms. The exact way this function works is unclear, though it seems so far that Ben has only turned a limited number of his aliens into Ultimate forms.

In addition to the primary transformations and evolutionary function, the Omnitrix and Ultimatrix can both be used for various purposes. Both include an automatic translation system that allows Ben to communicate with most aliens that don't speak English.

During the Highbreed invasion, the Omnitrix displayed the ability to manipulate and repair genetic damage, a function he used to cure DNAliens and save the Highbreed from extinction. Azmuth also mentioned he can use it to bring back to life any species stored on Primus.

In addition to his Omnitrix/Ultimatrix powers and abilities, fifteen-year-old Ben, in Ben 10: Alien Force, has been trained in hand-to-hand fight by his black belt first cousin Gwen (as shown in Be-Knighted), his former plumber grandfather Max, as well as various years fighting aliens, and received a basic Plumber training. Though he has only been trained on a weekly basis in order to minimise his reliance on the Omnitrix/Ultimatrix, he is still proved to be quite exceptionally skilled in basic hand-to-hand combat as well armed and unarmed combat, being able to easily dodge Manny's blasters while in human form in the episode Above and Beyond. Max hinted that Ben was a capable highly skilled fighter even as a human in Voided, expressing surprise about the fact he lost to Pierce (though it is then revealed that Ben had lost on purpose). Another hint of his exceptional hand-to-hand skill is when he succeeded in the Plumbers' Academy with a 95 out of a 100 (without using his powers). He is also shown to be a crafty fighter. However, according to Matt Wayne, Ben isn't a trained fighter and that he uses freestyle fighting.

In Where the Magic Happens it is shown that Ben has a good memory, as he was perfectly capable of remembering and writing down the mystic rune-like symbols for entering the inter-dimensional realm of Ledgerdomain with just one glance and seeing them from a distance. He was able to write the runes down with perfect accuracy.

In Perplexahedron, he is also shown to possess advanced intuition as he was able to understand how the cube-shaped planet Perplexahedron really worked with a small problem at first, but was then able to learn from that mistake and figure it out.

Original Series
Ben was originally a ten-year-old boy, who grew up in Bellwood, and was unpopular and was also bullied often in his school.

However, his life changed the day he went on summer vacation with his grandfather, Max and his cousin, Gwen. A short time after they left Bellwood, Ben went on a walk through the woods in which they were camping, and witnessed the crash of a strange capsule from space. This capsule happened to contain the Omnitrix, an immensely strong and powerful watch-like device, that firmly affixed itself onto Ben's left wrist.

At first scared, Ben soon discovered that using the Omnitrix, he was now able to transform into ten super-powered alien creatures. Unable to remove the Omnitrix, he eventually learned to use the device (though with relative problems) in order to become a superhero. Though he occasionally arrested ordinary criminals, he was quickly led to also fight super-villains, starting with Dr. Animo, Kevin 11, and ultimately, Vilgax, a vicious and evil alien warlord who wanted to get the Omnitrix for himself.

Despite being very immature and occasionally using the Omnitrix for minor selfish purposes, Ben proved to be a valuable wearer for the Omnitrix, defeating Vilgax several times (though mostly due to the help from Gwen and Grandpa Max) and saving people several times.

During this series, Ben's favourite aliens are Fourarms, Heatblast, Wildmutt, XLR8 and Diamondhead showing his tendency to favour brute force over well-thought plans. This was especially shown in the Ultimate Alien episode, The Forge of Creation, where he was examining 16-year-old Ben's Ultimatrix and called NRG and Big Chill lame when he saw them and called Brainstorm and Goop weak and said Humungousaur was okay, probably due to his big size and stature.

In Ben 10: Secret of The Omnitrix, during a battle with Dr. Animo, Ben accidentally activated the Omnitrix's self-destruct and rushed off with Gwen and Tetrax to find the Omnitrix's creator. He was joined by Myaxx and later realised the countdown sped up when he transformed. He learned he could be a hero without the Omnitrix and Gwen nearly sacrificed herself to save Ben from some Floraunas. Ben then discovered that the creator of the Omnitrix was really a Galvan named Azmuth. He shut down the self-destruct and accessed Ben a new alien, a massive form named Way Big. He then defeated Vilgax and hurled him into space.

10-year-old Ben appeared in the Ultimate Alien episode The Forge of Creation. He looks different from the original 10-year-old version, as a result of the different drawing style. He now has a face that resembles the current Ben and appears slightly thinner as well. His cargo pants are shaded with a lighter shade of green and his shoes are different along with a skin colour that resembles the present Ben's as well.

Ben 10: Alien Force
The sequel Ben 10: Alien Force continues Ben's adventures five years after the original series. At some point between the two shows, Ben, now fifteen years old, had succeeded in removing the Omnitrix through an unknown but difficult process, and chose to retire from his superhero career in order to have a normal teenage life, though he kept the deactivated Omnitrix as a souvenir. He then grew up into a slightly more mature teenager, losing his unpopular status at school and becoming a skilled soccer player.

However, after winning his latest match, Ben finds that his Grandpa Max had mysteriously disappeared while investigating what Magister Labrid calls "an alien conspiracy with Earth in the middle" leaving only an enigmatic holographic message for Ben. Despite Gwen's doubts, Ben decided to use the Omnitrix again in order to find Max. When he reattached the Omnitrix, it recalibrated itself, taking on a new more watch-like appearance and providing him with a brand new more exotic set of alien transformations. These ten new aliens possessed special abilities and powers that are much stronger and much more powerful than his original ten.

While helping the Alien Plumber Magister Labrid investigating on Max's disappearance, Ben and Gwen encounter Kevin, now a weapons dealer, brokering a deal between the DNAliens and the Forever Knights. Kevin attempted to attack Ben, still bitter after all his past defeats against him and his eventual imprisonment in the Null Void, but was again easily defeated after fighting Ben's new alien Swampfire and gets caught by Labrid. He then agreed to help them, hoping to get back the money he lost during the deal. Eventually, after an altercation with the Forever Knights and Labrid sacrificing his life to save Kevin's, Ben, Gwen and Kevin start working together as a team to face the Highbreed's expected invasion on Earth.

At the same time, Ben developed mutual feelings for Julie Yamamoto, an Asian/American girl from his school.

Though he was initially afraid of developing a relationship with her, fearing she'll reject him if she found out about the Omnitrix, he was eventually pushed by Gwen into taking her to a date at the Pier. The date, however, went wrong when a Galvanic Mechamorph symbiote later named Ship started attacking Ben in an attempt to get his attention. This incident eventually forced Ben to reveal his powers to Julie, but to his surprise, she didn't reject him, even calling the Omnitrix "cool." The two eventually continued dating, while Ship became Julie's pet.

At some point, Ben received a visit from a mysterious clone-like being of himself using an Omnitrix himself. The clone introduced himself as Albedo, a Galvan, stating he was the true creator of the Omnitrix and that Azmuth was a liar. He asked Ben to hand him over the Omnitrix, stating he was trapped in Ben's body since his DNA had become the Omnitrix Default and needed Ben's Omnitrix to override the device's programming. When Ben refused, he turned violent and attempted to take it by force. After two clashes between them, Azmuth appeared and revealed Albedo was actually his assistant, who was untrusting of Ben and had attempted to make his own Omnitrix. As a punishment for his arrogant act of rebellion, Azmuth removed Albedo's Omnitrix's central component (the Core), leaving him trapped in a damaged photo-negative version of Ben's human form, and sent him to a Null Void prison.

During one mission, Ben was accidentally sent through a teleportation device with the Highbreed commander Reinrassic III, causing both of them to be trapped on the hostile planet Turrawuste and forcing them to work together in order to find a way back to their respective homeworlds. Though initially displaying the usual racist Highbreed's behaviours, Reinrassic slowly grew a friendship with Ben, and eventually lost his hand trying to save him from a local vicious life form. After Ben heals his hand as Swampfire, they eventually reach the teleportation gate, but Reinrassic III chose to self-exile himself on Turrawuste, as he believed his friendship with Ben had corrupted him in the eyes of his people.

Ben eventually assembled a team, consisting of himself, Gwen, Kevin, Alan Albright, Paradox, Julie, Ship, Cooper, Azmuth and a briefly reformed Darkstar for a final attack on the Highbreed's hideout in Los Soledad in order to prevent the Hyperspace Jumpgate located there from being activated and unleashing the Highbreed fleet upon the Earth. Despite help from Max and the Plumbers' helpers, they failed to prevent the arrival of the fleet. Ben then went with Gwen, Azmuth and Kevin aboard Ship through the Jumpgate to the Highbreed homeworld. He then discovered the Highbreed were actually trying to exterminate every known sentient being in the Milky Way galaxy because they were slowly dying out and as stated by Azmuth, their belief in purity among their kind had led to Inbreeding, a loss of disease resistance and finally sterility. Ben as Humungousaur which he used to break out of a holding cell asked if the Omnitrix can repair the genetic damage to all of the Highbreed to which the device replied that it can but such an action would require all of its available power, after turning Ben back to his normal self it then charged up and released a powerful energy/DNA wave that infused all the Highbreeds with alien DNA from the Omnitrix's genetic database, thereby repairing their genetic damage in the process and saving them from total extinction. Though they were initially disgusted by this (and contemplated mass suicide as their only honourable act because of the change), Reinrassic III then re-appeared from his exile, and showed them how this "genetic impurity" was giving them a second chance at life. Realising he was right, his comrades named him Highbreed Supreme and he ended the war thereby bringing peace to the galaxy once more.

After his successful attempt at ending the Highbreed Conspiracy/Conflict on Earth, Ben grew famous and was celebrated as a hero throughout the whole galaxy, and received awards from various Alien Ambassadors (e.g. Lukik). This caused him to eventually relax and return to his immature and somewhat cocky attitude from the original series, much to Gwen's and Kevin's chagrin. When he had to face the return of his old nemesis Vilgax, Ben attempted, with help from Kevin, to hack the Omnitrix in order to unlock the master control. This attempt went awry, releasing Goop, Chromastone, Spidermonkey and Way Big from the Omnitrix as mindless, instinct-controlled creatures and causing Kevin to mutate for the second time. Worst of all, Ben loses Azmuth's trust. After reabsorbing the four aliens, Ben faced Vilgax and eventually defeated him as Diamondhead, though he temporarily lost Chromastone in the process.

Ben continued working as an honorary member of the Plumbers with Gwen and Kevin, with Max providing them with various missions throughout the third season of the series (Inferno and Fool's Gold being examples). He also had to deal with Vilgax, who continued trying to find ways to have his revenge on him (e.g. attacking Primus).

Eventually, Ben had to face a coalition of Vilgax and Albedo, the former having stolen a prototype upgraded version of the Omnitrix, the Ultimatrix, from Azmuth's lab. The two of them successfully took Kevin and Gwen hostage, leading Ben to deliver the Omnitrix to Vilgax. However, Ben eventually was forced into activating the Omnitrix's self-destruct sequence, threatening Vilgax to let it explode if he didn't remove it. Vilgax mistook this for a bluff, and paid the price (the Omnitrix exploding with the force of a small bar of C-4 plastic explosive or half a stick of dynamite), causing Kevin to lose his old mutation in the process. However, Ben then forced the Ultimatrix off Albedo to fight Vilgax as Swampfire and then as Ultimate Swampfire. The galactic conqueror's ship then hit the Pacific Ocean just offshore from Bellwood, with Ben, Gwen, Kevin and Max all escaping from it mere moments before its Fusion Drive exploded like a bomb.

Ben 10: Ultimate Alien
In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, sixteen-year-old Ben's secret identity is revealed to the world and he's now a megastar superhero loved all over by kids. This series features Ben's new car, the DX Mark 10 a heavily modified Mazda RX-8, which marked its first appearance in Ben 10: Alien Swarm, the car being gifted reluctantly by Kevin.

Also he will be seen with Julie who now shares a considerably stronger bond with Ben and Julie again helping their team from time to time. He and Julie also share their first on-screen kiss at end of the episode Fame, even though it was on the cheek.

He also gained a lot of confidence after Julie kissed him and Ben appeared to be utterly shocked at Julie kissing him on the cheek. Also, Ben and Kevin are now true friends and not rivals. Ben is now armed with an enhanced, upgraded version of the Omnitrix, the Ultimatrix, which evolves his aliens into their Ultimate Forms as he calls them, and also has every alien he has ever turned into, though at the moment, Ben has yet to either turn into or re-unlock all of them (His future self Ben 10,000 has reunlocked all of the aliens he has ever become up until now, with a few new ones just to annoy Azmuth). He is now also on good terms with his old school bullies, Cash and JT.

Also, the new series introduces two new enemies for Ben's rogue gallery: nasty news reporter Will Harangue who sees Ben as a public threat (he heavily represents Senator Kelly from the X-Men universe) and a villainous Osmosian named Aggregor whose sinister plan involves draining the powers of five powerful aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy to make himself the most powerful being in the galaxy. Interestingly, these five aliens also provide Ben with his five newest alien forms.

After Ben scanned Ra'ad, he now has a total of 1,000,910 genetic samples in the Codon Stream. After Kevin was mutated by absorbing the Ultimatrix's Energy Core and lost his sanity again, he successfully defeated Aggregor with help from Young Ben. Kevin was finally cured in Absolute Power with help from Darkstar and what was left of the Dominus Librium. After rescuing Baz-El in Eye of the Beholder, he and Julie become a couple again as he promises to be a better boyfriend.

He now faces the Lucubra, a creature from an alternate dimension. He was also told to beware it and a man named Old George by Paradox in Ben 10,000 Returns.

In Solitary Alignment, he learns about Azmuth's creation, the Ascalon, the sword that is wielded by Sir George and is told of how Sir George has the sword. He struck up a deal with Sir George, that if he is unable to slay Diagon, then he will take the sword and attempt to defeat Diagon.

In The Ultimate Enemy: Part 2, Ben obtains a new omnitrix which Azmuth awards him for winning the battle against Diagon and Vilgax. He also obtains Ascalon during the same episode which he uses to battle Vilgax, after George turns to dust after being defeated.

MAD (Television Series)
Ben appeared briefly in a snippet of the new Cartoon Network show, Mad. They were doing a Star Trek parody and the crew was watching Ben 10 on their screen. Then, they did another parody, but this time with Benjamin Franklin. He was flying his kite when he was struck by a lightning bolt. He then gained the Omnitrix after the accident. He turned into Four Arms, Swampfire, Jetray, NRG, and Humungousaur. In the parody, all of Ben Franklin's aliens had his hair and glasses, and were sometimes miscolored. He spent the longest time as Humungousaur so he could defeat the British people who were dissing the USA, and smash down a junior high school bully's house as revenge for calling Ben Franklin, "Fatty Magee". Then, they did another parody, but this time with Cowboys & Aliens. In Cowboys & Alien Force, Jedediah Benjamin Tennyson wakes up on the left side of Jake Lonergan saying he has no pants and gets punched by Jake. A cowboy said that Jake was wearing Ben's pants, his hat and his Omnitrix. Jake presses the Omnitrix, turning into an alien similar to Diamondhead or Chromastone and crushing the cowboy with its hand. The Omnitrix in this episode is more like a square and does not have the black and green color sequence.

South Park
In the South Park episode "You're Getting Old", Cartman's Mom mentioned that Cartman gets upset when he doesn't get a present every time someone else gets a present at a party. One of the presents Cartman gets is a "Ben 10 Wrist Rocket".

Generator Rex
He appears in the Generator Rex episode Heroes United in order to help Rex deal with a "common threat" which was the sentient Alpha nanite. His appearance changed based on the series art style.

According to Ben, he was at a celebrity gig when a strange storm picked him up and dumped him into Rex's world, where he mistook Rex for an alien attempting to destroy Bellwood. However, he was also mistaken for an EVO, who Rex tried to cure, but both found that they were not what the other thought they were. "Captured", Ben was taken back to Rex's with an unconscious Agent Six following a battle with an unknown enemy he had been chasing through the storm. While in the base, Ben learned of what was going on in that world, becoming confused by some facts, but generally grasping things are not going good. Deciding to team up with Rex, Ben met Caesar, Rex' brother and learned that he had banished the Alpha nanite to the null void, thinking it was an empty dimension. However, Alpha had returned and planned to use the Ultimatrix's energies to upgrade itself into a perfect being; Ben turned into Upgrade and fused with Rex, allowing them to use more powerful versions of Rex's weapons to beat down Alpha. With Caesar's help, Ben entered the Null Void as a stop on the way back home.

Video Games
Ben appears in every Ben 10 video game (playable) because he is the main character of the Ben 10 series. Ben is also seen in the crossover Video game Punch Time Explosion and Explosion XL.

Cartoon Network Online Games

 * Fusion Fall (NPC)
 * Project Exonaut (NPC)
 * TKO (only in aliens forms)

Movies

 * Ben 10: Secret of The Omnitrix
 * Ben 10: Race Against Time
 * Ben 10: Alien Swarm
 * Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens

Love Interests

 * See Ben Tennyson/Love Interests

Relationships with Other Characters

 * See Ben Tennyson/Relationships with other characters

Trivia

 * According to Azmuth and Paradox, Ben will have a glorious future.
 * According to Gwen, when Ben was 10, he slept with his teddy bear, called "Furry Freddy" but Ben said that Furry Freddy has his own bed which happens to be next to Ben's.
 * Ben shouts the names of his aliens to strike fear into his opponents.
 * Ben will start calling himself Ben 10,000 after the Plutonian revolt of 2022.
 * Ben knows how to play the guitar and the drums, also has basic knowledge on how to snowboard, shown in Monster Weather.
 * Like Grandpa Max and Gwen, Ben thinks that the summer he found the Omnitrix was the best summer he ever had.
 * In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, Ben owns both a driver's license and a car (the car being reluctantly gifted by Kevin as a birthday present for Ben).
 * Ben's worst subject is Physics.
 * Ben's left eye twitches whenever he tells a lie.
 * In Eye of the Beholder, it's revealed that Ben has a Plumber's Badge despite the fact that the Omnitrix and Ultimatrix serve as Plumbers' Badges.
 * Ben loves to make jokes even when facing dangerous enemies.
 * As revealed in Perfect Day, Ben passed the 3rd grade by choosing C for all the answers on multiple choice tests.
 * Ben will be president in the future long enough to stop Vilgax from invading a third time, but then Gwen will take over and come back for a second term.
 * Ben is very calm about everything, even when the universe is at stake.