Ben Tennyson (Classic)

Benjamin Kirby Tennyson, more commonly known as Ben or Ben 10, is the main character in all three of the Ben 10 series: Ben 10, Ben 10: Alien Force, and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien.

He is first introduced in the episode And Then There Were 10, where he finds the Omnitrix and then, throughout the series, learns to use the powerful alien device, including the responsibly of wielding it, to become a true hero.

It should be noted that Ben is three-quarters human and one-quarter Anodite (though Anodites have no DNA).

Appearance
Ben has brown hair and green eyes(in Alien Force his eyes appear to be of a darker green and his hair is a darker brown). In the original series, he wears a black and white t-shirt and green pants. In Alien Force, he wears a black t-shirt with a green jacket over it and a pair of jeans. His jacket in Alien Force has the number 10 on it.

In the original series it is also mentioned several times that Ben has poor hygiene.

Original series
Ben was originally a typical ten year old boy, who grew up in Bellwood, and was unpopular and bullied in his school.

However, his life changed the day he went in summers holidays 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, a powerful watch-like device, who fixed itself on Ben's 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 it, he eventually learned to use it(though with relative problems) in order to become a super-hero. Though he occasionnally arrested ordinary criminals, he was quickly led to also fight super-villains, starting with Dr. Animo, Kevin 11, and ultimately Vilgax, a vicious alien warlord who wanted to get the Omnitrix for himself.

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

During this series, Ben's favorite alien is Fourarms, showing his tendency to favor brute force over well-thought plans.

Alien Force
Ben also has a "girlfriend" named Julie Yamamoto, who marks her first appearance in the pilot episode Ben 10 Returns: Part 1 as a crowd attendent to Ben's soccer game. She then next appears in Pier Pressure, where Ben asks her out and she discovers the Omnitrix and finds it cool instead of running away like Ben thought. It seems that Ben has a very concerned and protective feeling for her and the same with Julie. Ben seems to trust Julie the most. For instance, when Ben's hand is cut-off, it goes in search of Julie and not Gwen or Kevin. And when Big Chill takes over Ben's personality, it is Julie who sincerely takes his problem seriously and tried to help him in every manner. Ben even travelled half-way across the galaxy only to fight against the claim of Baz-L for Ship only for Julie.

When Grandpa Max goes missing, he teams up with Gwen and a reformed Kevin. In the first two seasons, it is shown that Ben has matured dramatically and is a very capable good leader. But in Season 3, after their success at saving the universe at the hands of the Highbreed, Ben seems to have gone back to his immature self. He has this basic dialogue of saying that "And that's because I saved the whole entire universe" of which Gwen and Kevin have been highly disgusted with. Constantly, they only complete his this dialogue. Ben had also tampered with the Omnitrix which led to the release of Goop, Chromastone, Spidermonkey and Way Big which he got back whereas mutuating Kevin for the second time. Ben and Gwen have also revived their infamous love-hate relationship with each other. Despite their rivalry, their bond is still strong (e.g. In Time Heals, Ben tells Gwen that he lost her once and he's not losing her again). Now Ben considers that his "overconfidence" is his most appealing quality and thinks that he is adorable. In The Final Battle: Part 2, during his conversation with Azmuth, Ben starts to regret being overconfident. After the Omnitrix is destroyed which reverts Kevin to his human form, Ben gets the Ultimatrix from Albedo.

Ultimate Alien
In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, sixteen-year-old Ben's identity is revealed to the world and he's now a megastar super hero loved all over by kids but distrusted by many adults. This series will also feature Ben's new car, the DX Mark 10, which marked it's first appearance in Ben 10: Alien Swarm, the car being gifted reluctantly by Kevin. Also he will be seen with Julie, now sharing a stronger bond with her and Julie again helping their team from time to time. He and Julie will also share their first on-screen kiss (though we do not know when). He also got 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 by an enhanced version of the Omnitrix, the Ultimatrix, which evolves his aliens, and also has every alien he has ever turned into, though at the moment, Ben has yet to turn into or re-unlock all of them. He is now also on good terms with his old middle school bullies Cash and JT.

Also, the new series introduces two new enemies for Ben's Rogue's Gallery: nasty news reporter Will Harangue who sees Ben as public menace and operates a secret agenda to eliminate him, and perhaps Ben's greatest enemy yet (even worse than Vilgax): 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 newest alien forms.

Possible future
See: Ben 10,000 (episode) and Ken 10.

Though never mentioned in the future, Ben will marry Julie Yamamoto. Also the episode Ken 10 mentioned above is non-canon. Though it is stated that Ben 10,000 episode is indeed canon, because Ben learned about the fate of being a true hero and use the Omnitrix more wisely. For instance, Ben no longer has the Omnitrix and has the Ultimatrix. Although, Ben 10,000's "Omnitrix" could have been the Ultramatrix, but Ben 10,000 could have saved the whole explanation because he knew that at the time Ben 10 had come from, the Ultramatrix didn't even exist.

Personalilty
Ben is shown to be a cocky, immature boy, who is not above enjoying attention and enjoy making jokes even during fights. Though is immaturity makes a bad impression on some people, Ben is good-hearted, and his actions are motivated above all by a strong and sincere will to help other people. He will stop at nothing to protect his family or anyone in danger. For instance, in Time Heals, when Ben bought Gwen time, he told her that he had lost her once and did not want to lose her again. When meeting an enemy in difficulty (like Kevin in Kevin 11 or the HighBreed's in "War of the Worlds"), he will rather attempt to help him. At one point, he even choosed to save the half-cured DNAlien Tyler rather than take the key for the Highbreed's invasion, even though Tyler was willing to sacrifice himself. Sometimes, his idealistic nature tends to make him act naive, a weakness that was used against him by the Arachnichimp mercenary Simion.

Though often said by many other characters to be quite unintelligent, Ben actually proves to be resourceful, intelligent, shrewd and cunning when needed, which saved him from many situations, especially when the Omnitrix cannot activate or doesn't provide him with the form he originally wanted. When he almost abolished his immaturity in the two first seasons of Alien Force, he proved to be an excelllent and responsible leader for his team. Although, after his success at saving the universe from the Highbreed invasion, he became overconfident and cocky which caused him to revert to his immature personality. Even in Ultimate Alien, though he has no more ego and overconfidence, he only shows it off when his die-hard fans come to interview him or cheer him.

It is also pertenant to note that Ben has inherited both his grandparents' personality. Although Ben inherited his Grandmother Verdona's spirit, sense of humour and overconfidence, he also inherited his grandfather's determination, adventurous and self-sacrificing attitude. Even though Verdona stated that Kevin was the exact mirror of Max, Ben was a far much more of a mirror of Max than Kevin. This point is proved in various episodes. He is also a much of a practical joker like his Grandmother Verdona.

Tini
Tini is a Tetramand (same species as Fourarms), complete with all of Fourarms' powers but with better control over them. Upon arriving on Earth (with the Galactic Inforcers), she immediately met Ben as Fourarms and developed a crush on him and throughout the episode, tried to encourage him to turn back into Fourarms much to Ben's dismay. She was not aware of Synaptak's crush on her until Ben manipulated him into using his telekinetic powers to hold back a land slide, and at the end of the episode the two (Synaptak and Tini) hooked up.

Kai Green
Kai Green is a girl of Navajo descent and the granddaughter of Wes Green, a former Plumber and a long time friend of Grandpa Max. She appears in the episode Benwolf where Ben catches a glimpse of her dancing and is immediately smitten. At the end of the episode, Ben attempts to establish a relationship with her but is immediately rebuffed when he learns that she had just admired him in his alien form. In the alternate future she is Ben's wife and has two children with him; a boy named Ken and a girl named Gwen.

Julie Yamamoto
Julie Yamamoto is an Asian-American Japanese student and the teenage tennis player who its Ben's current love interest. She first appears in the pilot episode of Alien Force as a crowd attendant to Ben's soccer match. At the end of the two-part season two finale War of the Worlds, Ben and Julie get close to kissing, but decide against it as Gwen, Kevin, and Max were all looking on. In the series premiere of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, Ben and Julie share their first kiss; although technically, Julie kissed him on the cheek. It said that Ben and Julie will be kissing often throughout the series as their affection for each other grows.

Elena Validus
Elena Validus is one of the Plumbers' kids and a former member of Ben's soccer team. She is mentioned by Gwen as Ben's first crush (though this contradicts what was seen in the original series as Ben met Elena when he was thirteen while he met Kai when he was ten). Ben had to convince his soccer team mates to let her join. She appeared in the live-action film, Ben 10: Alien Swarm.

Jennifer Nocturne
Jennifer Nocturne is a famous film actress who appeared in the episode of Ultimate Alien, Hero Time, when she had an instant crush on Ben when he saved her life. Later she tried to make up a relationship with Ben just for publicity sake and make a better career for herself (Eventually leading to Ben's first on-screen kiss with her). Later on, she was captured with Julie by Captain Nemisis who had become the supervillain Overlord. When Overlord had the two of them hanging from a statue, he gave Ben the option to only to only save one of them before blasting the cord holding them. Without a hesitation, Ben turned into Goop and saved Julie while Kevin and Gwen saved Jennifer. After Ben defeated Overlord, Jennifer, impressed with Kevin's heroics in her rescue, tried to make a move on him, but was threatened to back off by Gwen.

Powers and Abilities
Ben is the wearer of the Omnitrix and later the Ultimatrix, which give him the incredible power and ability to modify his own genetic code in order to turn into various alien creatures. He traditionally has an arsenal of 10 alien forms 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 the creatures he meets. At the end of the original series, his arsenal included 20 aliens, while his current complete list is 38 aliens discovered (Ben 10, Ben 10: Alien Force, and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien). Furthermore, with the Ultimatrix, he is now able to become Ultimate Form versions of five of his Alien Force forms and one of his original. He has yet to access the Future Aliens used by Ben 10,000.

When transforming into an alien, Ben gets all the creature's features, including its appearance, voice, abilities, 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 species' reproduction instincts. Two of the aliens, Ghostfreak, Big Chill even managed to take over Ben's personality twice, though this was a special case. 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 even intentionally impersonated Bivalvan as Water Hazard to convince P'andor to flee from Earth, and though he was unsuccessful to convince him, P'andor actually believed him to be Bivalvan.

The Omnitrix/Ultimatrix also gives Ben the ability to communicate with any life form that doesn't already speak english (except for babies). As seen in Alien Force, Ben is also able to repair and manipulate any genetic damage of whatever life form he encounters by either removing the foreign DNA corrupting it or infusing it with DNA samples currently active. Ben can do this in two ways: By being in physical contact with the life form or by sending out a beam or wave from the Omnitrix face plate. Doing this in the latter method can overtax the Omnitrix and exhaust Ben if he uses more energy than is available (meaning if he's in alien form). Furthermore, Azmuth has stated that Ben is capable of bringing to life any species stored on Primus. While Ben has yet to use to ability willingly, there have been instances of Ben's forms coming to life and escaping the Omnitrix, such as in the original series when Ghostfreak separated himself from Ben (being alive all along), and when Ben attempted to access the Omnitrix's full power and resulted in releasing Chromastone, Spidermonkey, Goop, and Way Big. The genetic back-up ability also appeared in The Secret Of Chromastone, where Tetrax released Chromastone, the Codom Stream version of Sugilite, so he could restore the planet Petropia (though being that Ben had Petrosapian DNA in the Omnitrix, he could've brought the race back as well). However, it's currently unknown if the Ultimatrix has these abilities as well.

In addition to his Omnitrix/Ultimatrix powers, Ben, in Alien Force, has been trained in hand-to-hand fight by his black belt 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 (all of this according to Dwayne McDuffie). He is much more altheltic than his younger self. Though he has only been trained on week basis in order to be able to handle himself if the Omnitrix doesn't work, he's still proved to be quite skilled, being able to take off Manny's blasters while in human form in Above and Beyond and in the episode Voided where Grandpa Max commented on how he lost to Pierce (which Ben replied that he lost on purpose).

Trivia

 * Ben suffered from a fear of clowns up until the events of Last Laugh, when he realized that there were actually more serious things to be scared of, like "losing 'his' family to some 'goofball emotional vampire'," finally 'scaring the fear' right out of him.
 * In A Change of Face, it is mentioned that a 10-year-old Ben still slept with his teddy bear, called "Furry Freddy."
 * It was shown in Monster Weather that Ben knows how to play the guitar and the drums.
 * In Perfect Day, Ben was shown to wear Sumo Slammer boxer shorts, when his pants fell down in front of a group of cheerleaders.
 * Like Max and Gwen, Ben thinks that the summer he found the Omnitrix was the best summer ever.
 * As a kid, Ben was a fan of the Sumo Slammers franchise and of a Manga comic series called "Ultra Boy", even imagining himself as "Ultra Ben"(see: The Galactic Enforcers and Perfect Day.) To this day, Ben remains a Sumo Slammers fanatic, but it remains to be seen if he still reads Ultra Boy or not.
 * It is shown in Goodbye and Good Riddance that Ben has a dog.
 * Ben, like Gwen, is one-quarter Anodite, though unlike Gwen, (who has control on her anodite form, shows that she is full anodite when she is an anodite[obvious], and 1/4 anodite in her human body) he has yet to manifest any prominent powers and abilities attributed to them such as magenta-pink energy manipulation/control, magenta-pink mana manipulation/control, reality warping, clairvoyance, dowsing, telepathy, mana absorption, teleportation, telekinesis, magic production, spell-casting, flight, and who knows how much more. It is unknown at this time whether or not these powers and abilities will awaken within him or not. Below are possible examples of Ben's dormant Anodite powers awakening:
 * 1) In the episode "Fame", Ben is briefly seen with pink glowing eyes.
 * 2) In the "Ben 10: Alien Force" episode "Voided", he saw Dr. Animo absorbing mana, which may either be related to his hidden Anodite heritage or some unseen Null Void related phenomena, though it is most likely the first, as nobody, even when looking directly at Dr.Animo, saw the mana absorption.
 * In Fused, it is shown Ben sleeps in his black T-shirt and boxer shorts unlike in Cartoon Network Action Pack #38 (Lazy Day) where he wore gray pajamas.
 * Ben has a strong affinity to chilli fries and smoothies.
 * Julie is Ben's first girlfriend.
 * Thus far, Ben has had four crushes. First was Kai Green, who admired his "Benwolf" form, wanting to "train" and "tame" him. Elena is the second, who ended up on the "friendship" note only. The third was Jennifer who only appreciated Ben for his fame and money and wanted to use him as a mere tool for publicity and to make a better career path. Julie has appeared to be the only girl among the four to actually fall in love with the real Ben.
 * As mentioned in Primus, he is just a "regular guy" without the Omnitrix. This means that despite being a Plumber's grandson, Ben does not have any superpowers and super-abilities. This makes Ben one of the two official Plumber kids who does not have natural powers. The other being Elena, though later in the series he might have powers besides his "ultra-weapon".
 * As revealed in the episode Good Copy, Bad Copy, Ben's left eye twitches whenever he tells a lie. Kevin seems to be the first to noticed this, though when he was lying to his mom in "Grounded", his left eye didn't twitch, nor his right. This could be also because he had a black eye on his left.
 * Ben's middle name is Kirby. This is proven by his cousin Gwen in the Ultimate Alien episode, Duped. -Most probably after Jack 'the King' Kirby a famous comic book artist.
 * Sometimes, Ben can't tolerate high speeds. This is seen on four occasions: First, in Pet Project, when Ship is flying, Ben almost begs him to drive slowly. Second, in War of the Worlds Part 2, when Kevin is driving the car in a rash manner, Ben scolds him. Third, when Brainstorm is driving Ship and is flying fast, he vomits up all on Azmuth and faints when he reaches the Highbreed home world, and fourth, in The Final Battle: Part 1, when Ben tells Kevin that he can't wait for his license because he was fed up of Kevin's bad and rash driving (although Kevin was flying a plane).
 * Ben has put on/taken off the Omnitrix/Ultimatrix 4 times. First was in the first episode of the original series, then it was removed in Back With a Vengeance and put on again at the end of the same episode, it was then removed prior to the Alien Force series and put on again in the first episode of it, it then left Ben's wrist in Primus to find Azmuth and was returned to him towards the end of it, and finally, Ben took the Omnitrix off for the last time in The Final Battle: Part 1 and put on the Ultimatrix in The Final Battle: Part 2.
 * Both Ben and Gwen are named after 2 important Spider-Man characters, Ben after Uncle Ben, and Gwen after Gwen Stacy. Both characters suffered a tragic death that made Spider-Man the hero he is.