The First Locke

Lore & Background

In the deep backstory of the Locke and Key world, the First Locke was a skilled locksmith working in an era long before the modern Lockes of Maine. Through his craft—or perhaps through a discovery that was less luck and more fate—he came into possession of keys that did far more than open doors. These keys carried latent magical properties, and the house he built around them (or the house he found and reshaped) became the original Key House, a structure whose very architecture was bound to the keys' power.

The tragedy that defines him is one of familial betrayal. His own sons, driven by greed and a hunger for the keys' power, turned on their father and killed him. In the moment of his death, something twisted took hold of his spirit. Rather than passing on, he was corrupted into a Wraith—a shadowy, vengeful entity that retained a fragment of his identity but was consumed by rage and a desperate, hollow need to reclaim what was taken from him. He became the archetype for every Wraith that would follow: a Locke, murdered, twisted, and trapped in an endless cycle of hunger and malice.

His existence as a Wraith is not merely a ghost story. The Wraiths are the central antagonistic force of the series, and the First Locke's corruption established the pattern: the keys tempt, the family fractures, and the dead return wrong. Every generation of Lockes carries the echo of his murder in their blood, and the Wraiths carry his specific hatred in their shadows. He is, in a very real sense, the original wound from which the entire conflict bleeds.

In Their Own Story

The workshop smelled of iron filings and beeswax, the way all his workshops had for thirty years. He set the last key on the workbench—small, unremarkable, a simple ward for a garden gate—and felt the familiar hum beneath his fingertips. Not magic. Not yet. Just the particular resonance of metal shaped with intent, a vibration that had been building in his bones for a decade.

Through the window he could see the garden, the half-finished house rising behind it. His sons were out there, measuring beams, laughing. He loved them. He loved them the way a man loves the work he's poured into the world: completely, and with the quiet terror that it might not be enough.

He did not see them come in. He did not see the hammer. He only felt the cold, and then a cold that was no longer cold at all but a hunger, vast and patient, settling into the space where his heart had been. And in that last sliver of awareness, he understood: the keys would outlive him. They always would. And something in the dark was already learning his name.

Reader's Guide

The First Locke sits at the very root of the family tree. He is the locksmith whose craft gave birth to the keys, the man whose house became Key House, and the father whose murder set the Wraith cycle in motion. Every Locke who comes after him—Bodkin, Tyler, Nina, Kinsey, Mitch, Dolores, and the rest—carries the genetic and spiritual residue of his story.

His relationship to the keys is one of origin and loss. He made them (or discovered them, depending on the telling) and they became more powerful than he could control. His sons wanted that power for themselves, and the act of killing him for it created the first Wraith. The keys, in a cruel irony, are what made his murder possible and what bound his spirit into the Wraith form.

Emotionally, his arc is one of a craftsman who overreached. He was not evil; he was a man who touched something sacred and could not let go. His sons were not purely wicked either—they were children who saw a miracle and wanted to own it. The tragedy is that the keys do not allow for ownership. They allow for use, for connection, for love. The moment a Locke tries to possess them, the cycle begins.

His ultimate fate is a double death: the physical murder by his sons, and the spiritual corruption into a Wraith who is no longer fully himself. He becomes the first of the shadows that the later Lockes must confront.

In the Netflix series, the First Locke's story is depicted in the early episodes as a visceral, intimate family drama—father and sons in a workshop, the betrayal played out in close-up. The comic tells the same beats but with more mythic, almost fable-like distance, emphasizing the keys' ancient quality over the domestic horror. Both versions agree on the core: a locksmith, his sons, a murder, and a spirit that does not rest. The show leans harder into the emotional gut-punch of the family scene, while the comic treats the First Locke more as a founding myth, a cautionary tale told by the house itself.

Did You Know?

• The First Locke's murder by his own sons is the event that creates the first Wraith, establishing the pattern that every subsequent Wraith in the series follows.
• His profession as a locksmith is the narrative bridge between the mundane world and the magical: the keys were born from craft, not sorcery, which makes their power feel earned and intimate.
• The Wraiths are not external invaders but corrupted members of the Locke family itself, meaning the First Locke's tragedy is the family's own, repeated across generations.
• Key House is inextricably linked to his story—the house and the keys are treated as a single system, and the First Locke is the human element that bound them together.