Is Jason Bourne’s Heather Lee A Hero Or Villain?

Is Jason Bourne’s Heather Lee heroic or a villain? The original Bourne Identity provided a major shot in the arm for both the action and spy genres in 2002, and cast Matt Damon as a superspy suffering amnesia. The movie was based on the Robert Ludlum novels and was praised for Damon’s performance and its visceral action scenes. The movie itself went through a famously troubled production, going through several rounds of reshoots and re-edits but the movie’s eventual success proved the pain was worth it.

Original director Doug Liman’s fraught relationship with Universal meant he wasn’t asked back for 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy, with Paul Greengrass taking over. Both this sequel and 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum proved major successes, but both Damon and Greengrass felt the story was spent following the third entry. Wanting to keep a hit series chugging along, the studio greenlit spinoff The Bourne Legacy in 2012, which cast Jeremy Renner as a new agent. Despite hopes of kicking off a new franchise headed by Renner, the movie was a critical and commercial disappointment.

Instead, Damon and Greengrass reunited for 2016’s Jason Bourne, which sees the title character on the run from the CIA again when he’s drawn into a conspiracy involving a mass surveillance device. He’s also pursued by Vincent Cassel’s relentless assassin The Asset and learns the truth behind his father’s death, who was also partially responsible for the creation of the Treadstone project. This sequel also introduced Alicia Vikander as Heather Lee, the head of the CIA’s Cyber Ops division.

Heather Lee is a great addition to Jason Bourne, as her true motives and intentions are murky throughout. She leads the operation to track down Jason Bourne and Nicky Parsons, which ends up getting the latter killed. Despite her determination, she’s distrustful of CIA director Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) – as she should be since he’s massively corrupt and willing to kill those who threaten his agenda – and wants to bring Bourne back into the agency, knowing he’s a patriot at his core.

Heather Lee’s agenda in Jason Bourne is ultimately career-motivated; she finds Dewey and his methods outdated and is angling for his job. When she sees a chance to both save Bourne and kill Dewey at the same time, she takes the shot. The ending makes this clear, as she explains to her superiors she believes she can bring Jason Bourne back to the agency – and if he refuses, she’ll simply kill him. She then appeals sincerely to Bourne’s sense of patriotism by offering a job; he walks away, only for Lee to learn he recorded the conversation where she highlighted the option of killing him.

With Heather Lee, Jason Bourne and the franchise doubles down on its thesis that whether it’s old school dinosaurs like Dewey or ambitious newcomers, none can really be trusted to do the right thing. Lee was interested in Bourne as a potentially powerful asset, and while she’s not actively villainous, she’s exactly not a hero either. In fact, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the character being an antagonist in the next movie.

About The Author

Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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