Person of Indeterminate Gender

The Person of Indeterminate Gender was a large associate of indeterminate gender of the villainous Count Olaf and a member of the count's original theater troupe, the Very Fine Dramatists. They met the Baudelaire orphans shortly after Olaf adopted them, meeting them when he and his theater troupe entered his house to find them scrubbing the floor, and the person was among the troupe as they rehearsed their play and as the orphans served them pasta puttanesca for dinner, witnessing Olaf striking Klaus Baudelaire across the face in response to him and his siblings standing up to his treachery. Later on, the person aided Olaf in one of his schemes, involving The Marvelous Marriage, a play performed by Olaf and his troupe in which the count would be married to a woman played by Violet Baudelaire, though the marriage would actually be real and Olaf would inherit Violet's fortune as a result of the so-called performance. The person walked Violet down the aisle during the play, and witnessed Olaf being arrested afterwards. Their further fate is unknown.

Behind the scenes
The Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender was portrayed very differently in each adaptation of the books. In the non-canon 2004 Brad Silberling film adaptation, they were portrayed by actor Craig Ferguson and were listed in the credits under "Person of Indeterminate Gender". Their role was significantly smaller in the film; the movie only featured the first three books, so their appearance in The Hostile Hospital was omitted, and they were replaced by the two white-faced women in the section based on The Wide Window. Therefore, they only appeared during the portion of the film based on The Bad Beginning. At the dinner at Olaf's house, Lisa sat on the couch between the two white-faced women, wearing a costume identical to the one seen in illustrations of them in the books and clutching a beer bottle. They laughed and clapped when Olaf punished the children, but had no lines during these scenes including in extended parts; their role as a guard beneath Olaf's tower was also omitted. At the end of the film during The Marvelous Marriage, which in this adaptation is featured at the end of the story after the second and third books, the person wore half of a dress, half of a suit and half of a moustache and walked Violet down the aisle at the fake wedding. After Olaf was arrested, they were never seen or mentioned again.

The Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender was portrayed by actor Matthew Richard Cardarople, as Matty Cardarople, in the Netflix TV series adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events. They appeared very differently from the books: instead of being overweight, feared and dim-witted, they were skinny, awkward and rather smart. They wore the same costume, but their personality was vastly different: this version of the character actually spoke, often delivering witty, comedic lines at moments of tension, sometimes breaking the fourth wall.

They also had an expanded role: in the books, they only appeared in The Bad Beginning, The Wide Window and The Hostile Hospital , also mentioned in The Vile Village and The Carnivorous Carnival, whilst in the TV series they additionally appeared in episodes of The Reptile Room, The Austere Academy, The Ersatz Elevator, The Vile Village, The Carnivorous Carnival, The Slippery Slope and The End , never having appeared in the original books. In the series, their role as tower guard in The Bad Beginning was omitted, with the character instead serving as a manager for The Marvelous Marriage. In the series adaptation of The Reptile Room, the henchperson replaced Fernald as Dr. O. Lucafont, instead referred to as Nurse Lucafont. In The Wide Window, they and the other henchpeople were disguised as sailors, with Fernald serving as the sailboat rental guard instead of the henchperson. They disguised themself as a school nurse at Prufrock Preparatory School in The Austere Academy, a waiter or waitress at Herring Houdini in The Ersatz Elevator  and a villager at the Village of Fowl Devotees in The Vile Village.

Additionally, in the book version of The Hostile Hospital, they pretended to be a security guard and were ultimately left behind in the Heimlich Hospital fire, but in the series they were disguised as Nurse Lucafont again and survived and continued travelling with Count Olaf to the Caligari Carnival and Mortmain Mountains. In The Carnivorous Carnival, they posed as a carnival worker, whilst at the Mortmain Mountains in The Slippery Slope, they helped Olaf attempt to impress the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard and later abandoned Olaf alongside the bald man and the white-faced women  ; in the books, only the white-faced women did so, with the henchperson having been left behind at the hospital and the bald man having been eaten by lions at the carnival. They made one final appearance alongside the white-faced women and bald man in The End, where it was revealed that they had become famous actors, at least for a night, unlike in the books where the bald man died, the white-faced women disappeared and the henchperson was implied to have died.

Appearances

 * Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events