Fear me, because I am the void!

But one question stood out in particular: What the fuck is Walter? Yes, you've read this right..what..not who!

Yes, there is a theory in the fandom I think not many people know of or even care for, which actually makes a lot of sense. It's clear he his human (except at the end of the main story) but I think I speak for us all that his abilities are way over the top for a mere human. Some peple will probably know where this is going..but before I start explaining, I just want to clarify I will cite and take references and informations from several fan translations, fansubs and the official German translation of the manga. I just started to collect the new edition of the English one, so I can't properly refer to them but please feel free to fill me in with the old English version if there are drastic differences in context.

With this said..let's go trough what we know about Walter step by step:

We will start chronological with his youngest persona we saw: Young Walter or how the Japanese like to call him; Sholter.

So in The Dawn we get a throwback to a 14-year old Walter, who get's send on the mission to fight the Nazis in Warsaw in 1944. At the round table he gets praised by Arthur as the "strongest human of their existing militants".

So this clears Walter is in fact human and not something else, and also Hellsing's top figther. Alucard doesn't count here since he is a vampire and the secret special weapon.

We learn from Alucard that he officially must have met Walter when he was just mere 9 years old. Citing Girlycard here:

Hellsing's main story plays in 1999 and Walter is 69 at this point...that's simple math.

And this actually makes sense. When Girlycard and Walter get sent to Warsaw you can tell they already know each other. I won't dive deep into their dynamic here because I plan to do a seperate post for this, but I think the most notable moment to make that point clear is when Walter insults and questions "Bastard. Where's your shape?".

Or how it got translated in one fansub:

While Walter asks this, Alucard is already manifesting as Girlycard, stating "the form I take means nothing to me". So it's pretty safe to say Walter knows about the usual red coat man form and the vampire's ability to transform. Overall The Dawn gives vibes that they both already have fought alongside for a while.

I think this is enough to estabilish they met when Walter was 9 years old. Meaning they probably worked together for 5 years to this point...or at least Walter dealing with Alucard's shenanigans.🤭

This rises the question...how the hell does a 9-year-old end up in such an organization?

We don't know where Walter comes from..where he is born..who his parents are..Nothing!

It's a big mysterium, which I find rather odd since he is one of the most important characters in the main story and even the main character next to Girlycard in The Dawn.

But this actually fuels the fire of curiosity in me.

So let's take a turn here and talk about his abilities: We don't know how his wires work or what they actually are, but I will mention my idea with the final conclusion later on. So for now we ignore this part and just look at some examples of his bodily capabilities.

He is stronger than the average human:

Walter drags Alucard's coffin with one hand like it's an empty cardboard box.

Since Alucard canonically can weight basically nothing and rests in no particular shape in there (that's why he later emerged as black wobbling mass which first has to manifest into Girlycard), I just can point to the weight of a coffin for an adult.

This is the first data which shows up if you google it:

Also Alucard is canonically 6'6" (198cm) tall. Abraham staked him while he was more or less laying in the coffin...

...so it's not impossible the coffin even is oversized and weights more. I mean:

It's quite big, but not the most relatable source since Hirano fucks up with details a lot of times. lol

Walter then even kicks the coffin out of the plane with a simple kick.

Speaking of kicking; we also saw Walter kicking a knife.

You not only need a good control over your body to kick a knife from the table up and forwards, but look at the force he does this with. Animated it looked even more easy peasy for him to do so and the full force gets more clear if you see how fast the knife maneuvered to the Major. There is also quite the distance between them and the Captain catches the knife when it got pretty close to it's intended target.

Then he breaks the table in two parts with just one mere kick.

And even with 69 he still got a force in his legs which is astounding.

We saw how he kicked Jan against the wall for a brief second. And again animated it's even more impressive, when you can see and hear how Jan smashes against the wall.

And not to forget he could lift out the Harkonnen I for Seras like no biggie.

Just to paint the picture more clearly: The Jackal for Alucard alone weigthed 16kg and he handled it with it's case like it was nothing.

He is very swift, flexible and quick in reacting:

When Jan jumped over him and tried to run, he didn't take long to react to that despite being baffled by the enemies actions.

Or before that scene when he and Seras crawled trough the vents to get to the round table, where it seems that there is difference between OVA and manga.

In the manga it seems Walter crawls out with the legs first and landing gracefully on his feet (and luckily not on Seras):

Seras on the other hand....we still love you, silly police girl. In the OVA Walter emerges face first from the vent and catches his weight with his hands...

...just to push himself in the air again to regain his stance.

I can't stress enough that he is 69 here! So when he is capable to quickly move and react in such an age, it's no wonder young Walter did stunts like jumping out of a plane without a parachute and crashing through a window.

He is incredibly sturdy:

The most unflattering panel of Walter ever shows us with what force the Captain was punching the teen.

Like holy shit...that must have hurt. I can imagine this blow is the reason for his monocle later on.

Then he took a blow to the guts....

...and one in the back.

Ignoring that every anime/manga character has at least 100 litres of blood...those hits from a werewolf are sure something. No way a normal person would have survived this.

And yet Walter manages to quickly react and headbutt the doggo.

Also with an incredible force.

It's surprising as the Captain starts to strangle him, his neck isn't snapping like a twig.

We just saw how the werewolf just crushed a knife with a bare hand.

Looking at all those facts, you can't tell me he isn't the true one hell of a butler he is a mere human.

I'm convinced Walter is like Anderson an enhanced human. Which is also the theory circling around in the fandom and answers the question what he is.

But I never saw an explanation why this theory exists in the first place. So the gears in my head started spinning and tried to solve the puzzle.

We know the Vatican experimented on Anderson and thus creating his regeneration powers.

I can't remember if it ever got explained how, but it doesn't even truly matter in the end. Which matters is the fact that Walter was able to create a weapon for figthing Anderson. So my best guess is they experimented with biotechnology, which also plays a huge part in creating freak vampires.

BUT

Hellsing got their own ways and the prime example is Alucard.

It often seems to get forgotten who Abraham Van Helsing was, and what he was knowledgeable about.

And since Bram Stoker's Dracula is kinda canon to Hellsing, it's a fair use to cite Wikipedia here. ✌️

Integra even said that Alucard is the culmination of "generations of Hellsing's occult knowledge". This means nothing other than Alucard got experimented on, which makes sense since all the usual vampire weaknesses don't apply to him anymore.

But how do you experiment on a vampire? Well, if the word occult has not made it clear enough; let's have a look at a part in the manga where Richard chases smol Integra and provides some insights what Hellsing manor contains on rooms:

I think one is clearly sticking out a bit: Wizardry Analysis Room.

Combined with the fact Alucard's seals on the back of his gloves are pentragams with runes speaks a lot about what kind of experiments Abraham did.

This makes alchemy and sorcery to something which is canon and existing in Hellsing!

Since we know literally nothing about Walter, I think it's no wild guess to assume he is like Alucard an experiment of the Hellsing organisation.

I wouldn't go so far and say he is an homunculus since Arthur clearly said he is human as he fills in the round table about freak vampires, ghouls and Walter's existence. I see no reason why he should hide the fact they themselves created a homunculus at this point.

But what stood out to me was this sentence tho:

The majority of translations seem to go with born, but there are also some who are more like this:

Since I'm not able to find raw scans of The Dawn to maybe translate that part myself and to confirm, and I don't understand Japanese well enough to maybe listen and understand what Arthur exactly uses for words in the animation; take the following with a grain of salt.

If we go ahead with the born sentence...what actually would that mean?

Walter would have been indeed be born into the role of a vampire hunter. Which could also overlap with his role as being Hellsing's butler.

I'm no historian and very far off so but as far as I could research, this was something which was a thing:

Which makes the whole thing even more interesting. We don't know if Walter even has parents in the traditional sense. Is he some sort of lab-grown baby? If he got parents, were they also employed at Hellsing? What happened to them?

Questions which can't get answered here but can inspire to create nice headcanons.

To bring this long post finally to an end; My conclusion is that Walter is indeed an enhanced human, created by Hellsing themselves probably through alchemy. Which could wonderfully connect to his wires, because they could also be a product of alchemy or wizardry of some sort, since there is no logically explanation for this. 👀