Nigel is the main antagonist of the Rio franchise, serving as the central antagonist of Rio, the main antagonist of it's video games and one of the two main antagonists (alongside Big Boss) of Rio 2.
He is a phsycopathic and sadistic sulfur-crested cockatoo who was once a TV star of telenovelas (Brazilian soap operas), but was replaced with a pretty parakeet from Paraguay called Patricious. For this, he intends to capture pretty birds, especially for his owner Marcel. He is voiced by Jemaine Clement.
Biograaphy[]
Rio
He first appears at an animal caring center, in which he acts like he is sick, now the smugglers can enter and steal Blu and Jewel for a fortune. He explained the motivation of his true nature with the song "Pretty Bird": He was the star of a popular animal show until he was replaced by a green parakeet from Paraguay called "Petricious" (the name and origin being revealed in the part of the song that wasn't used in the movie), hence he developed a hatred against exotic birds, and he planned to help smugglers send them to extinction for vastly amounts of fortune.
He chased Blu and Jewel through Rio as they escape, but he failed to catch up to them. It was then that his owner, Marcel (the leader of the smugglers) gives him the task to find the macaws and bring them back, as he and the other smugglers (Armando and Tipa) plan to use the Carnival festival to cover the smuggling of the birds to get to the closest airport. Nigel then hires a group of marmosets to help him catch Blu and Jewel, threatening and abusing their leader Mauro to do so. Though the marmosets manage to find Blu and Jewel, they failed to catch them, and upon learning this, Nigel abuses them more, deciding to take matters into his own hands.
He eventually manages to kidnap Jewel and uses her to attract Blu and his other friends into being trapped into cages during the Carnival festival. Upon being given two of Blu and Jewel's feathers by Nigel to prove of his success, Marcel and his smuggling gang head onward to the airport, loading all the captured birds into their plane before taking off. During the final battle in the smugglers' plane, after Blu frees himself and all the captured birds and letting them escape back to their habitats, he engages into a battle with Nigel.
Jewel tries to intervene, but Nigel throws her into the wall, causing a cage to fall on Jewel's wing, damaging it. This infuriates Blu and he manages to defeat Nigel by setting his leg on a fire extinguisher, sending him flying out of plane and into one of the propellers, causing the plane to descend. This gave a chance for Blu to escape with Jewel, as he finally learns how to fly. This also forced Marcel and his gang to escape via parachute, though they would later end up being arrested. At the end, while the smugglers are thrown away in jail, Nigel survives from his encounter with Blu, but has lost much of his feathers and is humiliated by Mauro as payback for his abuse against him and the marmosets earlier.
Between Rio and Rio 2[]
After losing his feathers, Nigel was later found by humans and was medicated. Although they said he would have survived they said that he would never fly again, much to Nigel's shock.
After being medicated, he was adopted by a worker of a mercat at Rio where he worked as an indovino. There he met a female pink poisonous dart frog named Gabi which fall in love with him (however Nigel just saw her a s a friend) and a giant stupid mute ant eater named Charlie. Nigel was at the lowest point of his life and he's not happy about it promising revenge on the parrot that caused his misery.
Rio 2[]
Nigel first appears while playing Shakespeare to Gabi with a skull (even though she dosen't understand a word of the play even when Nigel tells her that it talks about death).
Then he goes to work but he sees Blu and his family which are going in Amazon for a vacation and decides to follow them to kill Blu for making him unable to fly. After freeing himself he frees Gabi and Charlie taking them as his new henchmen and togheter they escape.
Later Nigel, Gabi and Charlie goes on the ship where Blu and his family are traveling on and plans to kill them on midnight.
Gabi prepares to kill Blu with her poison but Nigel stops her as he wants to kill him by himself . Luckily for Blu, Charlie accidentally ruins the plan waking up the humans which kicks them out of the ship before they can kill Blu.
Then they are forced to search for Blu for the whole forest. Nigel apparently founds him and uses Charlie's tongue as a catapulte. He successfully attacks the parrot but he discovers that it wasn't Blu and he founds himself in a casting for the Carnival Show made by Nico, Pedro and Raffael.
Seeing this opportunity as a chance to be a star again, Nigel sings "I Will Survive" with Gabi and disguises himself under the alias of "Bob the Bird". He wins the audition but he hasn't forgot his revenge and orders Gabi and Charlie to shoot Blu with a poison dart while he detracts the audience with his performance.
However later his performance is cancelled when the smugglers starts to destroy the forest which makes Nigel deciding to kill him instantly. He, Gabi and Charlie try to shoot Blu while he's fighting with the smugglers but they fails, much to Nigel's frustration.
Later, Nigel stops Big Boss from killing Blu as he wants to be the one to do it saying that no one steals his show. Then he chases Blu while he's trying to turn off some dinamite and ignores his advertiments. Then Blu recognizes Nigel and the dinamate explodes.
Nigel starts to beat up Blu while they're stuck and Gabi tries to help him by shooting the dart to Blu but she accidentally hits Nigel.
Convincted that the durt is poisonous, Nigel performs Shakespeare and apparently dies, while a devasted Gabi apparently kills herself as she can't live without him.
Luckily for them, Bia reveals that Gabi is not poisonous and the frog is delighted by this as she can finally be with Nigel. Nigel has a mental breakdown and starts to attack Blu and his family but Gabi drags him away with the intention of showering him with love and being intended to never leave him go away from her. An horrified Nigel asks Charlie to help him but he betrays him and refuses leaving Nigel being dragged away and married off-screen against his will by Gabi.
Later, Nigel and Gabi are captured by Linda and Tulio and put in a cage as they believe the two have bonded and they take them back to Rio to continue the exploration as they will be put in the same observatory where Blu and Jewel were at their first encounter in the first film. Gabi is happy about having a "honeymoon" at Rio while Nigel makes a despair face as he's gonna have to deal with the talkative and clingy frog for a long time.
They will be put in the same observatory where Blu and Jewel were in the first film.
What happened to Nigel after the events of the film remains currently unknown; he could have been released by Linda and Tulio once the observation is over or he could make a plan to escape from the observatory like Jewel did in the first film and searching revenge on Blu and his family once again. The second option seems more possible. If a Rio 3 will be made, Nigel's final fate would probably be revealed.