Skulker

Skulker is one of the main antagonists of the TV show Danny Phantom. He is a predator who hunts down rare and unique creatures and is actually a small ghost blob wearing a big battlesuit.

Season 1
Skulker first appears in "One of a Kind," where he plans to put Danny in a cage, seeing him as a rare exhibit to behold. A daring chase for the ghost boy results in Skulker taking Tucker's PDA to power up his suit, only for him to stick with Danny's schedule that takes control over his armor. However, he still pursues Danny to the Amity Park Zoo where he nearly kills Danny until Danny summons the purple-back gorilla to attack Skulker, his battle suit damaged and revealing the wearer: a tiny little green ghost blob controlling the suit from its head. In the end, Danny captures him with the Fenton Thermos.

He briefly makes his second appearance in "Bitter Reunions" when he was hired by Vlad Masters to disable Danny's powers with the power cube. Although he plans to get more revenge on Danny, he's commanded to leave on Vlad's behalf. Also, the PDA from the previous episode is still stuck to him and still unprogrammable.

Later in "Prisoners of Love," Skulker works alongside Danny Phantom, Nicolai Technus, the Box Ghost, the Lunch Lady Ghost, and Desiree to escape from Walker's ghost jail. Walker had taken away Skulker's weapons so he could not escape, so instead, Skulker steals one of the weapons from a ghost cop to use.

In "Life Lessons," Skulker, now free of the PDA, witnesses Danny and Valerie fighting. Seeing both's worth, he hosts a contest to find out who can survive against the other long enough to be worthy to hunt. At the Nasty Burger, Skulker uses the Box Ghost as bait, but after a brief confrontation, both enemies leave so they won't cause any more harm. In Valerie's apartment, he gives the flour sack to Danny, which causes Valerie to hunt him. But when Danny gives her back the sack, Skulker, impatient from the lack of a winner, decides to capture both of them, taking them to his lair. In the end, Danny and Valerie team up to defeat him, and Skulker gets paralyzed by his own darts.

Season 2
He returns in "Reign Storm," leading numerous ghosts out of the Ghost Zone to find safe havens in Earth when Pariah Dark returns as well as leading several ghosts to attack Danny. Afterwards he and Danny fight at the store that Skulker took over until, with Sidney's convincing, he relates the story of Pariah to Danny before ultimately rounding up various ghosts to help Danny fight off Pariah Dark later.

Later in "Identity Crisis," Danny, Sam, and Tucker check out Skulker's file on the Fenton computer hinting Danny might have fought with him since he mentioned sending the hunter back to the Ghost Zone.

Skulker's next appearance is "The Ultimate Enemy," where an alternate future version of him exists where he shares a robotic suit with Technus, now calling themselves Skulktech 9.9. To their misfortune, though, the PDA's influence is on them once again.

In "Secret Weapons," Vlad hires Skulker again to scrounge around Amity Park for various devices, namely bloodstream nanobots from Axion Labs and the Fenton's new "Ecto-Converter" device. Although Danny tries to stop him, his well-meaning but inexperienced sister Jazz keeps tripping him up and letting "Ghost-X" (what Jazz knows Skulker as) get away. The next day, Danny, thinking Jazz went after Skulker, runs into Skulker in the Ghost Zone just as the hunter finishes "borrowing" Technus's Electro-Rod weapon. Taking advantage of the chance encounter, Skulker captures Danny and takes him to Vlad.

In "The Fright Before Christmas," Skulker is one of the many ghosts to uphold the law of being friendly towards others during Christmas time, later helping Danny stop the Ghostwriter and restore Christmas to normal.

Skulker also had a starring role in the episode "Micro Management." Skulker, armed with a new suit, begins to hunt Danny again while the young hero is busy trying to put up with his "fitness buddy" Dash. However, the three of them wind up getting shrunk when Jack Fenton tries to test out his new "Fenton Ghost Crammer." As a result of being shrunk, Skulker is unable to use his ghost powers, but he is still able to use his weapon-laden suit. In his attempts to squash Danny, Skulker follows him and Dash throughout the Fenton household and all the way into the rooftop Op's Center, where Skulker winds up in the center's freezer. The cold traps Skulker in ice and ultimately gets him consumed by Jack Fenton, who puts the frozen hunting ghost into his root beer float.

In "Double Cross My Heart," Skulker briefly makes another appearance (now free from Jack Fenton, in his normal size, and back in his old suit) while he is confronted by the Guys In White while hunting one of their decoy ghosts. When the GiW catches Skulker, he escapes by ejecting from his battlesuit, which the agents use to help receive information on Danny. Note that this is the first time since Skulker's premier episode that he leaves his battlesuit.

In "Kindred Spirits," Skulker makes a cameo appearance in a flashback stealing money from a molasses factory and then attacking Danny and his friends.

Season 3
In "Girls' Night Out," he's Ember McLain's boyfriend and - because she criticized his hunting skills - tries to catch Danny to impress her, only to be defeated by Jack Fenton, whose competence as ghost hunter arises when his family is in danger.

In "Livin' Large," he teams up with Danny, Johnny 13, and Youngblood to stop the Guys in White from destroying the Ghost Zone. Afterwards, the three ghosts chase after Danny.

In "Boxed Up Fury," Danny rescues Skulker from three unicorns that the Box Ghost released to destroy him for revenge. He, in return, helps Danny out by telling him how to find Pandora so he can stop the madness the Box Ghost has caused.

Skulker's final appearance was in the series finale, "Phantom Planet." He serves as the mouthpiece and de facto leader for the other inhabitants of the Ghost Zone, driving Danny away when he came seeking the help of the Ghost Zone's residents. Seeking aid for turning the planet intangible to avoid an asteroid strike that would destroy both Earth and the Ghost Zone, powerless Danny gets caught by Skulker while trying to persuade them to help him. Skulker and other ghosts blast him, awakening the dormant powers in Danny's white streak of hair and allowing him to transform again. Warning the ghosts about their mistake, Danny drives them off with his Ghostly Wail.

Danny eventually returns to the Ghost Zone and begins catching ghosts against their will to help. Skulker frees them and leads a gang-up on Danny, but the young ghost fighter eventually convinces his enemies to help. The ghosts succeed in turning the entire planet intangible, saving it and the Ghost Zone from destruction. With the crisis averted, Danny thanks Skulker, but the hunter only promises that Danny is still his prey - and now that he has saved a whole planet, he is a much more valuable prize. They part ways amiably, however.

Appearance
In his true form, Skulker is a tiny green blob with a face, red eyes, and limbs.

Skulker normally wears a weaponized robotic suit. In this form, he has electric green eyes, electric green flaming hair and goatee, and jagged teeth. The "skin" of his suit is an off-white and his arms have metal seams. He wears a black tank top and pants, a dark gray shoulder guard on his left shoulder, and a dark gray belt that slings across his chest. Skulker also wears dark gray gauntlets that have technological features in the wrists, along with a gray utility belt that has a blue "S" on the buckle. He wears gray boots with blue laces and a necklace with a white skull on it. Over the series, Skulker's suit gets several technological upgrades and new weapons.

Personality
A rather confident yet callous ghost, Skulker is persistent and determined in his quest to hunt down rare ghosts for his growing collection, Danny included. Because of that, Skulker has become one of Danny's frequent enemies. A murderous, sadistic, greedy, and ruthless hunter to the very core, Skulker enjoys a good hunt with good prey as a prize, so much that he would often offer his targets a beginning "headstart" just so he could relish the hunt even longer.

Knowledgeable in the ways of the hunt and often blunt and arrogant (he has a habit of calling Danny "whelp," or "ghost child," Skulker, at rare times, has a bit of a lighthearted side, appreciating Danny's compliment on his new weapon in "Bitter Reunions," for example. Should a major issue ever arise, it can be expected that Skulker eventually teams up with Danny to fight off the big threat. He also seems to possess good leadership qualities, having rounded up numerous ghosts many times throughout the series and commanding them to attack when the opportunity arises.

Danny Phantom
He sees Danny as nothing more than an animal that needs to be hunted down. Skulker is determined to eventually kill Danny and put his pelt at the foot of his bed. Despite his obsession to hunt Danny, they are often forced to work together when a much bigger threat comes up. This has caused Skulker to also view Danny as an occasional ally. Due to the hunter's persistent nature, it is likely he won't rest until he wins the hunt.

Vlad Masters/Plasmius
Skulker's relationship with the other half ghost is less strained than with Danny. Rather than hunt him, he acts as a frequent hired helper; he works for Vlad who in exchange rewards him, possibly with equipment and/or other items.

Ember McLain
In "Girls Night Out," it was revealed that the two were dating. Skulker's relationship with Ember is not very stable, since she often insulted his ghost hunting skills. He does show some level of love towards her, working hard to try and hunt Danny down in order to impress her.

Although dating, the two have hardly interacted in previous episodes and they weren't seen together in "Girls Night Out."

Nicolai Technus
In the alternative future in "The Ultimate Enemy," Skulker and Technus became one ghost with the name Skultech 9.9. Despite them being stronger together, they sometimes have problems cooperating with each other.

Box Ghost
Skulker has no respect towards him, having used him twice as bait, and clearly viewing him as an annoyance. The tables were turned at one point, though, when the Box Ghost gets payback in "Boxed Up Fury."

Sidney Poindexter
The nerdy ghost acted as the voice of reason around Skulker during the events of "Reign Storm" by trying to get him to calm down, to which Skulker responded by pinning Poindexter to the wall with a crossbow.

Powers and Abilities
Robotic Suit: Skulker has ghost powers (invisibility, flight, intangibility, and overshadowing). As evidenced in "Micro-Management," however, he doesn't often rely on them, preferring instead to use the various weaponry embedded in his suit, however he is shown to go invisible and intangible a lot, and even though he can fly he uses a jet pack on his suit, possibly to enhance his speed.

His weakness is that he is just a tiny ghost with a squeaky voice in a robotic suit. The suit itself is also easy to hack into by means of devices like PDAs, and when the suit is compromised, like in "One of a Kind" or "Micro Management," Skulker is left helpless.

Production information
From "One of a Kind" through "Prisoners of Love," Skulker was voiced by Matthew St. Patrick. From "Life Lessons" on, he is voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson.

Trivia

 * Skulker has teamed up with Danny numerous times, despite primarily being an antagonist.
 * It is revealed in "Girls Night Out" that Ember McLain is his girlfriend.