Elias Van Dahl

Elias Van Dahl
Basic info
Home planet	Meridian
Occupation	Painter
Appearance
Hair	Brown
Eyes	Brown
Gender	Male
Comic appearances
First appearance	Issue 005: So Be It Forever
Last appearance	Issue 005: So Be It Forever
TV appearances
First appearance	Framed
Last appearance	Z is for Zenith

Elias Van Dahl is a supporting character in Arc 1: The Twelve Portals of the comics and in the TV series.

Appearance

In the TV series, he appears younger than his comic book counterpart.

Plot

Comics

Elias used to be a court painter in the castle of Meridian. Phobos ordered every image of himself to be destroyed and Elias found himself on Phobos' list of enemies. Luckily, he managed to escape through a portal and landed in Europe, in the seventeenth century, a time where artists like him were appreciated. On Earth, he assumed a new identity, could peruse his art and fell in love with a human girl. Phobos, however, never forgave Elias for painting him and was eventually found by Cedric and his men. Cedric ripped open in the veil using Elias' painting, The Never-Ending Spring, as a portal and left him imprisoned inside his own creation.

The last tear

When inside Elias' painting, the W.I.T.C.H. girls encountered Elias while escaping from the guards of the town. Elias saveed the Guardians and instantly knew that they are not part of his creation. The girls were very surprised to see how much authority Elias had over the people. He then revealed that he was the painter of the magical painting and that its people respected him because they owed him their existence. Elias told the girls of his backstory and that of the painting, including last tear, a tear kept inside the cathedral that was the last tear shed in the village. He helped them escape from Frost the hunter, and mixed his paints with the last tear which brought the girls' powers back. In the end, Elias declined the Guardians' offer to help him leave the painting and decided to remain there, finishing a painting of his former love.

TV series

Since Phobos despised art that was cheerful and happy, he felt very offended because Elias actually dared to go against his wishes and paint a cheerful picture, so he created a portal in that picture and threw Elias into it, trapping him forever.

When the Guardians were trapped in the picture, Elias hid them from Frost the Hunter. He also expressed his hope that they eventually would find a way to free him. He then provided them with colours to paint themselves new clothes and joined them as they ran from Frost the Hunter and Cedric and his troops. Since painting something inside the painting would conjure objects, he assisted Hay Lin in drawing several means of transportation and also objects of defence.

In the end, he and the girls got out of the painting when Phobos sliced the picture in two. He later joined the girls' medieval school fair, together with all the people that inhabited the world of the painting. At the end of the episode, he is seen as a guide in the museum.

Later, Elias returned to Meridian and joined the resistance of Kandrakar against Phobos.

Trivia

• Elias is an artist, but his last names (Van Dahl) ironically combine to sound like "Vandal".
• Despite being no member of the royal family of Meridian, Elias appears to be fully human in the comic version. This is exceptional, since later issues made it appear that the Escanors (and probably the descendants of their four knights) were the only human inhabitants of Meridian. This, of course, does not apply to the show where most common folk in Meridian appear human.

Gallery

Images of Elias Van Dahl from the TV series.