Rhys Williams

Rhys Williams was Gwen Cooper's live-in boyfriend, unaware of the true nature of Gwen's work at Torchwood 3.

Relationship with Gwen
Rhys was a transport manager. Before she dated Rhys, Gwen was going out with someone named Bruce, Profiling Gwen's personality, Owen opined that Gwen simply "settled" for Rhys. (Torchwood website)

Rhys knew nothing of Torchwood and believed that Gwen worked in "Special Ops".

Rhys showed increasing irritation with Gwen's evasiveness and long hours. Gwen broke off an engagement to go bowling with him in order to answer an urgent call to investigate a meteorite fall with the team. (TW: Day One)

He and Gwen had a slight argument when she missed dinner due to her work at Torchwood, Gwen used the Ghost Machine to relive happy memories of the time when the two had a close relationship. (TW: Ghost Machine). Rhys becomes angry with Gwen when he discovered that she has been lying to him about the nature of Emma Cowell, who she had taken in as part of her Torchwood work. He stated displeasure at Gwen's ease and readiness to lie to him. (TW: Out of Time)

Unknown to Rhys, Gwen had a brief sexually charged encounter with the alien which had possessed Carys (TW: Day One) and had established a sexual relationship with Owen Harper at the end of Countrycide to help herself deal with her two lives at home and at work. (TW: Countrycide). She confessed the affair to him but also slipped Rhys retcon so he would not remember her confession. (TW: Combat)

Death and resurrection
As part of a strategy designed to manipulate the Torchwood 3 team into opening the Cardiff rift, Bilis Manger transferred to Gwen a vision of Rhys living stabbed to death on the floor of their apartment. Following this, Gwen used a stun gun on him and transferred him unconscious to a holding cell in the Hub. There, Manger freed him and then stabbed Rhys to death himself. When the Torchwood 3 opened the Cardiff rift, Rhys vanished from the table in the autopsy room and re-appeared alive back at his apartment. (TW: End of Days)

Personality
In common with most of Earth's population, he believed that alien interference with Earth over the past two years were actually mass hallucinations induced by terrorists putting psychotropic drugs in the water supply. When Gwen put this theory to Jack he derided Rhys as stupid. (TW: Everything Changes)


 * If Gwyn's death did not get entirely erased from the timeline, enough memories of his experiences may have remained for him to now accept the "impossible".

Easy-going, amiable and straight-forward Rhys had a cheeky sense of humor and knew how to charm Gwen out of her moods. He would on occasion, joke with Gwen about her "Secret Squirrel" job. However, with time, his relationship with Gwen began to fall apart and a note of anger and suspicion began to emerge into his side of the partnership.