A central part of Immortan Joe’s character and goals in the Mad Max franchise was his obsession with siring a full-life male heir, which caused him to have multiple wives and children. Immortan Joe led the War Boys in Mad Max: Fury Road, and he served as the Wasteland’s primary tyrant. He was also one of the few returning characters from Fury Road in Furiosa, which has given him a more lasting legacy than most Mad Max villains. Immortan Joe had a huge effect on the Mad Max timeline, partly because of his decades-long plan to secure an heir.

Immortan Joe wanted desperately to have a son who was considered “full-life,” one who wasn’t mutated by the apocalypse. Instead, most of his children were considered “half-life,” as they were born with genetic mutations that made them less likely to live as long as a full-life child. Since the likelihood of mutation was so high, Joe took many women to be his wives and used them as breeders to produce as many children as possible in the hopes that one would be born full-life. That meant Immortan Joe had a huge number of wives and children in the Mad Max franchise.

Immortan Joe Has Had At Least 16 Wives In The Mad Max Movies

Furiosa Implied Immortan Joe Had Even More Wives

Throughout the Mad Max franchise, Immortan Joe took at least 16 women to be his wives, and possibly more. Furiosa showed that Joe had at least 10 women in his captivity long before the events of Fury Road. Joe also had five wives who tried to escape with Furiosa and Max on the War Rig in Fury Road, and the emptiness of his vault indicated they were his only wives at the time. Additionally, prior to Furiosa, Joe took a woman named Hope – the mother of the girl who haunted Max’s visions – as his wife for a short time, before she escaped.

It’s unclear what exactly happened to the wives shown in Furiosa. It’s implied that most of them lived and became the Milk Mothers seen in Fury Road after failing to produce a full-life male heir, but Mad Max neither confirms nor denies their fates outright. It’s also possible that some of those Milk Mothers were new wives Joe took between Furiosa and Fury Road, but this, too, is unconfirmed. Finally, it’s also likely that Joe had more wives prior to Furiosa who were not seen or referenced.

Immortan Joe Has At Least 7 Children In The Mad Max Movies

Immortan Joe Never Had A Full-Life Male Heir

Immortan Joe had at least seven children in the Mad Max franchise who appeared on-screen. These included his three most prominent children who served under him at the Citadel. Corpus Colossus served as a strategic advisor and supervisor to Joe, while Scabrous Scrotus and Rictus Erectus both acted more as enforcers. In addition to his named children, Joe also had two unnamed babies born in Furiosa and Fury Road. One was a half-life baby, and the other a full-life boy, who was delivered stillborn by the Splendid Angharad, who the Organic Mechanic described as “perfect” and would have been Joe’s long-awaited male heir.

There are also several suggestions that Joe had multiple children whose births were not shown in the movies themselves. In Furiosa, one mother had produced three children, and Immortan Joe declared she would serve as a Milk Mother for failing to produce a male heir. However, there’s no way to verify how many such children were born beyond the example from Furiosa.

What Happened To Immortan Joe’s Wives & Kids

Most Of Immortan Joe’s Family Died Terrible Deaths

Most of Immortan Joe’s wives and children met unpleasant fates, and several of them were at his own hands. As shown in Furiosa, Immortan Joe had no love for his half-life children, and many of them were likely killed long before they grew up. While Joe had a deep affection for his wives, he also treated them in a heinous way once they were no longer useful as breeders. Most of Joe’s wives would likely become Milk Mothers, forced to produce their breast milk to be sold as one of the Citadel’s trade goods. He even killed one of his wives, Angharad, though that was an accident.

If Joe’s wives and children didn’t die at his hands, they likely met an equally brutal fate in the Wasteland. Both Scrotus and Rictus were killed in battle, and Corpus was the only one of his offspring to survive. Luckily, not everyone in the Immortan Joe family tree suffered such a fate, as four of his five wives in Fury Road survived their escape long enough to retake the Citadel. Their servitude to Immortan Joe and importance to the Mad Max franchise, though, won’t soon be forgotten.