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| Who Is Gabe in War? Meet Aran Murphy, the Actor Playing Carla’s Son. |
HBO’s War gives Carla’s teenage son Gabe an increasingly important role in the bitter divorce battle between Carla and Morgan, with Aran Murphy bringing the troubled teenager to life. Although Gabe is not Morgan’s biological son, he has always regarded the tech mogul as his father, making their complicated family relationship one of the most emotionally interesting parts of the legal drama. As the divorce proceedings become increasingly hostile, Gabe finds himself caught between the two adults he cares about most. Unfortunately, when lawyers start looking at family relationships as potential legal advantages, being a teenager with complicated feelings becomes considerably more difficult than it needs to be.
Gabe’s relationship with Morgan is central to the third episode of War, which explores how the couple’s separation affects the people around them. Initially, Gabe struggles to accept that his mother wants to divorce the man he considers his father. His first reaction is to suspect that Carla must have done something wrong, showing just how deeply his loyalty to Morgan runs.
That changes when he discovers that Morgan was unfaithful, leaving him disappointed in the person he had trusted. Between the impending divorce and the revelation about Morgan’s behaviour, Gabe struggles to process his emotions and makes some increasingly reckless decisions. A party involving alcohol and drugs ends in a fistfight, underlining just how much the family crisis is affecting him.
What makes Gabe particularly important is that his connection to Morgan could become a significant factor in Carla’s legal strategy. Carla’s team recognises that the relationship between the teenager and his stepfather is far stronger than a conventional parental arrangement might suggest.
They see an opportunity to challenge the couple’s prenuptial agreement, turning what should be a private family matter into another front in the legal dispute. It is a particularly uncomfortable development because Gabe has not chosen to become part of the battle. He is simply trying to make sense of the breakdown of his family while the adults around him consider how his feelings might influence the outcome.
Morgan’s own feelings make the situation more complicated. Despite the accusations and hostility surrounding the divorce, he genuinely cares about Gabe. When their relationship comes up during arbitration, Morgan struggles to deny the strength of their bond. Carla’s legal team plays a message in which she accuses Morgan of never having acted as a proper father to the teenager, but Morgan’s reaction to Gabe tells a different story. His frustration reveals the emotional investment he has in the boy, even if his behaviour has helped create the family crisis now unfolding around them. For a man accustomed to exercising control over business and legal negotiations, dealing with a relationship that cannot simply be managed like another corporate asset proves considerably harder.
The irony is that Gabe’s strongest family connection could also become his biggest source of conflict. He loves Morgan, but Carla is his mother, and the divorce threatens to turn those two relationships into opposing sides of a dispute. Neither parent necessarily wants to force him into choosing between them, yet the legal proceedings risk doing precisely that.
As the battle intensifies, the question is whether Carla and Morgan can protect Gabe from the consequences of their separation or whether their lawyers will continue to pull him further into the proceedings. The teenager may not be a direct party to the divorce, but his emotional attachment to Morgan gives him an importance neither side can easily ignore.
Behind Gabe is Aran Murphy, the young Irish actor whose performance brings the character’s uncertainty and emotional struggles to the screen. At 19, Murphy is already building a varied career across theatre, film and television. Viewers familiar with his family background may also recognise his resemblance to his father, acclaimed actor Cillian Murphy. However, Aran is establishing his own professional identity, and his growing list of acting credits suggests that he is keen to explore roles that offer something beyond the obvious comparisons with his famous parent.
Murphy began performing at a young age, landing a leading role in Irish theatre company Dead Centre’s production of Hamnet when he was just 11. The production took him from Dublin to international stages in cities including London, Brisbane, New York and Hong Kong.
The play predated Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel, which later inspired the Oscar-winning film directed by Chloé Zhao. It was an early opportunity for Murphy to experience the demands of professional acting and perform for audiences well beyond Ireland. After stepping away from theatre, he is preparing to return to the stage in 2027 with Dating Amber, a production based on the 2020 film of the same name.
His screen career began with the independent film LOLA in 2022, giving him an early opportunity to move from theatre into film. Murphy subsequently landed a more prominent film role in Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, further expanding his experience in front of the camera.
His television work has also begun to attract attention, including a role as Ruarí in Sharon Horgan’s series Youth. Murphy described the experience as an opportunity to learn how to work consistently on a production and understand a character’s development over time. Those lessons are particularly relevant to a series such as War, where a character’s emotional state can shift dramatically as family tensions and legal manoeuvring collide.
Unlike the lighter tone of a comedy-drama, War gives Murphy the chance to explore a more emotionally demanding character. Gabe is not simply an angry teenager reacting to his parents’ separation. He is a young person confronting the possibility that the man he considers his father may not be the person he believed him to be.
That distinction gives the role more substance than the familiar television stereotype of a rebellious teenager causing trouble for the sake of it. Murphy must convey the character’s loyalty, disappointment and confusion while also showing how those feelings influence his decisions. It is a useful opportunity for the actor to demonstrate his range without relying on his family name to carry the performance.
There is also an interesting contrast between Gabe and the adults surrounding him. Carla and Morgan approach their divorce through legal arguments, negotiations and competing strategies, while Gabe experiences the same situation in much more personal terms. He cannot separate his feelings from the consequences of their decisions, nor can he simply walk away from the family conflict. His presence reminds viewers that the fallout from a bitter separation rarely stays confined to the people signing legal documents. In War, the family’s emotional history becomes another factor in the dispute, and Gabe is caught in the middle of it all.
Opinion: Aran Murphy’s Gabe could become one of War’s most compelling characters. The legal battle between Carla and Morgan provides the series with plenty of conflict, but Gabe brings something more personal to the story. His attachment to Morgan makes the divorce feel less like a contest between wealthy adults and more like a family crisis with consequences that cannot be settled in arbitration.
It is also refreshing to see a teenage character whose behaviour has an understandable emotional context rather than existing purely to create another dramatic subplot. Murphy has the difficult task of portraying a young man who is hurt, confused and occasionally reckless without making him impossible to sympathise with. That tension could give the actor plenty of room to develop as the series progresses. The real test will be whether War allows Gabe to remain a character in his own right, rather than turning him into another bargaining chip for the adults around him.
Ultimately, Gabe’s role in War is about far more than being Carla’s teenage son. His relationship with Morgan exposes the emotional complications beneath the couple’s legal dispute, while Aran Murphy brings a fresh young talent into a drama built around power, loyalty and family ties. As the proceedings continue, viewers will be watching to see whether Gabe can maintain his relationships with both parents without being dragged further into their conflict. Do you think Morgan’s bond with Gabe can survive the divorce, and will Carla’s legal team go too far by using their relationship in the case? Share your thoughts on Gabe and Aran Murphy’s performance as the drama develops.