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Kat Loving
Kat Loving
Played by: Cara Gee
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Played with. While Kat holds onto the hope that her husband is alive, she nevertheless gets involved with a half-Indian U.S. marshal she has more than a little in common with. She later agrees to marry him.
- Action Mom: She's easily more badass than most men, especially in defense of her biological or adopted children.
- Badass Longcoat: Wears one constantly.
- Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The brawn. Acting as the sheriff of Janestown and getting more than a few Big Damn Heroes moments.
- Big Damn Heroes: Usually about once per episode.
- Determinator: The central conflict of the story is more or less Kat vs Slotter-who can Determinate harder?
- Establishing Character Moment:
"One day you'll go too far, Kat."
"Better too far than not far enough."
"Better too far than not far enough."
—Kat Loving
- Failed a Spot Check: Very few recognized Kat as having First Nations ancestry (aside from Caleb, who's of mixed heritage like her), although it's fairly obvious. They then act like she "lied" about it to boot.
- Good Is Not Soft: Kat is a good and just woman, but she's also very, very good with guns.
- The Gunslinger: She is extremely accurate, but she mostly survives as well as she does by being a Quick Draw.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Kat considers running off with the Indians because she doesn't belong with white people. The Indians tell her she doesn't belong with them either. It's something she and Caleb bond over. It gets better later in Janestown at least.
- Happily Married: With Jeremiah.
- Indian Maiden: This is only seen in the form of a humiliating costume Kat is forced to wear.
- I Will Find You: Kat is searching for her missing husband, who was part of the otherwise murdered hunting party most of the men were at.
- Mama Bear: She saves her daughters pretty routinely per episode.
- Marriage of Convenience: Kat and Isabelle "marry" to the advantage of them both. Isabelle gets to inherit her part of Slotter's estate and Kat gets to share in the proceeds of the mine to save up for a ranch.
- Meaningful Name: Kat Loving is the only one of the three leads in an unquestioningly loving relationship. She also unhesitatingly adopts four children she just met because they have no one to take care of them.
- Missing Mom: Kat says her white mother ran off, leaving her to be raised by her Cree father, with emphasis on the former being a "good Christian" (not) when defending two Blackfeet men that were accused of murder.
- Pass Fail: Kat quietly passes for white, though some people guess. She outs herself when she speaks to two Blackfeet men in their own language.
- Promotion to Parent: Kat promotes herself when she adopts her children on the road.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: She's encouraged to be this.
- Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Kat takes a turn dressed up as a squaw after agreeing to sell herself in her daughters' place.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: This is Kat's notable foible once she becomes sheriff. She wants to screw the rules, and she struggles constantly not to.
- Take Care of the Kids: Kat's request to Rebecca when it looks like she will be run out of town for being Métis.
- Trigger-Happy: Unsurprising considering the genre, but the most trigger-happy character, Kat, has yet to actually kill anyone. OR HAS SHE?
Rebecca Blithely
Rebecca Blithely
Played by: Melissa Farman
- Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The brains. The doctor's wife who is probably a more talented physician than he is.
- Bedlam House: Rebecca says that she once called one of these home before Mr. Blithley and his wife took her in.
- Covert Pervert: Rebecca is very eager to approach Morgan in public about being touched in thrilling ways.
- Establishing Character Moment: Is introduced as weirdly distant and cold with her medical drawings and awkward manner, but shows herself to be more focused on doing right than appearing right when she states plainly to her husband that whoever would buy the girls has no conscience.
- Frontier Doctor
- Heroic BSoD: Her practically shrieking, "It's black through the hip! It's black through the hip!"
- Hollywood Atheist: Averted. She's an atheist, but also one of the most heroic characters.
- Mad Doctor: When he's awake, Rebecca's husband routinely accuses her of becoming this.
- Meaningful Name: Rebecca Blithely appears to be casually and cheerfully indifferent to doing wrong and the suffering of others. She does in fact care very deeply, but she struggles with communicating this.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Slotter tries to pull this on Rebecca as her interest in the inner workings of the body can look like disrespecting the dead. Rebecca's answering Shut Up, Hannibal! came at the end of the series when she rejects using his body for science because she doesn't want anything of his.
- Parental Incest: There are undertones of it. Dr. Blithely and his wife did not formally adopt Rebecca, but for all intents and purposes, he is her father. Their marriage is strictly for the purpose of maintaining some propriety, though Thomas wavers on that point when Rebecca becomes attracted to Morgan. The implication is that the marriage was never consummated.
- Sexless Marriage: Thomas and Rebecca have one, as it's just so he can remain her legal guardian. When she grows interested in sex, Thomas is too hampered with his injury for it. Even after he feels that his manhood is threatened and he gets protective about her as his wife, they still never have sex.
- We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: It's practically her job.
- Wife Husbandry: Played with in the case of Thomas and Rebecca Blithely. Thomas raised Rebecca as practically his own daughter and he does love her very much. However, he still misses and is in love with his dead wife; his marriage to Rebecca is meant to allow him to remain her legal guardian. He doesn't seem to take an actual romantic/sexual interest in Rebecca until his manhood is threatened by Morgan, his inability to protect Rebecca, and the condition of his leg.
Thomas Blithely
Thomas Blithely
Played by: Bill Marchant
- An Arm and a Leg: Thomas Blithley's leg eventually requires amputation. By the time he finally decided to have it cut off however, it was already too late to save his life.
- Establishing Character Moment: Dr. Blithely shows that he is kind but ultimately restrained by what people will think of him when he feeds and protects Robin and Kelly, but refuses to go through with actually adopting them, even though he obviously has the means to provide for children.
- Frontier Doctor
- Marriage of Convenience: He married Rebecca so he could continue being her legal guardian.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Thomas survives being shot in the leg. The wound ultimately kills him when it gets infected.
- Parental Incest: There are undertones of it. Dr. Blithely and his wife did not formally adopt Rebecca, but for all intents and purposes, he is her father. Their marriage is strictly for the purpose of maintaining some propriety, though Thomas wavers on that point when Rebecca becomes attracted to Morgan. The implication is that the marriage was never consummated.
- Sexless Marriage: Thomas and Rebecca have one, as it's just so he can remain her legal guardian. When she grows interested in sex, Thomas is too hampered with his injury for it. Even after he feels that his manhood is threatened and he gets protective about her as his wife, they still never have sex.
- Wife Husbandry: Played with in the case of Thomas and Rebecca Blithely. Thomas raised Rebecca as practically his own daughter and he does love her very much. However, he still misses and is in love with his dead wife; his marriage to Rebecca is meant to allow him to remain her legal guardian. He doesn't seem to take an actual romantic/sexual interest in Rebecca until his manhood is threatened by Morgan, his inability to protect Rebecca, and the condition of his leg.
Isabelle Slotter
Isabelle Slotter
Played by: Tattiawna Jones
- Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The beauty. A prostitute so alluring that John Slotter took her to wife.
- Black Widow: Makes an attempt in the first episode due to her grief over her daughter.
- Cain and Abel: Isabelle invokes this to win her husband's support against his friend Jared.
- Establishing Character Moment: Not the madam, the manipulator, or the tyrannical mistress of the house. She's shown in mourning for her child. This moment of vulnerability and humanity establishes a softer side both for characters and the audience.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Isabelle is much more reasonable than her husband about Robin and Kelly being prostitutes, as she started her own career when she was twelve. She is complicit in the ploy to get the girls out.
- Lie Back and Think of England: There are clearly some sexual encounters between Isabelle and John where John is doing absolutely nothing for her.
- Mama Bear: Isabelle's one connection that is based purely in love and affection without the complications of money and survival is her love for her stillborn daughter. Even months later, she will tear you apart if you lay finger on Ada.
- Marriage of Convenience: She probably married John in part for his money.
- Kat and Isabelle "marry" to the advantage of them both. Isabelle gets to inherit her part of Slotter's estate and Kat gets to share in the proceeds of the mine to save up for a ranch.
- The Masochism Tango: Her marriage is really terrible. Sometimes they are the perfect team, sometimes they're just shy of being the death of each other.
- Phony Psychic: Though she does believe in a world beyond her own.
- Sex for Services: Isabelle offers herself to Cornelius to get her husband a loan.
- Spooky Séance: She performs one of these in hopes of goading someone to invest in the Slotters' failing mine.
- Sympathy for the Devil: She is poison, but even so the women of Janestown never turn against her as completely as her husband because being a woman she is as much under his power as they are.
- You Should Have Died Instead: What she seems to feel toward her husband immediately following Ada's death.
John Slotter
John Slotter
Played by: Aaron Poole
- 0% Approval Rating: No one actually likes him. People who support him pretty much only do it because of money and free license to brutalize people.
- Abusive Parents: John Slotter seems to have his share of daddy issues from a lifetime of being browbeaten by his father. In particular, through Robin, we learn that his father once made him stand on a broken leg.
- Big Fancy House: Slotter's house in the middle of nowhere serves only to show off his power and wealth to Janestown. It is also a brothel.
- Company Town: Much as the women try to establish independence, Slotter will sweep in to show this is still his town.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Slotter is terrible at running his mine. Conditions are unsafe and wages don't get paid (and when they do, they're low).
- Establishing Character Moment: His first line is about money, his second is about the children he bought to be whores, and then he terrorizes the party at the station house before immediately plotting to make whores of all the women present.
- Frame-Up: Slotter claims that all attempts to pin the murders of the men on him are this. He is of course a lying liar who lies. His men commit a real frame-up on two innocent Blackfeet men, claiming both were found with the loot they took from the men.
- Insane Equals Violent: Slotter is always violent, but he gets even more violent as he starts mentally unraveling.
- Marital Rape License: Isabelle has to endure him abusing this after he decides to father another child with her.
- Marry for Love: What John did in marrying Isabelle, a mixed race prostitute. Whether she in return did it for love or is just a Gold Digger is less clear.
- The Masochism Tango: His marriage with Isabelle is really terrible. Sometimes they are the perfect team, sometimes they're just shy of being the death of each other.
- Meaningful Name: Slotter... well. There's lots of dead people in his wake.
- Sanity Slippage: Slotter was never particularly stable, but he slowly descends further into madness.
- Suicide by Cop: Slotter is deeply messed up and unhappy and he knows it. By the end of the series, he basically gives up all ties to life, and in his final scenes he all but dares Kat to kill him, even though he's about to be hanged. She obliges.
- Thanatos Gambit: Slotter gleefully arranges his will in such a way to make sure his wife, his father, and Mr. Ling will tear each other to pieces in the event of his death.
- Title Drop: In the first episode, Slotter claims Janestown and the mine as his empire, which a potential investor calls "a strange empire" for being made up of women and minorities.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Ruby insists that Slotter was kind as a child, which is why she remains loyal to him when she knows he's a monster.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Slotter is primarily motivated by wanting his father to see him as a successful man, making it all the more painful that Cornelius only shows up when things are going particularly wrong. John puts a gun to his father's head and asks if Cornelius can say he loves him, just once.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Slotter continues to inexplicably be alive in a genre of lackadaisical gun control. Kat finally shoots him down — with a bow and arrow — in the season finale.
Cornelius Slotter
Cornelius Slotter
Played by: Duncan Ollerenshaw
- Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: His favorite method of getting new women.
Ruby Slotter
Ruby Slotter
Played by: Marci T. House
- Like Brother and Sister: Claims this relationship with Slotter. Which makes him having sex with her all the more icky.
- Mammy: Ruby visually invokes this, but acts as an examination and deconstruction of the stereotype.
- Not So Above It All: Ruby often acts as the voice of reason and morality in the Slotter household until it looks like Isabelle might legitimately be out on her ear, at which point Ruby tries to establish herself as mistress of the house and moving in on Cornelius against Slotter.
Kelly
Kelly
Played by: Michelle Creber
- Establishing Character Moment: The first shot we see of Robin and Kelly is them innocently playing a clapping game atop a stagecoach.
- Five-Finger Discount
- Girlish Pigtails
- The Ingenue: Played with. She is clearly not an innocent in all ways as she's a thief, she knows something of what happens between men and women, she was fairly resigned to her fate as a prostitute before Kat came along, and while she's upset about her first period she doesn't think she's dying. However, her first brush with romantic love shows that she's still very naive and someone very nearly does take advantage of her.
- Street Urchin: Before being adopted by Kat and her husband.
Robin
Robin
Played by: Matreya Scarrwener
- Establishing Character Moment: The first shot we see of Robin and Kelly is them innocently playing a clapping game atop a stagecoach.
- I See Dead People: At one point, she sees visions of people who are dead. It's yet to be confirmed whether what she's seeing is real or not.
- Street Urchin: Before being adopted by Kat and her husband.
Ling
Mrs. Briggs
Mrs. Briggs
Played by: Anna Marie DeLuise
Jeremiah Loving
Jeremiah Loving
Played by: Richard de Klerk
- Happily Married: With Kat.
- The Lost Lenore: Gender-flipped with Jeremiah Loving. Emphasis on "lost" — his fate is currently unknown; though Kat pretty much acts like he's already dead. The very last scene of the first season reveals he's alive — right before several Indians snatch him away just as Kat realizes it's him.
Franklyn Caze
Franklyn Caze
Played by: Teach Grant
- Hollywood Atheist: Franklyn is as atheist, and does very bad things. However it's never indicated to be a result of his atheism, and he's not portrayed with any stereotypical traits besides this. He's no different than many other characters, and does good too (along with him displaying actual remorse).
Georgie
Georgie
Played by: Spencer Drever
- Sacrificial Lamb
- Tongue Trauma: Kat's son Georgie is found hanging from a tree with his tongue removed after he mocked Slotter, which convinces Kat even more that Slotter was responsible for the deaths of the town's men.
