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Dr. Kreizler
Dr. Laszlo Kreizler
- Played by: Daniel Brühl
The titular alienist. A child psychologist by trade, he is drawn into an investigation when one of his former patients is murdered.
- Abusive Parents: Kreizler had an abusive father who broke his arm so badly that it never healed properly and is now permanently disabled.
- Ambiguous Disorder: He has No Social Skills, is blunt to the point of rudeness, and has trouble relating to his peers socially.
- Authoritative in Public, Docile in Private: He is an ambitious psychiatrist and quite a high-ranking member of the New York society, but there are some hints that he enjoys a submissive role in romantic relationships. This shows up in his conversation with the professional dominatrix Mrs. Williams (he mentions that he enjoyed her stories of "men's vulnerabilities"), and in his relationship with Karen Stratton, who takes him to various kinky places. His relationship with Mary also has strong undertones of this kind: he is highly dependent on her due to his bad arm, and she enjoys his timidity whenever he needs her to do something for him (and whenever he pisses her off, she just leaves him on his own, and he cannot even tie his own shoelaces without her). Besides, while Mary was away, he sneaked to her room to sniff her clothes.
- Cannot Spit It Out: He is really bad at communicating with other adults (he's fine with kids). Especially Mary; an attempt to tell her how he feels comes out all wrong and ends up pissing her off.
- Dark and Troubled Past: His right arm was crippled by his abusive father.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Kreizler can be a jackass and has his own hang-ups, but he feels genuinely responsible for a pair of children being murdered under his watch and just wants to stop the killer before he hurts more people. It's also clear he does value his friends, even if he comes off as unappreciative, especially in regards to Moore and Cyrus.
- Heroic BSoD: He shuts down after Mary is killed, locking himself away in his house for days.
Mary
Mary Palmer
- Played by: Q'orianka Kilcher
Kreizler's former patient who subsequently became his housemaid and Love Interest.
- Abusive Parents: Her father had been molesting her for years, taking advantage of the fact that she couldn't tell anyone about it due to her condition.
- Ambiguous Disorder: She can neither speak nor write, impyling that she has aphasia and agraphia.
- Beware the Nice Ones: She is sweet and compassionate, but her abusive father and Captain Connor learned the hard way that you better not get on her bad side.
- Cute Mute: Subverted. She looks cute and innocent, but is actually very sharp-minded, and capable of brave and sometimes violent actions in extreme circumstances (such as killing her abusive father and fighting back with a kitchen knife when attacked by Captain Connor). See also Good Is Not Soft.
- Dark and Troubled Past: She killed her abusive father by burning him to death, after which she was committed to a mental hospital.
- Defiant to the End: Connor kills her in the end, but she gives the son of a bitch a good beating, stabbing him in the chest before she goes down.
- Good Is Not Soft: She is gentle and kind-hearted, but can fight back when attacked. She can also mess around with people she dislikes, as seen when she didn't open the door to Sara (whom she was jealous of). Also, when she felt that she was slighted by Kreizler, she went on a date with John, leaving Laszlo alone for the whole day to manage domestic tasks on his own (which was a big problem for him due to his handicap).
- Hidden Depths: She is barely noticed by most people around her due to her status as a housekeeper, and is often seen as mentally handicapped because she is unable to speak or write. However, she has a deep and sharp mind, is a romantic at heart (as illustrated by her reading Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott), and is very much capable of standing up for herself in dangerous situations.
- The Lost Lenore: Becomes this for Kreizler after her death.
- Power Dynamics Kink: Though Laszlo is formally her boss, he is very much dependent on her in everyday tasks like tying his shoelaces due to his crippled arm. Mary takes a great deal of pleasure in it and in his shyness when he asks her to do something. Moreover, when he annoys her, she is not above "punishing" him by leaving him to do the tasks on his own (which would not be a big deal for a person with two functioning arms, but renders Kreizler basically helpless).
- Race Lift: In Caleb Carr's original novel, she was presumably white. In the TV series, she is presumably Native American, portrayed by the Native American actress Q'orianka Kilcher.
- Speech-Impeded Love Interest: Her muteness doesn't stop Kreizler from falling in love with her and planning to marry her.
- Will Not Be a Victim: She severely injures Connor who attempts to kill her, but unfortunately he succeeds nonetheless.
Sara
Det. Sara Howard
- Played by: Dakota Fanning
New York's first female detective. In Angel of Darkness, she becomes a private eye.
- Action Girl: She is the NYPD's first female detective, and enjoys getting her hands dirty.
- Daddy's Girl: She loved her father dearly, and his suicide still affects her to this day.
- Private Detective: Sara becomes one at the start of Angel of Darkness, having left the NYPD to open her own agency focusing on cases brought by women.
John
John Schuyler Moore
- Played by: Luke Evans
A freelance artist from a well-off family. In the first book, he becomes involved in Kreizler's investigation while making crime-scene illustrations for The New York Times. In Angel of Darkness, he has become a journalist at the Times, a position from which he aids Kreizler and Sara's investigation.
- The Alcoholic: Early on, he's seen drinking frequently. His grandmother gets him to quit drinking partway through the series, and he's got clear withdrawal symptoms from then on.
- Ambiguous Disorder: Moore demonstrates some signs of clinical depression, self-medicating with alcohol and promiscuity.
- Butt-Monkey: Moore simply cannot catch a break. In addition to his long dead little brother, he gets the shit kicked out of him, drugged (multiple times), in all likelihood sexually assaulted, Sara doesn't take his feelings seriously, Laszlo treats him rather poorly, he struggles with alcoholism, gets dragged into a depraved serial's killer ritualistic murder spree of young children, and you can count on one hand the characters who don't give him shit about something.
- Childhood Friend Romance: He has been close friends with Sara Howard since they were kids, and they hook up during the course of their investigation with Laszlo.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Moore gets it on with any willing lady, but he's not vulgar or abusive about it, and he's otherwise a decent guy. And he always acts the perfect gentleman toward Sara. He never really hits on her, except in a fond half-joking manner.
- Idle Rich: John Moore starts out showing some tendencies of this trope—he is a wealthy, hard-drinking playboy who only halfheartedly dabbles at his job as a crime illustrator for The New York Times, and who, by his own admission, "likes to avoid" what he calls "an honest day's work." However, as the series goes on, he begins to take on quite a bit of hard work in an effort to contribute to the investigation. Midway through the series, moved by his love for Sara Howard, he begins to change in earnest, giving up alcohol, working harder, and even attempting to learn how to type so he can take up reporting.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Moore is a cynical, ill-tempered drunk, but he's basically a good guy. He genuinely cares for Sara, he loves his grandmother, and he befriends the boy prostitute Joseph, making sure he stays safe and talking to him about how he might help him escape this life.
Lucius and Marcus
Lucius and Marcus Isaacson
- Played by: Matthew Shear, Douglas Smith
Two brothers who serve in the forensics department at the New York Police Department.
- Killed Off for Real: Poor Marcus is shot dead in Angel of Darkness.
- Nice Jewish Boy: Lucius is presented as kind, intelligent, polite, hard working, and deeply devoted to his mother and his religious faith.
- Those Two Guys: They usually appear together.
Byrnes
Chief Thomas Byrnes
- Played by: Ted Levine
The Chief of the New York Police Department. Calling him dirty would be an understatement, as he openly takes bribes from the rich and powerful and regularly interferes with Laszlo and his allies' investigations into his wealthy patrons.
- Break the Haughty: Undergoes one in the later half of Angel of Darkness. His methods to extract information fail utterly and result in the death of one of his men
- Deliberately Bad Example: He represents everything wrong with the cops in the 19th century, being racist, sexist, brutish and utterly corrupt.
- Dirty Cop: He openly takes bribes from the rich and powerful.
- Even Evil Has Standards: In Angel of Darkness, he is willing to protect the lying-in hospital from being investigated in order to protect its wealthy and powerful patrons, but he warns Dr. Markoe that if he finds out he's been performing abortions, he will bring the wrath of God down on the hospital. He also offers Kreizler and Sara his full cooperation when Lucius is murdered, helping them rally the rest of the NYPD to take down Goo Goo and Libby.
- The Millstone: In Angel of Darkness, Cornelius Vanderbilt forces Sara to retain Byrnes as part of her team. Byrnes proceeds to mess with the investigation at every turn, seeking to undermine Sara and Kreizler.
Willem
Willem Van Bergen
- Played by: Josef Altin
The scion of the wealthy Van Bergen family, and a pedophile.
- Killed Off for Real: Connor kills him partway through The Alienist.
- Psychopathic Manchild: He likes to drug and rape young boys, and when confronted by it, he throws a temper tantrum like a spoiled eight-year-old.
- Red Herring: While Van Bergen is a serial child-rapist, he is not the killer, as evidenced by the fact that another murder is being committed almost at the exact same time that Connor tracks him down and shoots him dead.
- Scary Teeth: He's been nicknamed "The Man with the Silver Smile" by the prostitutes because the mercury used to treat his syphilis has stained his teeth a silvery color.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: His family have used their money to protect him for years. It does not, however, save him when Captain Connor comes after him; he tries to bribe Connor but gets shot dead.
Bitsy
Bitsy Sussman
- Played by: Melanie Field
Drury
Japeth Drury
- Played by: Bill Heck
The Big Bad of The Alienist, a mentally unstable serial killer who mutilates children.
- Abusive Parents: A horribly abusive mother, and a father who ranged from indifferent to equally abusive.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: As is often the case with real-life serial killers, the killer here began with torturing and killing animals. He seems to have a particular enmity against cats.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Japeth Drury wasn't the most sane young man to begin with, what with his fanatically-religious parents and being witness to grisly events on the frontier, but being sexually assaulted by a trusted adult friend was what finally pushed him over the edge.
- Child by Rape: Unlike his older brother, Japeth was conceived when his normally timid father got drunk and demanded that his wife perform her "duty" as his spouse and forced her when she refused. His mother took it out on her son from the moment he was born.
- Self-Made Orphan: He murdered nearly his entire family in his first act of killing. Only his older brother, who had already left the area, was spared. The massacre is so brutal that the locals actually chalked it up to an Indian raid, and the remains of the Drury farmstead has become the local "scary old house on the edge of town."
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: When Kreiszler and Moore finally confront Drury, what terrifies Moore the most is how nondescript the man's face is. The novel takes place in the 1880s, and earlier it has been emphasized how much psychology is regarded as an occult art, not a science, and everyone takes it for granted that a psychotic Serial Killer could not possibly blend in with "polite society", but would have to be recognizable by either some physical deformity or some uncontrollable behavioral tic.
Libby
Libby Hunter/Elspeth Hunter
- Played by: Rosy McEwan
The Big Bad of Angel of Darkness, a young ward nurse with a violent streak and a penchant for kidnapping babies.
- Arc Villain: She's the villain of Angel of Darkness.
- Ax-Crazy: She's obsessed with being a mother again, even if it means having to kill a lot of people to get it.
- Framing the Guilty Party: She was a terribly unfit mother, but her own mother only made her problems worse by framing her for an assault, causing her to lose custody of her daughter. The injustice of being framed drove Libby from being a mere abuser into a full-blown serial kidnapper and murderer.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: She has very little self control and loses her temper extremely easily.
- Slasher Smile: She has a truly creepy one, with blackened gums and yellow teeth.
- Tragic Villain: Ultimately, she is a tragic figure, painfully aware that she's become a monster but unsure if she can stop herself.
