Characters / The Event

Main Cast

Sean Walker

Played By: Jason Ritter

• Action Survivor -> Action Hero
• Anti-Hero: Type III
• Break the Cutie: After leaving Leila.
• The Chosen One: Dempsey seems to think he's this, in regards to the threat of Sophia's people.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique
• Playful Hacker: In his youth. He still has some connections.

Leila Buchanan

Played by: Sarah Roemer

• Damsel in Distress -> Action Survivor
• Idiot Ball: She is always captured and needs Sean to rescue her. Even though it seemed as if she Took a Level in Badass recently, her forays into heroism are far less successful than Sean's. When she is escaping with Michael and Simon, she decides to stay at her (presumably) dying father's side instead of leaving with Simon to go where she might actually help.
• Half-Human Hybrid
• Tomato in the Mirror: Had absolutely no clue her dad was an alien.

Michael Buchanan

Played By: Scott Patterson

• Alien Among Us
• Interspecies Romance: Complete with two kids.

Vicky Roberts

Played By: Taylor Cole

• Action Mom: Adopted a baby whose family she killed for the job.
• Anti-Villain -> Anti-Hero (Type IV)
• Breakout Character: Because of her popularity with viewers, her role increased as the series went on. By the end the series, she had effectively replaced Leila as the female lead.
• Dark Action Girl: Before her Heel–Face Turn.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Turned against Dempsey after finding out about his experiments on girls.
• Heel–Face Turn

Elias Martinez

Played By: Blair Underwood

• Our Presidents Are Different: President Minority, starts off as President Personable and soon turns into President Iron when dealing with Sophia, and quite possibly President Evil depending on how you view things.
• Tranquil Fury: See Episode 15.

Blake Sterling

Played By: Željko Ivanek

• Made of Iron: Took a bullet, kept walking around for a good long while, got tortured, stayed stable, got shot again and was still able to crawl around a bit.
• Character Development: Starts out looking like he's going to be a Knight Templar, but turns out to be a truly good guy.

Raymond Jarvis

Played By: Bill Smitrovich

• Our Presidents Are Different: Well, Vice Presidents; he's Vice President Scheming, even being involved in the attempted assassination on Martinez.
  • Two of them, actually. He's agreed to help Sophia take out Martinez, both so that he can become President and to protect America from the impending invasion.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Dempsey, partially. And now even more so to Sophia.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Everything he does, including the attempts on the President's life, has been to protect his country.
  • Although it's peculiar just how many of the actions he takes "in service to his country" also happen to benefit him personally. Indeed, Sophia partly plays on his ego, painting a picture of him as "the man who saved America" while getting him on her side.

Christina Martinez

Played By: Lisa Vidal

• Demoted to Extra: In the main cast, yet we barely ever seen her.

Sophia Maguire

Played By: Laura Innes

• Hazy-Feel Turn: After Thomas' death.

Thomas

Played By: Clifton Collins Jr.

• Big Bad Wannabe: And he was succeeding, for awhile.
• Heroic Sacrifice
  • Death Equals Redemption
• Knight Templar
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Well, his entire race is gonna die unless they find a new home planet. He's kind of got a reason to want to get things going.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy

Simon Lee

Played By: Ian Anthony Dale

• Alien Among Us
• Defector from Decadence: After Sophia's Hazy-Feel Turn.
• Disney Death
• Interspecies Romance: Was in love with a human girl, but Thomas convinced him to leave her. Years later he ran into her, now an elderly woman, himself looking exactly the same.
• The Mole: An Alien working in the White House.

Recurring Cast

James Dempsey

Played By: Hal Holbrook

• Affably Evil
• Ancient Tradition: Claims to part of a tribe of "Sentinels" who have protected Earth from the aliens for thousands of years.
• Big Bad: Starting to look like it...
  • At least until he kills himself.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him
• The Chessmaster
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Justifies his actions by saying it's to stop the impending Alien Invasion.

Agent Angela Collier

Played By: Heather McComb.

• What Happened to the Mouse?: Nothing comes of her entire FBI field office getting slaughtered by Dempsey's conspiracy.

Isabel

Played By: Necar Zadegan

• Big Bad Wannabe: With Thomas.
• Lady Macbeth

Carter

Played By: D.B. Sweeney

• Mauve Shirt: Considering it's a wonder he's even got a name...

Maya

Played By: Clea DuVall

• Cradling Your Kill: After killing her boyfriend, who was going to give information about Sophia to the government in exchange for releasing them from Inostranka.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Via...
  • Taking the Bullet: For Sterling.
  • Redemption Equals Death

Catherine Lewis

Played By: Virginia Madsen

• No Celebrities Were Harmed: A feisty female Governor Senator from Alaska? Hm.