Only spoilers from S4 and 5 will be hidden, including character affiliations, so beware spoilers if you're not up to date on the episodes.

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The Magnus Institute

First Mentioned: MAG 001

A mysterious institution dedicated to researching the paranormal and cataloging paranormal artifacts. Officially, they're even more boring, staid, and unremarkable than any organization with that stated purpose should be.

Officially. There are occasionally hints that it's more than it appears, but exactly what is uncertain. Their most common activity, as shown in the podcast, appears to be taking statements of observers of paranormal occurrences and then investigating.

In General

Artifact Collection Agency: It's downplayed considering that their most prominent activity appears to be taking statements and investigating them, but it's mentioned several times that they have an artifact storage room.
Dwindling Party: Over the course of the series, more and more of them die, resulting in very few surviving to the final episode. Sasha is killed first, replaced by the NotThem in the season 1 finale. She's followed by Tim, who blows himself up to stop the Unknowing at the end of season 3. Daisy is next to go, giving in to the Hunt at the end of season 4, then mercy killed by Basira in season 5. Elias is killed by Jon in the final episode, and Jon and Martin suffer an Uncertain Doom soon after. The final scene shows that, of the named Institute employees, only Melanie, Basira, and Rosie made it through alive.
Eldritch Location: The building is built atop a network of catacombs. Disturbingly organic catacombs.
Fat and Skinny: Martin and John, respectively, going by what little physical description we get.
Haunted Technology: Tape recorders seem to serve as a kind of monitoring device for the Beholding. At first, they are just used because digital recordings of the statements are always scrambled. Then they gain a habit of turning themselves on without any human aid. By Season 3, they're not even trying to be subtle anymore and just appear near people whenever something relevant is about to happen.
Lack of Empathy: Working in the archives for any length of time, especially as Head Archivist, leaves employees rather numb to the experiences of those giving the statements. For those who are being changed and warped by the Beholding, they're often more eager to observe suffering rather than provide aid. The founder of the institute at one point received a letter from an old friend begging for protection from supernatural forces, who he could easily have helped... but he preferred to do nothing in favor of seeing what would happen.
Mysterious Benefactor: Has one in the form of the Lukas Family, who are, well... not exactly trustworthy. And honestly kind of unsettling.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Their status as odd but harmless academics is a facade. While they're ostensibly a laughingstock among paranormal investigators, the Institute itself actually serves The Beholding, an extradimensional entity of unimaginable power.
Shout-Out Theme Naming: With the exception of Jonathan Sims and Basira Hussain, the last names of the archival assistants are all taken from famous horror authors; Martin Blackwood, Tim Stoker, Sasha James, Melanie King and Michael Shelley.
Unwitting Pawn: Elias is of course using everyone for his own benefit. More broadly, everyone who has read a statement, that is Jon, Martin, Melanie, Basira, Gertrude, and Elias, or dictated their own statement, that is every other archival assistant, Daisy, and numerous civilian statement givers, have played into the Web's master plan of using the tapes to traverse dimensions.

Head Archivists

Jonathan Sims

Jonathan Sims, The Archivist

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Voiced by: Jonathan Sims

The new Head Archivist for the Magnus Institute after Gertrude Robinson's untimely death. This position involves less library science than you might think, and more slow transformation into The Archivist, a monster who serves the eldritch horror that uses the archives as a front.

Action Survivor: Before his Avatar powers fully developed, his encounters with supernatural threats consisted of him running and hiding away from them.
Adorably Precocious Child: Subverted. While he certainly was precocious as a child he also admits to being impatient and quick to talk back, even saying that he later came to terms that he was a deeply annoying child.
Adventures in Comaland: In the Season 3 finale, Jon ends up in a coma where he stalks the nightmares of all the people he has taken statements from.
Agent Scully: To an extent that might unsettle even Richard Strand - no matter how overt the circumstances of a statement are, he often discounts any possible paranormal influence.
- This turns out to be a deliberate subversion. The Archivist is afraid that something is watching him and that it will get angry if he doesn't play up the skeptic angle. He admits in Episode 39 that he actually believes all the stories he's recorded are real. After that, he ditches the skeptic angle entirely.
Ambiguously Human: This comes with the job title, if you embrace it... which Jon has been doing by accident. As of Season 4, he is now introducing himself solely as "Jonathan Sims, The Archivist", and is able to heal all the lingering damage from his coma simply by reading a statement. When he tries to cut off one of his fingers as an anchor to draw him back out of the coffin, the wound keeps healing. Even Helen pulls a "Not So Different" Remark on him, claiming that he is currently as much "Jonathan Sims" as she is "Helen Richardson".
Amicable Exes: Is this to his former college girlfriend Georgie.
And Then John Was a Zombie: After waking up from his coma at Season 4, he officially became an Avatar.
And This Is for...: Punctuates each stab at Elias with the names of Sasha, Tim, and Gertrude, whose death he was responsible for, either directly or indirectly.
Anti Anti Christ: A variation where he only learns about his Antichrist status only when he is tricked into ending the world, but after that he goes on a mission to kill Elias and fix the world, all while rejecting the Eye's temptantions It's played straighter when he decides to kill Elias/Jonah and take his place as the Eye's pupil to kill off the Fears instead of going with the Web's plans to pass then on through the multiverse.
Anti-Hero: In later seasons he becomes this as he relunctly settles into his role as The Archivist, with him losing touch with his humanity and developing a Horror Hunger for other people's supernatural trauma while trying to use his powers to save the world.
Apocalypse Maiden: As the series goes on, it's revealed that everything that happened to him since he was promoted to Head Archivist was part of an elaborate plot to get him to bring the Powers into our reality, kickstarting The End of the World as We Know It.
Badass Bookworm: He is an Oxford graduate and used to work at the Research department before getting promoted. In the series itself his main solution for dealing with the supernatural threats he and his team face is to learn more about it, and as the Archivist his powers revolve around knowledge.
Bad Powers, Good People: As the Archivist, Jon gains the power to not only compell those around him to tell the truth but also to extract information directly out of people's head via Mind Rape (i.e Breekon), make them relive their trauma via nightmares and then watch their dreams, alongside a Horror Hunger for other people's fear. He tries to use it for good... with mixed results.
Beneath the Mask: In "Infestation", he admits to Martin that he puts on the skeptic act to mask how scared he is of how recording the statements makes him lose himself and of feeling watched.
Berserk Button: Go ahead and mock his losses. And please, go ahead and threaten Martin or remind him that you murdered Sasha. It will not end well for you.
Bookworm: As a child the only thing that kept him still was reading, but due to his picky tastes his grandmother had to buy books en masse from charity shops.
Cassette Craze: At first it is out of necessity, as the most bizarre statements cannot be recorded digitally, but in Episode 39 and 40 he records the Prentiss invasion and its fallout out of his own violation, and in Season 2 he starts to record supplementals about his investigation of Gertrude's murder in case anything happens to him. As his Archivist powers develop, he begins to spawn reccorders out of nowhere and gets the compulsion to reccord statements whenever he can.
Catchphrase:
- "So, what happened?", whenever he records a live statement. Eventually established to be a function of his Compelling Voice, as he can extract truth from a subject with any sentence phrased as a question.
- "I just know/knew" starts to crop up a lot starting in season 4, as his burgeoning Avatar powers enable him to have knowledge of things he'd have no access to otherwise, via his connection to the Eye.
Clear My Name: To avoid getting his throat slashed by Daisy, he offers to use his Compelling Voice to force out a confession from Elias about the murder of Gertrude Robinson and Jurgen Leitner.
Compelling Voice: When the Archivist asks a question, even other monsters have no choice but to answer truthfully. It's less useful than you might think, as most beings connected to the Powers are well aware of this and will take measures to ensure he doesn't finish his questions, which tend to be rather painful for Jon. Jon eventually becomes able to compel specific actions but apparently only if it's in the service of obtaining more information.
- Also Inverted; once he begins reading a statement Jon is compelled to continue reading it, and seems literally incapable of stopping unless interrupted. This is used against him in the Season 4 finale.
Conveniently an Orphan: Jon’s parents died under questionable circumstances, and he wasn't close with the grandmother who raised him. Leaving him with no close ties to notice he's been claimed by the Beholding, or to distract him from his obsessive need to sort through and devour stories.
- Also part of the actual Jonathan Sims' efforts to enforce the separation between himself and the character, as not only are both his parents still alive as of the end of the series, they played Gertrude Robinson and Jurgen Leitner.
Covered with Scars: Over the course of the podcast, he suffers quite a few injuries at the hands of the Powers, most of which leave him marked in some way. He gets an assortment of pockmark scars from Jane Prentiss's worms eating into him, a stab wound from Michael's hands, the flesh of his hand melted by Jude Perry, another stab wound from Melanie King, and two ribs pulled out by Jared Hopworth.
Cowardly Lion: Admits to not being a brave man but keeps pushing through horrifying stuff either to satiate his curiosity or to help the people he cares about.
Creepy Good: As his Archivist habilities develop he begins to unnerve his allies, (not helped by their resemblance to Elias's). Nevertheless, he's firmly on the side of good.
Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: After learning that Gertrude was murdered beneath the Institute, he becomes determined to solve the mystery behind her death. In Season 3 it's revealed that this contributed heavily to his transformation into "the Archivist". As Elias explains:
Elias: You never wanted this, no. But I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see. Our world is made of choices, Jon, and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean, but we make them nonetheless.
The Danza: Played by Jonny Sims, who lamented in one of the Q&As that he brushed off Alex "Martin" Newell's suggestion that he should maybe not name the Archivist after himself.
Dark and Troubled Past: His parents died when he was a little kid, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother, who was quite emotionally distant and couldn't hide her resentfulness towards him. When he was eight, he came across a Web Leitner that nearly got him killed, only to be accidentally saved by his childhood bully and then watched him be devoured by a Giant Spider in his place, leading to his arachnophobia and Survivor's Guilt in the present day.
Deadpan Snarker: Tends to snark and make snide comments whenever irritated.
Death Seeker: After making the definite choice to become an Avatar in the first episode of Season 4, Jon starts to disregard his life and throws himself into situations that could lead into his death or even worse, such as going into the Buried without warning anyone in the vain hopes of saving Daisy. His justification is that, if anything happens to him, "the universe loses another monster".
Defrosting Ice King: Starts the podcast as cold, arrogant and scornful of others - especially towards his assistant Martin - and didn't have many connections. Through the series, he warms up to the people around him and falls in love with Martin.
Despair Event Horizon: Causing the reshaping of the world, despite not being at fault for it, drives him to hate Jonah Magnus so much that he's willing to destroy the world Jonah envisioned, and everyone in it. The pragmatic reason for this is to avoid dooming who knows how many other universes to the Powers, which is the Web's Plan B, but Jon's tirade against Jonah at zero hour implies more than a bit of vengeful anger factors in his ultimate, tragic decision.
Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: After waking up from his coma he admits being adrift due to having no ritual to disrupt after the Unknowing.
Determinator: Jon may be neurotic and frightened, but when push comes to shove, he won't let anything stop him from finding out what he wants to know... including the very real threat of death at the hands of monsters he interviews. This obsessive need for knowledge is what made him an ideal servant of the Beholding from a very young age. Not every child would, upon escaping a near-fatal encounter with a demon spider, chase after its new victim in order to see what will happen.
Distressed Dude: He has a knack for getting into trouble he can't get out of and then being rescued at the last second.
The Dog Bites Back: After spending the whole podcast being manipulated, used and violated by Elias/Jonah, Jon brutally stabs him to death while the latter tries to beg him for his life.
Dream Walker: Jon's bad dreams aren't merely a reaction to trauma.They're what make The Archivist as monstrous as the other avatars. When Jon takes a statement directly from a victim, he causes them to have recurring nightmares, and enters their dreams to watch them suffer over and over again.
Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In the final episode, after achieving apotheosis, he is perfectly calm as he explains to Martin that Melanie and Georgie can't ignite the gas main without the Web's lighter... at which point he realizes that he doesn't have it, since he gave it to Georgie in the previous episode.
Fantastic Drug: As he takes to the role of Archivist more and more, the statements become this for him. Without the opportunity to record a statement, either from a transcript or in person, he goes into withdrawal, to the point that taking statements might well qualify as Abstract Eater.
Forgot About His Powers: Inverted. Later on in Season 5, Jon has become so used to his powers that he does not know how to react when a question is not immediately answered, has to be reminded by Martin that beating Magnus to death is totally within their power and is not necessarily a hopeless venture, and when he cannot find where Martin has gone and is in a panic, Melanie has to sit him down and remind him that he does not need his powers to think and reason things out.
Four-Temperament Ensemble: Jon is the Melancholic, with Martin, his partner, being the Phlegmatic.
Frame-Up: In the Season Two finale, Elias bruttally murders Leitner in his office while Jon went on a smoke break after the Cosmic Horror Reveal, making it seen like Jon senselessly killed an old man (not helped by his erratic and paranoid behaviour throughout the season), leading to him going into hiding at his ex-girfriend's place.
Free-Range Children: As a kid he had the habit of wandering off through his town and being taken back home by the policemen at night.
Gallows Humor: Develops this sense of humor in Season 4, possibly as a response to his new nightmarish life, which his allies find rather uncomfortable.
Healing Factor: As of the end of Season 3, he heals quickly, even more quickly if he reads a statement. When he tries to cut one of his fingers off the wound heals instantly, and in the end he has to turn to Jared Hopworth for help in permanently removing one of his ribs.
Humanoid Abomination: Became one the second he took the Archivist position, but has fully transitioned into one come Season 5, where he is able to wander untouched in the hellish world he was partially responsible for bringing into existence, and able to destroy other Avatars by making them See all of the fears they were feeding on from the perspective of their own victims.
I Am a Monster: Firmly adopts this mindset about himself in Season 4 after becoming a full-fledged Avatar, not helped by his allies getting unnerved by his awakening or his new powers.
I Cannot Self-Terminate: In the Grand Finale he asks Martin to stab him so the group can complete the plan to send the Fears away from their world, as the Eye won't let him do it himself.
Insufferable Genius: Particularly in Season 1, where he tended to be very condescending and scornful towards the statement givers and snide with those he viewed as incompetent, like Gertrude and Martin. If his statement in "A Guest for Mr. Spider" is anything to go by, he has this attitude since he was a child.
Irony: Jon starts the show with an extremely dim view of Martin and ends up falling in love with him.
It's All About Me: A Fatal Flaw of his. While it starts out as just a bit of elitism on his part, as the series goes on Jon becomes more and more self-centered, seeing himself as the most important person in the world, for better or worse. To be fair, he is the centerpoint of both the Eye and the Web's plans, but by the final two episodes it has gotten so bad that he ignores the wishes of Basira, Georgie, Melanie, and even Martin, and elects to make the final decision about what to do with the powers directly against what they had previously agreed on, entirely because he thinks his choice is better.
It's Personal:
- Would completely drop his academic detachment and skeptcism whenever a Leitner showed up in a statement. This is because when he was 8, he nearly fell victim to one and watched his bully getting killed by it.
- In season 5, he goes out of his way to kill avatars that hurt him previously, including Jude Perry, Jared Hopworth, and NotSasha.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Starts out as mostly a Jerkass with him being arrogant, pompous, short-tempered, and snide but is shown to be someone deeply caring and protective of his fellow men and tries his hardest to hold onto whichever humanity he has and keep his moral code as he grows more and more into his role of the Archivist.
Jerkass to One:
- Out of all his assistants, he's the most harsh and comptentous of Martin. Later in the show it's explained that it's due him already knowing Tim and Sasha from research and specifically requesting them to join him in the archives, and Elias sending Martin in without telling him.
- Jon tends to be fairly patient with statement givers, more so in season 2 and onwards, but gets off on a very bad foot with Melanie. To be fair, Melanie isn't exactly easy to get along with either.
Kick the Morality Pet: In episode 169, Jon choses to take a detour through a Desolation domain just to kill Jude Perry, despite Martin clearly being terrified and uncomfortable with it.
Laughing Mad: Reduced to this at the end of the Season 4 finale, after he witnesses the apocalypse he's unwittingly unleashed upon the world.
Mean Boss: Mostly acts this towards Martin, making snide remarks about him on tape and one time even sending him to look into a suspected witch that might have chopped up a statement giver and then calling him an "useless ass" for being unable to find her right after admitting that her description is very vague. It gets worse in Season 2, when he starts stalking his assistants due to him believing one of them killed Gertrude.
Meaningful Rename: Stops introducing himself as "Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute" and begin introducing himself as "Jonathan Sims, The Archivist", reflecting his increasingly inhuman nature at the start of S4.
Never My Fault: When confronted by the others over hunting down innocents to feed on their supernatural trauma he tells them that he might've been controlled by Annabelle Cane to do it. It's only after he reads her statement that he comes to terms that he did it because it felt good.
Omniglot: The Archivist can understand languages he has not learned, though he doesn't gain any particular ability to speak them.
The Omniscient: As he grows more and more into his role as The Archivist for the Beholding, he gains powers that allow him to simply "know" things; at least, things the Eye will share with him.
- In Season Five, after the Beholding takes over the world, he truly becomes able to know exactly everything that it can know in the world.
- However, these powers are often shown to have limits. As stated earlier, he can only know what the Eye is willing to share, and it will sometimes try to hide sensitive information from him. Also, other Powers that are antithetical to the Eye, specifically the Dark and The Stranger, have certain natural defenses that blocks the Eye from seeing their territories.
- Perhaps his biggest limitation is alluded to early on in the series by Jurgen Lietner, who points out that Jon's role is that of the observer; he can see & know almost anything, but he struggles with connecting individual events with each other to put together the larger picture. So while the Dark & the Stranger can hide things from him, the Web doesn't need to, because while he can see any individual piece of it's plan, the whole of it is so big and intricate that he can't hope to piece together the whole thing.
The Paranoiac: Very much becomes this in Season 2 after the body of his predecessor, shot three times, is found in the tunnels under the archives.
Painting the Medium: It's subtle, but whenever Jon uses his Compelling Voice unintentionally (such as getting Melanie to blurt out that she's started going to therapy) there's slight static on the recording.
Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: As the podcast goes on, he gets more and more scars from his encounters with the supernatural, matching with his declining mental state. This turns out to be a plot point. Each scar is a mark from the entities, filling him with the fear of that event and turning him into a battery for all fourteen. This turns out to have consequences.
Powerful and Helpless: By Season 5, he's essentially become a Physical God in the post-Change world, having borderline omniscience and the ability to instantly destroy anything, even fellow avatars, with a few words. Unfortunately, those powers aren't particularly helpful in his quest to avert the apocalypse, since they're drawn from his connection to the Eye, which is both responsible for the world's current state and very much against turning it back to before.
Prematurely Grey-Haired: Is noted as having gray in his hair, despite only being in his late twenties/early thirties.
Properly Paranoid: Jon is right to be paranoid about being attacked by whoever was behind Gertrude's death, although he doesn't express that paranoia in very productive ways.
Raised by Grandparents: Jon was taken in by his grandmother after the suspicious deaths of his parents.
Seeker Archetype: Is mostly driven by his unsatiable hunger for knowledge, monsters be dammed.
Self-Deprecation: When recounting his childhood he calls himself a "deeply annoying child".
Sleeps with Both Eyes Open: As of the apocalypse, Martin notes this about him, even in places more cut off from The Eye’s power like Salesa’s house or the cult’s tunnels.
Stalker without a Crush: In Season Two he starts stalking his assistants due to suspecting them of killing Gertrude, from going through their belongings to taking pictures of Tim's house.
Superior Successor: Jon to Gertrude, as Archivist. Largely because Gertrude spent her time actively plotting against the supernatural instead of feeding The Beholding, with all evidence point to her deliberately sabotaging the Magnus Institute. Played straight as we get a more accurate picture of Gertrude, whose lack of friends or attachments would have caused her to fall into despair where Jon will not.
Together in Death: With Martin, maybe.
Tragic Hero: By the end of the series, Jon has developed into this. His fatal flaw is his ego, and his inability to even potentially doom another person to the guilt he carries, as well as his series-long insistence on rushing forward to do everything himself, results in the worst possible ending - he breaks his promise to save himself if possible, makes Martin kill him, AND the Web still gets what it wanted in the end.
True Sight: Jon uses this to counter the Unknowing and save the world. A season later, he uses it to see through the Lonely and find Martin.
The Undead: Enters a state of reverse brain death after being blown up in the Season 3 finale. His body is dead, but his brain activity is off the charts.
Uncertain Doom: At the end of the show he has Martin to "cut the tether" by stabbing him to force the Fears out of their world. However, he states the possibility of it sending both him and Martin to another universe instead of just killing him.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He's the one to unleash all the Powers and end the world in the Season 4 finale, all because he read the wrong statement.
Vengeance Feels Empty: Comes to this conclusion during Season Five. After he kills Jude Perry and Jared Hopworth, he reflects that it didn't make him feel better and their realms are still torturing their victims without them. Not when it comes to Jonah Magnus, though.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: At the series finale he chooses to betray the group and take over as the Eye's pupil so that he can send the whole world to the End's domain to stop the Fears from spreading through the multiverse. Said plan ultimately fails, as him giving Georgie the web lighter in the previous episode allowed her to ignite a gas main in the Institute, initiating the Fears' spread throught the multiverse.
Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Refuses to kill Callum Brodie, an avatar of the Dark after realizing doing so wouldn't help their current situation, i.e, saving the children that's being preyed upon in his domain.
Wrong Genre Savvy: Invoked almost word for word in Episode 78, in which he destroys the table binding the Not-Them, thinking it was their source of power.
Younger Than They Look: He is in his early thirties but comments that people are always surprised upon learning that fact due to his greying hair. Melanie King at one point even feels the need to ask Jon if he is aware of what a "meme" is.

Gertrude Robinson

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Voiced by: Sue Sims

The former Head Archivist for the Magnus Institute. Initially a mysterious figure whose chaotic management of the archives infuriates Jon, her successor. As the story progresses we learn much more about her own handling and use of the Archive's statements and her efforts to thwart the Powers, including the Magnus Institute itself.

All for Nothing: At the absolute best, all her interventions in the rituals ever really did was prematurely end the suffering of the innocent victims already caught up in them and possibly prevent a scant few more victims from being drawn in.
The Aloner: She was somewhat touched by the Lonely even before she started working at the Institute, having never had many friends and always preferred her own company.
Ambiguously Gay: She works with plenty of people, but the only two people she seems to have trusted enough to rely on are both women; Emma Harvey, who's described as her trusted confidante, and Agnes Montague, who is quite literally her soulmate.
Big Good: Played With She single-handedly foiled the rituals of the Powers for decades, defending humanity but also was incredibly ruthless while doing so, having no issue with manipulating or killing people to achieve her goals.
Everyone Has Standards: She was certainly no saint, but upon learning that Emma, one of her assistants, had been intentionally feeding her coworkers to the Powers just to see what happens, she was absolutely furious and had Agnes burn her to death.
Foil: To Jon, as his predecessor. While Jon sacrificed his humanity in service of his friends and became a monster torn apart by his empathy, Gertrude remained human but gave up connections to others in order to so so.
Good Is Not Nice: Gertrude was determined to stop the rituals that would help the Powers to warp the universe. Among other things, she sacrificed Michael Shelley to the Distortion/Spiral in order to bind and constrict it and murdered Jan Kilbride to use his dismembered corpse to stop the Buried's ritual.
Heroes Love Cats:Once asked why she worked so diligently against the powers, she states that a cultist of the Lightless Flame killed her cat. Word of God pointedly refuses to confirm if this did indeed happen or if this is Gertrude's idea of a joke.
I Work Alone: Increasingly embraced this mentality as she aged, confiding in others less and less and leaving her assistants to their own work as she pursued hers. This eventually led to her death at Elias' hands, as she had nobody to help her in her plan to destroy the Archive. Episode 167 makes it clear that this trope is the sticking point between her and Jon, who refuses to stop trying to protect his friends even as he loses touch with his humanity.
Kill It with Fire: Her preferred approach to... anything really. She killed her first monster using fire, and went on to use it again and again through a long career of monster hunting, though she upgraded to explosives at one point. It may or may not have had something to do with her connection to Agnes Montague.
Manipulative Bastard: Deliberately engineered sympathy and loyalty in Michael Shelley, so that he would do anything for her — because he trusted her.
Mysterious Past: Jon initially sees her as an incompetent predecessor out of touch with the times, but it becomes increasingly clear that there's more to her than that. Even after more of her true character is revealed, though, a lot about her past goes unanswered. She was apparently aware of (and fighting against) the Powers well before coming to work at the Institute, and even the nigh-omniscient Elias admits he's not sure how she came to be aware of the supernatural.
Never Mess with Granny: She was still taking on servants of the Powers and trashing their rituals well into her grey years. Sasha describes her as "stone cold" despite looking like a little old lady, and even powerful avatars like the Lightless Flame's cultists tread lightly around her in statements where she appears.]
Obfuscating Disability/Obfuscating Stupidity: Pretended to be much frailer than she actually was in front of her assistants, letting them believe she was a harmless older lady who needed help and protection. Likewise, the bad archival skills Jon bemoans at the beginning of episode 1? Entirely deliberate sabotage of her ostensible employer.
Parental Substitute: Despite her general coldness, she was probably the closest thing Gerard Keay ever had to a healthy maternal figure. It's strongly implied that his death was the last nail in the coffin for her I Work Alone attitude.
Pet the Dog:
- While intimidating Arthur Nolan, she makes clear that Jack Barnabas is to be left alone.
- In "Bloody Mary" (Episode 154), she at least makes an effort to be nice and sensitive to the skin book ghost of her old Institute colleague Eric Delano regarding his death, though she gets a bit testy when he turns out to know something important.
- Despite her general willingness to sacrifice her assistants for the greater good, when she learned that one of her assistants deliberately put another one in a situation which got her killed simply to learn more information about the Powers, Gertrude had Agnes kill her.
Posthumous Character: Jon at first merely bemoans her apparent lack of archival skills, but soon becomes curious about her death.
- The finale of the first season reveals that she didn't just die in unusual circumstances but was actually murdered, as the team discover her body underneath the Institute; we get to hear recordings made by her beginning in the second season; and the third season focuses heavily on her research into, and thwarting of, the Powers. Season Four shows that she was alive two months longer than we had been lead to believe, before being killed by Elias while attempting to burn down the Institute.
Revenge: There was supposedly no thirst for revenge in her, but it's worth noting that every time she goes after a specific monster or avatar it's to retaliate for the death of someone associated with her; The first monster she killed was the Grinning Wheel, who itself killed her predecessor, and when she learned that Emma Harvey had been using her assistants as guinea pigs, she was furious and had them burned to death. She also claimed that she hunted the Powers because the Desolation killed her cat.
Unscrupulous Hero: Spent her entire time as Archivist investigating other Powers and preventing their rituals, including by sacrificing her employees and liberal usage of explosives.
Walking Spoiler: It's very difficult to talk about Gertrude without spoiling why Jon replaced her as Head Archivist and her relationship with the Powers.
Willfully Weak: Compared to Jon. Gertrude never embraced her title as the Archivist, and was practically human. This did not stop her from being one of the most feared people by other powers.

Angus Stacey

First Mentioned: MAG 167

The Head Archivist before Gertrude Robinson.

Bad Boss: It's hard to know what he was like as a person, but he did burn through all but one of his assistants before he himself died, which speaks to at minimum a disregard for safety.
Fatal Flaw: From what little we learn of him, his seems to have been hubris; Specifically the hubris to think he could re-categorize and redefine the Dread Powers, which ultimately got him killed.
Posthumous Character: Long dead by the time we learn of him.
Satellite Character: Angus is barely a character in his own right, existing mostly to fill out the lore and show that there were Archivists before Gertrude who did their own thing. He's not even that important to Gertrude's story, and only really connected to Fiona Law, who is herself a very minor character.
Tear Off Your Face: His fate at the hand of a monster Gertrude called The Grinning Wheel, which she later killed.

Jon's Assistants

Martin Blackwood

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Voiced by: Alexander J. Newall

One of Jon's assistants. Jon starts the series with a dim view of his competence.

Big Beautiful Man: Martin is established plus size early into the series when he describes himself as “not the smallest guy in the world” when talking about breaking in through a window into the apartment of Jane Prentiss. His weight however is never mocked in the podcast except for by the not!them in season 5, when they describe him as “positively roomy” when threatening to wear his skin
Action Survivor: Manages to survive being trapped in his apartment by the entity formerly known as Jane Prentiss for about two weeks.
Adoring the Pests: Really likes spiders, even finding the bigger, hairier ones cute.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: A downplayed example. While he is kind, he can be jealous, petty and has a manipulative streak.
Boss's Unfavorite Employee: Jon had a very low opinion of him in the first season.
Bumbling Sidekick: How Jon perceives Martin until Prentiss.
The Caretaker: Used to take care after his ill mother before she asked to be moved to a home.
Cassette Craze: In Episode 39 he reveals that he often records his poetry on cassette tapes due to liking the sound.
Crazy Jealous Guy: Shows some definite signs of this with regards to Jon, to the point where his coworkers openly wonder if the interest is more than professional.
- Doubled down in Season 5 when he asks Jon to kill Oliver Banks because he's jealous. Jon (fondly) calls him out on this.
Crazy-Prepared: Traces back to his being an Action Survivor. When Jane Prentiss attacks the Institute, Martin proves to have prepared for such an event, even thinking outside the box in terms of preparing to remove the worms. In season 5, he's immediately prepared to go confront Elias the second Jon is, and has packed bags for it including several things that are no longer necessary, such as maps, because "you never know".
Deadpan Snarker: As the show goes on he gets more and more snarky.
Deuteragonist: Has the most focus after Jon.
Disappeared Dad: When Martin was eight and his mother began to sicken, his dad left them both.
The Dog Bites Back: Successfully executes a plan to take down Elias at the end of Season 3, after all of Elias' employees get sick of his shit. He also gets rightfully angry at Peter Lukas and ruins all his plans by refusing to do what Peter asked of him.
Dude in Distress: After defying Peter in episode 158, Peter throws Martin into the Lonely -a Pocket Dimension of overwhelming loneliness that tries to convince its victims that they're all alone and are better off on their own -and Jon has to dive in to rescue him.
- During his and Jon's journey to the Panonpticon, Martin gets stuck in a Lonely domain where his memories are erased every once in a while. However, unlike the previous time, he manages to get out on his by forcing himself to remember that he has loved ones.
- Subverted with Annabelle, whom Jon thinks kidnapped Martin to take him to Hill Top Road, but in actuality just told Martin that she knew a way to reverse the apocalypse but he had to follow her and she never meant to harm him at all.
Dude, Where's My Respect?: By Season 3 he begins to get fed up with those around him not taking him seriously, culminating on a rant when Elias dismiss him burning the statements as "acting out".
Martin: Oh, so that’s it, isn’t it. Martin’s just acting out. I mean, Daisy’s a “rabid dog”, and Melanie’s a potential killer, Tim’s a – a rogue element, but Martin, oh Martin’s just acting out. He’ll have a cry, and a lie down, and feel much better.
Effeminate Misogynistic Guy: Like many gay men in British works, he tends to be very catty and unpleasant to most of the women around him, particularly ones he views as rivals for Jon's affection. He begins to warm up to Melanie and the other girls on the team eventually, though. His discomfort around women probably stems from his difficult relationship with his mother.
Et Tu, Brute?: Has this reaction when he learns that Jon went behind his back to kill Elias/Jonah and becoming the Pupil, jeopardizing the group's plan to end the apocalypse so he could stop the Fears from spreading by killing everybody in the world.
Genre Blindness: He starts out rather naive about the kind of story he's in and the how far reaching the evils around him extend. Nowhere is this more evident than his horrified reaction to the idea that the Metropolitan Police might resort to killing Daisy and anyone aware of her activities if she were to become too much of a liability.
Gentle Giant: Not only is he of rather portly proportions, based on a brief comment on how far Jane Prentiss' worms had to jump to attempt to bite him in the face, Martin is apparently meant to be well over six feet tall.
Grew a Spine: As the seasons go on, he becomes braver and more assertive, culminating with him telling Peter off about killing Elias/Jonah in the Panonpticon and taking over his place.
Healthcare Motivation: Joined the institue to pay for his ill mother's care.
In Touch with His Feminine Side: Likes to write poetry in his spare time, makes tea for the archives team, tends to fuss around Jon and in Season 2 he encourages Jon and Tim to talk out their issues with each other. However, he averts the "Lack of Agression" part of this trope, with him being ready to fight Michael alongside Tim, getting very excited with Jon's newfound ability of smiting Avatars and encouraging him on taking a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the ones who hurt them and being determined to kill Jonah after everything he put the everyone in the archives team and the world through.
Ignored Enamored Underling: Season 3 reveals that he harbors a crush on Jon, which Elias mocks, saying "It’s baffling, really. Such loyalty to someone who really treats you very badly".It's then subverted in Season 4, as it's revealed that Jon does reciprocate Martin's feelings and by the start of Season 5 they've alredy had a Relationship Upgrade.
Love Martyr: Towards Jon, particularly in earlier seasons, and his mother.
Meaningful Name: Martin's surname, Blackwood, translates to "Schwarzwald" — the location where Jonah Magnus first encountered the supernatural.
Mysterious Middle Initial: Introduces himself as Martin K. Blackwood when recording poetry.
Older Than They Sound: One might assume from Martin's voice and his general nervous, timid personality that he's a teenager, or at least the youngest of the archival staff. He's actually twenty-nine.
Pay Evil unto Evil: When Jon gains the ability to destroy at least some of the avatars in Season 5, Jon is deeply conflicted and terrified of the implications... while Martin points out that the avatars are objectively hurting people and deserve to die, and that they should absolutely go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
Rage Breaking Point: In the first three seasons he reaches it nearing the Season Finale.
- In Season 1, during Prentiss's attack on the Institute, he gets fed up with Jon's Scully Syndrome when the latter attempts to dismiss the Flesh Hive as just unthinking parasites.
- In Season 2, while searching for Jon in the tunnels with Tim acting as a Sour Supporter, he snaps at Tim and calls him out for acting so similar from Jon lately.
- And in Season 3, when Elias dismisses Martin's attempt at distracting him as "acting out" and acting on Jon's behalf Martin goes on a tirade about not being taken seriously by anyone.
- However, he stops doing it in the last two seasons, due to the influence of the Lonely in Season 4 but mostly due to Character Development kicking in.
Single-Target Sexuality: Has only ever evidenced interest in Jon.
So Okay, It's Average: Martin writes poetry. Martin's poetry is derisively compared to Keats by Jon in season 2 and described as "aggressively mediocre" by the writers.
Spiders Are Scary: Averted by Martin, who is willing to walk into a creepy cobwebbed basement because he likes spiders. And he is right to do so. Eldritch spiders horrors are relatively benign compared to some of the other monsters out there. Sure, they sometimes eat people, but they also bind, suppress, and devour other supernatural forces.
Strong Family Resemblance: Is said to look exactly like his father, which is a problem, as he abandoned the family and led his mother to stop loving him as he grew older because she couldn't look at him without being reminded of how the man she loved rejected her.
Together in Death: With Jon, maybe.
Uncertain Doom: The end of the series sees him kill Jon to force the Powers out of his universe and into some other one. While the execution of this plan requires the death of the Pupil, aka Jon, there is no guarantee Martin actually died, or if he got sucked into another dimension but is otherwise fine.
Very Fake Résumé: He pretended to have a master's degree in parapsychology to get a job at the Institute. Despite this, he does well there because he's observant and creative, and his talent for manipulation becomes a Chekhov's Skill later.
Vocal Dissonance: Has a relatively high, almost childlike voice despite being described as a large, even bearlike man in his late 20s/early 30s.
"Well Done, Son" Guy: Wants validation from his distant mother.
You Are Worth Hell: Stays with Jon in the latter's final moments when he could run and be safe, killing him and either dying as well due to the blast set off by the others or being pulled into another reality.

Sasha James

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Voiced by: Lottie Broomhall

One of Jon's assistants.

Badass Bookworm: The most intelligent, book knowledge-focused member of the original assistant trio... who also spends her statement episode fearlessly staring down Michael and taking on spawn from the Flesh Hive. She also saves Tim's life from Jane Prentiss with some quick thinking (and faster running).
Big Damn Heroes: Bolts out of a sealed, relatively safe room during Jane Prentiss' attack on the Archives in the season 1 finale to save Tim. She also dives back into the building with Elias to turn the fire alarms on and get everyone else in the Institute out. This ends up becoming a Heroic Sacrifice, as she's separated from Elias and killed by the Not-Them.
Dude, Where's My Respect?: Flashbacks in Season 5 reveal that basically everyone expected Sasha to become the new Archivist, including Gertrude, but Jon was chosen instead, despite him being less mundanely qualified. The audience knows that Jonah/Elias picked based on who would be easier to manipulate into performing his new ritual, but Sasha never learns that. She clearly thinks that her strong qualifications and years of excellent work were ignored because of sexism.
Grand Theft Me: In the Season 1 finale, courtesy of the Not-Them, who go so far as to somehow dispose of cases 0051701 and 0160204, on which Sasha's voice could be heard.
Playful Hacker: Hacking secure databases is one of her less-ethical methods of researching statements. After her death, Jon somewhat wistfully notes that finding such information is much harder now.
The Reliable One: Very good at her job; more directly, Tim refers to her work persona as "this reliable, down-to-earth nerd." In fact, she's so good that Gertrude had tapped Sasha as her successor (which is no doubt one of the reasons Elias didn't choose her).
Sacrificial Lion: Arguably the most developed of the Archive assistants in season 1. Naturally, she dies at the end to establish that Anyone Can Die.
We Hardly Knew Ye: Due to the format of the podcast, we only get a few moments with Sasha before she gets killed and replaced by the Not-Them.

Timothy "Tim" Stoker

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Voiced by: Mike LeBeau

One of Jon's assistants.

Accuser of the Brethren: Does not forgive Jon for his association with The Beholding, in spite of Jon's efforts at reconciliation. Though he does thank him for giving him the chance to get revenge for his brother.
Beleaguered Assistant: What else do you call getting attacked by worms and treated as a murder suspect by your boss?
Big Damn Heroes: At the end of Season 1.
Break the Cutie: Tim used to be far happier and less bitter from what we saw of him until the season 1 finale. He was still somewhat cheerful in early season 2, but Jon's paranoia put an end to that.
Cynicism Catalyst: His brother was killed by agents of The Stranger. This also explains some of his other quirks, such as his familiarity with 19th-century circuses and the work of real-life architect Robert Smirke.
Even the Guys Want Him: Tim is noted in Season 2 to have police "contacts" in the form of clerks — one woman and one man, who take two different shifts. They allow him access to police records. Jon notes the usefulness of such "contacts" but is irritated by how indiscrete Tim seems to be about it.
It's Personal: Joined the Magnus Institute to pursue the creatures that murdered his brother.
Rage Breaking Point: After months of being on the receiving end of Jon's paranoia and stalking in Season 2 and receiving No Sympathy from others, in "Binary" Tim snaps and gives Jon a "Reason You Suck" Speech about his behaviour and how he's failing as a boss.
Resignations Not Accepted: Tim comes to hate the Institute, but he feels like there's something there that's preventing him from quitting. He later even tries running away to Malaysia but finds himself getting sicker the longer he stays away from the Institute.
Sad Clown: His flippant attitude and promiscuity are the source of a good deal of the early seasons' lighter moments, but it soon becomes clear that it's all a front for some very serious personal trauma.
Seen It All: By season 3, Tim is completely unfazed by the horror show that is the archives. After fleshworms, infinite corridors and the twisted form of Not-Sasha, he can't be bothered to be surprised. When Elias explains his Dead Man Switch to everyone, Tim just replies with a monotone "sounds about right."
The Skeptic: Tended to be dismissive of the veracity of the statements until he gets caught up in Jane Prentiss's attack in the Season 1 finale.
Sir Swears-a-Lot: Downplayed due to the general lack of swearing in the series, but so far Tim is tied with Jon, who obviously speaks much more than him, for the honour of dropping the most F-bombs of any single character (three, and he implies a fourth), and the only cast member who does for some time. No one else says "fuck" until after his death, in fact.
Sour Supporter: He'll help the Archivist save the world, but that doesn't stop him from hating the Archives and everything they stand for.
Taking You with Me: Blows himself up in order to stop the Stranger's ritual of the Unknowing.

Later Hires

Melanie King

First Mentioned: MAG 028

Voiced by: Lydia Nicholas

Melanie King is an amateur ghost hunter who started to stray from the beaten path of haunted locations after witnessing a co-worker, Sarah Baldwin, peel back the skin off of her arm and staple it back on. She occasionally consults the Magnus Institute for information until she's brought on as Sasha's replacement.

Affectionate Nickname: Her dad used to call her "Little Moth". Daisy calls her "Mel," though she switches to "Ms. King" when Melanie says she doesn't like it.
Ambiguous Situation: She was supposedly freed from the Slaughter's influence after Jon and Basira cut the bullet out of her leg, but there are some hints that it still has some vague hold on her, even if she's not in danger of becoming an avatar anymore. Her anger issues persist, in episode 140 she tells Martin that she might have beaten her followers to death if Georgie wasn't there to keep her sane, and in the second-to-last episode she freely admits that a significant part of the reason she supports the Web's plan is that she wants to stab Jonah to death.
Amnesia Missed a Spot: She is the spot, in this case; NotSasha leaves her with full memories of what the real Sasha was like, so she's left confused and angry when everyone seemingly tries to gaslight her about the fake Sasha.
Ax-Crazy: While she never reaches that point (at least not on-screen), she does become gradually more violent and angry throughout seasons 3 and 4. Jon and Basira eventually realize that it's because she's touched by the Slaughter, and on her way to becoming an avatar.
Badass Normal: After her crew disperses, she goes off hunting war ghosts on her own, regardless of the fact they can actually hurt her, unlike the Grey Ladies she used to investigate. Also tries to kill Elias multiple times, albeit unsuccessfully.
Blind Seer: In the post-change world, she tries to invoke this by telling the survivors she and Georgie gathered that she's had a vision of the world returning to normal. It brings them hope as she intended, but also led to them worshipping her as a prophet which she is not comfortable with. She also finds the term "blind prophet" offensive.
The Cassandra: At least twice, usually because of her Jerkass tendencies making her too aggressive to patiently explain anything.
- In the second season, she's the only one who notices that Sasha is not who she claims to be, but is largely ignored since everyone else have had their memories tampered with.
- In the third and fourth seasons, she repeatedly insists that they should just kill Elias, but is rejected since it might kill them too. While Elias' death might have killed everyone working at the institute (as he's the only source on this and a known liar), it would also have prevented his nefarious plans from plunging the world into an unending hellscape of fear and horror.
Commonality Connection: She and Jon don't get along very well, and they have two very different approaches to supernatural investigation, but in "The Smell of Blood", they start nerding out over historical documents she found while investigating in the exact same way, and they're both willing to almost totally disregard their safety in the pursuit of information.
Daddy's Girl: Melanie's dad used to be her last "anchor" before his death. She's driven to a sobbing fit when Elias implants in her head the knowledge of the awful way he died.
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Bitchy, but less visibly hostile than just about everyone in the Institute except Jon and Martin. She also immediately tries to poison Elias upon realizing what a bastard he is, then tries to shiv him. When the Flesh attacks the institute in between Seasons 3 and 4, she fights so violently and efficiently that Jared Hopworth, its foremost avatar, actually gets scared and runs away.
Disability Immunity: Downplayed, as it's not the disability itself that makes her immune, but rather how she became disabled. By permanently blinding herself, she severed her connection to the eye, which means it can't get a lock on her in the post-change world.
Do Not Call Me "Paul": She doesn't like being called "Mel."
Empowered Badass Normal: It's implied that there is something about her in season 4, even if she doesn't have any obviously supernatural traits. Otherwise, it's hard to explain how an average woman with no combat experience to speak of got close enough to killing a powerful avatar of the Flesh to make him run away scared.
Eye Scream: She ends up removing her eyes with an awl, as this is the only way you can escape the Beholding's influence and quit the Magnus Institute.
Final Girl: Alongside Basira and Georgie, she's one of three total main characters who make it out of the series alive.
Heroic Willpower: While Basira and Jon cutting the bullet out of her leg was the impetus for her breaking out of the Slaughter's influence, she implies that it wasn't as simple as that and that it required her making the active choice to deny it. And that's not even getting into how much willpower it took to stab out her own eyes.
Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: She's caught on camera while yelling at some security guards about blood and ghosts, which becomes a meme and robs her of any credibility she used to have.
Jerkass: The first thing she does upon being interviewed is snobbishly chew out the very people trying to interview her, even though she went to them precisely because her coworkers wouldn't even listen to her. One of the things she criticizes is the Institute's policy of looking into stories that lack evidence. When she tells her story and Jon does his usual thing and say that the Institute will look into her story, rather than believing her outright, she gets pissed off and yells at him. Even though she arrived with no real evidence. (Although it's implied the abrasiveness is her way of dealing with how much Sarah scared her, and that she's much nicer when she's not scared).
Mirror Character: To Jon, whom she shares a lot of traits with despite their mutual dislike. They share a common interest in paranormal and occult studies and research, and often throw themselves headfirst into danger in the hopes of learning something new, which more often than not causes them long-lasting injuries and near-death experiences. They are both fairly abrasive and make poor first impressions, and both let paranoia and obsession get the better of them, causing them to drive away most of their friends throughout season 2. Finally, they have both been marked by supernatural powers far beyond their control, and are being turned into avatars against their will. The only difference that makes their paths diverge is that Melanie has the willpower to break free of her entity's influence, which Jon ultimately does not. Also, both have or are dating Georgie Barker.
Murder Is the Best Solution: Adopts this attitude after she has a bad encounter with a ghost and is drawn in by The Slaughter. She is adamant that killing Elias is the only option they have, and is vehemently against the actual plan to just put him in prison.
Never My Fault: Melanie has a nasty habit of blaming everyone around her for her suffering and failing to recognize her own failings. Jon is the most common subject of her anger, as she blames him for getting her stuck in the archives, for being the Archivist, for not believing her first statement, for failing to recognize NotSasha, etc.
Paranormal Investigation: Her YouTube show is about this. She insists at first that it is more evidence-based than the Archives, although they sometimes ham it up because looking at temperature readings isn't very exciting on-camera, but later discovers that her show and others like it have been unconsciously avoiding real paranormal sites.
Opt Out: Melanie can't actually quit, but she can choose to just not do any work. Which she does, as she believes doing anything that empowers the Beholding is evil. And then when Jon discovers it is possible to unbind yourself from the Beholding by blinding yourself, she takes an awl to her eyes.
Running Gag: A short-lived one; when she records statements (at least the first few times), she claps her hands as a sound marker when starting to read and finishing reading the statement, likely a holdover from her experience working in visual media and editing.
Screw Destiny: So far Melanie is the only person known to have severed her ties to two different powers.
- Melanie spends most of seasons 3 and 4 being slowly corrupted by the Slaughter, coming very close to becoming an Avatar, but before she is fully consumed, Basira and Jon cut the bullet out of her wound, giving her the chance to recover, which she eventually does.
- After learning how Eric Delano quit the institute, Melanie does the same, taking an awl to her eyes and severing her ties to the Beholding at the cost of her eyesight.
Serial Killer: It's implied that she would have become this eventually if the Slaughter bullet wasn't removed from her leg, as her patron would not be satisfied with just Elias' and Jon's deaths.
Took a Level in Jerkass: Becomes increasingly aggressive and abrasive over the course of the third season, culminating in a diatribe about how nobody appreciates the struggle she went through to start a ghost-hunting series.
- She takes another level in Season 4. Upon her first reappearance, she nearly attacks Jon, blaming him for Tim and Daisy's deaths, and all but growls at him to stay away from her. In Episode 125, Jon realizes this is happening because she was shot by a bullet from an avatar of the Slaughter, which was "infecting" her, increasing her aggression to the point where it nearly consumes other aspects of her identity.
Took a Level in Kindness: Having the cursed bullet out and going to therapy in the back half of Season 4 have helps Melanie do this. Escaping her entrapment in the Magnus Institute and moving in with Georgie significantly improves her mental health and she lets Jon know she sees him as a friend despite everything that has happened between them.
Too Much Alike: Why she doesn't like Jon. In MAG 191, Georgie says she and Jon are actually pretty similar, and Melanie bitterly quips "at least I hate consistently".
Unwanted False Faith: In Season 5, she hates being the object of the cult's worship along with Georgie, because of the unbelievable pressure of them taking everything she says as gospel. Also, she hates them calling her the Blind Prophet, but can't manage to talk them out of it.
Unwitting Pawn: Elias hired her in the hopes that she would attack or hurt Jon and thus mark him for the Slaughter, which she eventually does. That said, Elias admits that he hardly did any manipulation aside from keeping her around, and had nothing to do with her becoming an avatar.

Basira Hussain

First Mentioned: MAG 043

Voiced by: Frank Voss

A police constable who deals with strange cases.

Accomplice by Inaction: The core part of her character is that she is an enabler for Daisy. Both in the sense that she helps cover up and ignore all of her horrid instances of police brutality, and that she encourages Daisy to go back to being a Hunter, which is very similar to an addiction, once she decides to get away from it. In season 5, the domain she's stuck in with Daisy specifically forces her to confront all the ways in which she has allowed her to get away with horrible abuses of power before she can finally catch up with her.
Action Girl: While most of her cases don't involve violence, merely the aftermath of it, she's prepared for the ones that do.
Ambiguously Gay: Her relationship to Daisy is deliberately left vague since confirming it to be romantic would muddle the message, but their relationship is certainly very close and she never shows any interest in men.
Badass Normal: Manages to defeat the dissociative illusions of the Stranger during its attempted apotheosis just by reasoning to herself.
Big Damn Heroes: Shows up just in time to keep Daisy from murdering Jon.
Dirty Cop: While she's not murderous like Daisy, she is perfectly aware of her crimes and helps her cover them up.
Emotionless Girl: In the early episodes of Season 4, she seems to have totally shut down emotionally. It's unclear if it's due to the traumatic events that occurred in between seasons (i.e. a colleague and one of her best friends dying, another friend ending up in a coma, multiple Eldritch Abomination attacks on her place of work, yet two more friends being slowly taken away from her by other powers, and having to make sure the department runs in the bargain), her being claimed by the Beholding or both.
Final Girl: Alongside Melanie and Georgie, she's one of three total main characters that make it out of the story alive.
Friend on the Force: To the Archives. She brings Jon tapes that were confiscated during a police investigation so he can listen to them for clues. She later admits that she did it mostly to keep tabs on Jon, but by then she isn't a police officer anymore.
Heroic Willpower: During the Unknowing, she powers through the overwhelming influence of the Stranger, successfully escaping the wax house by herself. Notably, she's the only one who does so without outside aid; Jon had the Eye to help him, and Tim was woken up by Jon.
Hidden Depths: She handles being bound to the Institute better than anyone and seems to quite enjoy researching in the latter's library. As Jon puts it "maybe she just suits the academic life".
Hypocrite:
- She quits the force in protest over how they handled a coverup, despite her having helped Daisy cover up a truly atrocious amount of policebruality.
- In season 4, she considers Jon a monster because of his urges to feed on innocent people by forcing statements out of them and leaving them to suffer the ensuing trauma and threatens him if he does it. At the same time she is actively encouraging Daisy to return to the hunt in order to feed herself, even though Daisy herself doesn't want it.
Mercy Kill: She is forced to keep her promise to kill Daisy after the latter gives in to the Hunt completely in order to defend the Institute employees from Trevor and Julia.
Morality Chain: Her fellow Sectioned cop Daisy Tonner has gone almost full He Who Fights Monsters. Basira is the only reason for the "almost".
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Eventually quits the force, because she's so disgusted at the way her superiors handled a coverup, and says the best way Jon can thank her for her help is for her to never hear about any of this again.
Sole Survivor: In a sense. By the end of the podcast, she is the only one of the Institute employees who both survived the events of the series and did so without grievous bodily harm or severe mental damage, although having to kill Daisy definitely counts for trauma.
Took a Level in Jerkass: While it's reasonably understandable considering everything she goes through, Basira becomes extremely hostile to Jon in Season 4 from the outset, and comes off as unsympathetic to Daisy following her escape from the Buried.
Unwitting Pawn: Elias uses her through all of season 4, feeding her clues and pointers to get Jon in the position he needs him to be in order to be marked by the remaining powers (or in some cases keep her on wild goose chases so she doesn't get in the way).
You Kill It, You Bought It: After she kills Daisy, she functionally inherits her role as a watcher in the post-Change world, hunting for a way to solve things which doesn't exist. According to Jon, she is technically an avatar, and will eventually get a domain of her own.

Daisy Tonner

Alice "Daisy" Tonner

First Mentioned: MAG 061

Voiced by: Fay Roberts

A detective and avatar of the Hunt. The metropolitan police force turns a blind eye to her murderous activities, so long as she keeps hunting other spooks.

Affectionate Nickname: She takes to calling Melanie "Mel". When Melanie says she doesn't like it, Daisy jokingly calls her "Ms. King" instead.
Ambiguously Gay: Her relationship with Basira is deliberately left vague, since confirming it to be romantic would muddle the message, but they do have a very close relationship that can easily be read as romantic.
Body Horror: We don't get much detail about what, exactly, Daisy looks like after she gives herself entirely to the Hunt, but she sounds less human than anything else in the series, and the one detail we get about her mentions "a hundred sharpened teeth."
Disney Death: When Breekon traps her in the Coffin as revenge for her killing Hope in the season 3 finale, the archival staff have reason to believe she's dead - until it's revealed in the middle of season four that she's alive after all, just trapped in the Buried. Jon's able to get her out. After she succumbs to the Hunt, she is killed off for real by Basira in MAG 179.
Fire-Forged Friends: With Jon. She originally hates him, believing that he's one of the monsters she's dedicated her life to hunting (to be fair, she's not entirely wrong); she would have murdered him after finding him with Mike Crew if Basira hadn't intervened. But after he goes into the Coffin to rescue her and the two of them end up trapped in the Buried together for three days, they end up becoming much closer. By the middle of season four, they're arguably the only two members of the Archives that genuinely consider each other friends.
Heel–Face Door-Slam: After her Heel Realization, she makes an attempt at becoming a better person, refusing to hunt any monsters and forming genuine and friendly connections with Jon and Melanie. Then Trevor and Julia invades the Institute, and she has to give in to the Hunt again to protect her friends. What she becomes afterward is everything she hated about herself, and Basira has to Mercy Kill her.
Heel Realization: Spending a lengthy period in the Buried, completely separated from the Hunt, makes her realize how much it had influenced her and heightened her bloodlust her entire life, and decides that she didn't like the person she had become. Once Jon rescues her, she's trying to be better and is a much more pleasant person for it.
He Who Fights Monsters: There is very little except her friendship with Basira separating her from what she hunts. In the Season 3 finale, she goes all the way off the deep end, tearing one of the deliverymen apart with her bare hands, and seems so overcome with bloodlust that she's no longer really a person. As of episode 158, she fully gives into the Hunt in order to defend Basira and Jon as the Institute is invaded by Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert.
Hidden Depths: When cut off from the Hunt's influence, she reveals herself to be a far kinder and more vulnerable person.
Hunter of Monsters: Daisy's whole thing is killing monsters, that is people who have been touched by the Powers. That said she doesn't particularily care to distinguish between willing avatars who spread fear for fun or power, and unfortunate innocents caught up in it.
Laughing Mad: Daisy's reaction to the Unknowing is to go berserk while laughing maniacally.
Killed Off for Real: After her Disney Death in Season 4, she's killed for real by Basira in season 5, after fully succumbing to the Hunt.
Killer Cop: She was when she was on the force, performing illegal killing of people involved with the supernatural. Under Elias, it's also implied that she gets up to some rather murderous activities, though by that point she's not a cop anymore.
Morality Chain: For all her faults, she does genuinely care about her partner, and agrees to work for Elias because he claims Basira would die if she killed him, and so she can stay close to her.
My God, What Have I Done?: It's not something she talks about a lot, but after she's rescued from the Coffin, incarceration in which significantly lessened the Hunt's hold over her, she clearly feels bad about what she did while serving it, particularly because she abused her position as a police officer.
Only Known by Their Nickname: Her first name is actually Alice- Daisy is a nickname based on a flower-shape scar she has. It's very easy to forget this.
Police Brutality: Very much so, to the point of having a secret gravesite in the woods for her victims.
Rabid Cop: Even when she wasn't outright murdering suspects, she was this, hounding ex-cons and people she believed "deserved" to be locked up and using "operational discretion" as an excuse to ignore due process. More than a few times she's compared to a rabid dog.
Resurrection Sickness: After she's trapped in the Buried for six months, she's extremely weak and has to undergo months of physical therapy - partly because she'd been unable to move for an extended period of time, and partly because she's lost her connection to the Hunt.
Sociopathic Hero: Kills monsters, but mostly because she likes killing. However, her love for murder is exacerbated by the Hunt, and she expresses regret for her actions after she stops serving it.
Unwitting Pawn: Elias specifically requested that she be assigned to investigating Gertrude and Jurgen's deaths so she would be likely to threaten or hurt Jon, thus marking him with the Hunt.

Peter Lukas

Peter Lukas, Avatar of the Lonely

First Mentioned: MAG 033

Voiced by: Alasdair Stuart

A member of the Lukas family, servant of the Lonely and new head of the Magnus Institute. Appears to be on good terms with Elias.

At Least I Admit It: He's quite upfront with the fact that, yes, given the chance, he will absolutely throw the world to the Lonely. But that can't happen for a while, so there's no reason not to be civil!
The Bet: He likes to make wagers with people; Simon Fairchild speculates that it's because it allows him to easily form temporary partnerships to people without having to get close to them in any way.
Break Them by Talking: Rather different than Elias' specialty of Mind Rape. Peter, an avatar of the Lonely, tries to do this to Jon once he steps into his "space" to rescue Martin- After Jon initially fails to convince Martin to leave, Peter appears and tells him Martin "made his choice", and that Jon's just as guilty for causing him to make it as he is. He then rubs salt in the wound by asking where Jon's other friends are, forcing him to admit they're either dead, presumed dead, or simply want nothing more to do with him. Peter then claims Jon's the "last one standing", and that while he'd prefer him to leave, it'd be better for him to stay since he can't hurt anyone else if he does. Jon almost does, given his self-deprecation through season - but unfortunately for Peter, Jon doesn't, and instead uses his Archivist powers to force him to answer his questions, eventually leading to Peter breaking himself by talking.
The Captain: Of the Tundra.
Fair-Play Villain: Peter may be a monstrous servant of a god of loneliness, but he's also an avid gambler, and so a level of fairness is inevitable in many of his interactions. While he explains that this allows him a way to interact and maintain contact with people without feeling any mutual bond, it has the side effect of making those people who he's targeted and managed to survive come away far richer than they were before. Carter Chilcot noted that while he never heard back from Lukas, he still got his full pay, and when Carlita Sloane survived her brief tenure aboard the Tundra she walked away with a fifty thousand pound check. The only exception to this is his bet with Elias, where when he realizes he's lost he flees to his Pocket Dimension and takes Martin with him.
Faux Affably Evil: Peter is outwardly pleasant and polite to people he meets, but his veneer of civility does little to hide his monstrous actions; like Simon Fairchild, Peter will speak kindly to someone as he feeds them to his patron, dooming them to a lifetime of isolation and horror with a smile on his face merely for slighting him, or for no reason at all. Paying attention to his conversations with Martin shows that his actual words below the polite tones are cruel and dismissive, and the finale of season 4 shows that all his benevolent behavior was merely a means of Gaslighting Martin into believing Peter's lies about the Extinction so he would murder Jonah Magnus and destroy the Institute.
Giver of Lame Names: He admits that the name for his ritual, The Silence, was rather uninspired, and that he mostly just came up with it because he assumed a name was required.
Godzilla Threshold: How he tries to justify his actions to Martin. Yes, he wants to remake the world in the image of a horrifying incarnation of fear itself. But seeing as the Extinction wants to eradicate all of humanity forever, he and the Institute have a mutual interest in keeping the world going.
Karmic Death: Under the effects of Jon's Beholding powers, Peter's forced to forced to interact with another person face to face, something he detests.
Kick the Dog: His first appearance has him dooming a random man to eternal isolation for no apparent reason.
Meet the New Boss: After Elias is incarcerated at the end of S3, Peter takes over the administration of the Magnus Institute. He's hardly more interested in Institute safety than Elias was.
No Social Skills: Played with. Despite serving an entity based on a fear of loneliness and isolation, he isn't strictly speaking bad in conversations and is very polite and friendly to people he works with (unless he's being confronted, in which case his friendly facade can drop); it's just that he doesn't like engaging with people directly if he can avoid it.
Painting the Medium: When he talks to Martin, the recording makes loud, whirring sounds, as if the reels are being spun out of sync.
The Power of Apathy: Peter's powers literally come from Apathy as a servant of the Lonely.
Villainous Friendship:
- Has this, or at the very least, Villainous Professional Respect, with Elias.
- He seems to have a similar relationship with Simon Fairchild, of The Vast, both belonging to families with close ties to one of the powers (though the Fairchilds aren't related by blood) and their respective fears are closely connected. The Lukases and Fairchilds were both involved (along with members of The Dark) in the creation of the space station Daedalus. They at least know each other well enough to make bets with each other.

Administration

Elias Bouchard

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Voiced by: Ben Meredith

The head of the Magnus Institute and Jon's superior.

Ambiguously Human: An avatar of the Beholding, one of the Powers. Although he looks human, he's just as monstrous as Jane Prentiss or Michael.
The Bad Guy Wins: In MAG 160, he successfully completes a ritual that brings not just Beholding, but all the Powers into the world.
Bait the Dog: For much of season 3, even after he's been revealed as the killer of Gertrude and Leitner, he still does a good job of coming across as sincere in his desire to save the world, if shady in how he does so. He fawns over Jon's progress with the Eye, is patient with the Archive staff's disobedience, and is even willing to let Melanie go with a warning when she tries to kill him. The archive crew doesn't believe him, but the audience is given ample reason to believe he may simply be a Creepy Good Well-Intentioned Extremist. And then he shows Melanie her father's death in all its gory detail. Very little doubt remains after this point of what kind of man he really is.
Boxed Crook: After the crew manages to put him in jail, he rapidly gains favor and privileges by using his Beholding powers to help catch other criminals.
Devil in Plain Sight: Head of the Magnus Institute. Also murdered Gertrude Robinson and Jurgen Leitner, and is not only a vessel for the Eye but actually Jonah Magnus.
Didn't Think This Through: His grand ritual as well. When he taunts Jon, he basically admits that he already has everything he would want out of it; he has an effective means of maintaining immortality and has guaranteed safety from anyone else's rituals. In fact, he knew that he had all of this before he even started grooming Jon for the ritual! In the end, he dies in a far worse situation than he would have had to deal with had he not simply allowed things to run their course. Both of these failures to think things through do go back to his patron, admittedly.
Faux Affably Evil: Perfectly civil with his underlings, even when they tell him to shove it or try to murder him repeatedly. However, he is more than happy to psychically torture people at the drop of a hat as well.
From Nobody to Nightmare: Was once an ordinary archival assistant. People who knew him then are honestly shocked that he's now the Head of the Institute. Turns out this is both averted and actually Foreshadowing, as the "Elias" the audience knows is actually a bodyhopping Jonah Magnus. The real Elias Bouchard has been dead for years.
Mind Rape: One of his more insidious powers is to force traumatic visions into the minds of his victim, doing this to Melanie by showing her how much pain her father was in when he died, and to Martin by letting him know exactly why his mother always seemed distant and resentful of him.
The Nicknamer: He always calls Basira "Detective", despite her not being an actual detective. When she asks why, he says he just likes the sound of it.
Not Me This Time: He claims that, while he took advantage of it, Melanie being infected by the Slaughter was entirely her own doing.
Not So Omniscient After All: For all his abilities, Elias is unable know everything and has a limited amount of focus. Basira talks to Elias to distract him from Jon and Daisy planning how to get rid of him.
Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He's insistent to his staff (and Jon in particular) that every unethical or cruel thing he does is to protect the archives and prevent The End of the World as We Know It. No one really believes him, and he pretty transparently has ulterior motives, but what they are is a mystery for most of the show. Eventually he admits to Jon that he never had noble goals; he always wanted to end the world to secure his immortality, and the only reason he wanted the other rituals stopped was just so no one else could do it first.
Obstructive Bureaucrat: Why, yes, he murdered two people and sees all of his employees as disposable, but that doesn't mean you get to duck out of paperwork.
Elias: Oh, that reminds me. Make sure you keep any receipts for expenses, assuming you wish to claim them back.
Jon: And assuming we don’t, you know, die.
Elias: Yes. If you die, I’m afraid you probably won’t be able to claim your expenses. Now, if you’ll excuse me?
The Omniscient: His Beholding powers seem to extend to knowing people's deepest secrets, such as the incident mentioned in Break Them by Talking. Although he says he doesn't know everything, because it would be "exhausting", suggesting he knows things that pertain to him (like Melanie's murder attempt) or that he specifically looks for.
Play-Along Prisoner: He only went to jail because it was convenient for his plans (being away from Jon meant Jon couldn't accidentally read his mind and find out his master plan) and just walks out when he decides he needs to be back at the Institute.
Really 700 Years Old: Is actually Jonah Magnus, founder of the Magnus Institute, using the body of Elias.
Squishy Wizard: He has great powers of omniscience and telepathy granted to him by the Eye, but it doesn't give him any special advantages in a physical fight. When Melanie goes to stab him to death, he relies on Jon to talk her down.

Rosie Zampano

First Mentioned: MAG 11

Voiced by: Hannah Brankin

Elias' assistant.

Bystander Syndrome: Episode 192 ("An Appointment") revealed that she suspected more than once during her time as Elias' assistant that something was up and thought about speaking up and doing something to help the others, but was afraid to lose her job and didn't. After the Change, her torment consists of knowing she is cloes enough to Jonah to do something but terrified of what will happen if she does.
Embarrassing Nick Name: She was called "Nosy Rosie" as a child, which Elias used during her interview to unsettle her.
Final Girl: She's one of only four named characters known for sure to have survived the events of the series.
Improperly Paranoid: Her story in Episode 192 ("An Appointment") suggests that she was married before coming to work at the Institute, but it was ended by her paranoia.
Locked Out of the Loop: She is never involved in the ongoing drama with the others much and it isn't made clear if she is even aware of the supernatural events, until Episode 192 ("An Appointment"), when she is revealed to have gradually figured out that something was off about Elias.
Satellite Character: For most of the podcast, she doesn't get much characterization outside of being Elias' assistant.
Vague Age: Her exact age is never brought up, but she's at least old enough to have been married and divorced.

Jonah Magnus

First Mentioned: MAG 023

The founder and namesake of the Magnus Institute.

Ambiguously Gay: Has no explicit relationships, but many of the statements written as letters for him (all written by men) imply that there was something between them and Jonah, often calling him "dear Jonah" and telling how much they miss him.
Big Bad: Arguably shares this with The Web. Throughout the series, he manipulates Jonathan into fulfilling his role as The Archivist and arranges many of the encounters Jonathan has with the other power's. All so he may enact a ritual which will summon all of the powers at once, and rule over what remains of the world for eternity.
Forced to Watch: A twisted inversion. His friend, Barnabas Bennett, crossed one of the Lukases and writes to him for help. Magnus chose to do nothing, not out of malice or an inability to help, but because he wanted to see what would happen to Barnabas.
Immortality Immorality: Explains in "The Eye Opens" (Episode 160) that his whole goal in summoning the Powers into the world is so he himself can become immortal and rule over what's left of Earth.
Karmic Death: He bludgeons Jurgen Leitner to death at the end of Season 2, and his ultimate drive was to cheat death; at the end of Season 5, Jon savagely beats him as he begs for mercy, and he's stabbed to death even as he's pleading that he doesn't want to die.
Kill and Replace: He overwrites the bodies of those he intends to possess when he places his eyes in their sockets, and poses as the overwritten character while they are promoted to his Head of Institute position.
Laser-Guided Karma: He sustained himself throughout the centuries by killing and possessing the bodies of his employees, all so he could eventually enact a ritual that would damn the rest of the world and make him immortal. While he succeeded, he gets caught up in the Eye with his mind and personality violently taken over, and what's left of him is forced to watch and recount a perpetual vision of terror.
The Omniscient: After his failed attempt at the Watcher's Crown, he found that he could turn his sight anywhere he wished. This trait remained even as he hopped between various bodies over the years, so long as his actual body remained in the panopticon.
Parasitic Immortality: Magnus takes over the bodies of successive hosts by transferring his eyes into their sockets.
Posthumous Character: He's long dead by the start of the story. Or at least his original body is. Sort of.
Soul Jar: Though his mind no longer resides in his original body, destroying it will kill him.
Walking Spoiler: Talking about him in any detail inevitably moves to the topic of how he founded the Magnus Institute in service to Beholding, as well as the fact that he's actually Elias Bouchard.
Villainous Breakdown: In the finale, once it becomes clear that Jon is legitimately going to kill him, all his smugness vanishes and the immortal mastermind demigod is reduceded to helplessly, desperately begging for his life.
Voice of the Legion: Magnus's voice is this blended with radio static when Jon experiences a flashback of Elias's interview with him.

Spoiler Character

Elias Bouchard

First Mentioned: MAG 001

The real Elias Bouchard, whose body was taken over by Jonah Magnus.

Brilliant, but Lazy: Specifically described as such in-universe by his own father, who wanted to avoid having his son become an Idle Rich.
Eye Scream: The ritual through which Jonah Magnus took over his body apparently involved removing his eyes and, presumably, replacing them with his own.
Friendless Background: When he was hired for a research position at the Institute, he was basically alone in the world, with his parents dead, as was his only other known close friend, Allan Schrieber.
I Just Want to Be Normal: Elias apparently envied students from lesser, non-elite families that did not have such immense expectations thrust upon them.
I Just Want to Be Special: Episode 193 ("A Stern Look") revealed that Elias came from a privileged family and his classist father taught him that he was special and better than others and had to work hard to prove it. Unfortunately, later in life, Elias either wasn't academically inclined or wasn't dedicated enough to put in the work and performed disappointingly in his studies. He still felt like he was somehow entitled to a higher position in life and thought the position at the Institute would be a stepping stone to that goal.
Mind Rape: Magnus subjected him to this over the course of an interview for a position with the Institute, to such a degree that Elias feels convinced he must heed the call he feels to the Beholding even though he does not understand why it called him and even after he feels horrific images coursing through them.
Posthumous Character: Is long-since dead when the story begins.
The Stoner: During his university years, he was a bit of a pothead.

Gertrude's Assistants

Fiona Law

First Mentioned: MAG 29

A former Archival Assistant who worked under Head Archivist Angus Stacey, and later his successor, Gertrude Robinson.

And I Must Scream: Her ultimate fate was to be pushed into the Coffin by Emma Harvey, a fate which fainting wouldn't save her from. Since the Buried is loathe to give up its victims, one can assume that she's still down there.
Cowardly Lion: She's noted to have been an odd mix of curious and cowardly, as she would always push forward to learn as much as possible but turn tail and run the second it became obvious that there was any real danger.
Dramatically Missingthe Point: She was locked in with the horrors so often that she concluded that spontaneously locking doors was a sign of the Powers manifesting. She never considered that her coworker Emma might be locking them intentionally.
Early-Bird Cameo: She's first mentioned in episode 29, 138 episode before her story would be fully explained.
Faint in Shock: She tended to faint whenever she was terrified, which actually saved her from a lot of encounters with the Powers; An unconscious person isn't afraid, so killing them doesn't benefit them in any way.
Fatal Flaw: Curiosity. Despite being scared to the point of unconsciousness again and again, she just couldn't help but push further into the unknown to learn more.
Make It Look Like an Accident: Her cause of death mentioned in episode 29 is complications during a liver transplant. Episode 167 reveals that she was actually pushed into the Coffin by Emma.
Opt Out: Defied. It's mentioned that Angus' death could have freed her from the Eye, but she chose to stay on as Gertrude's assistant voluntarily.
Posthumous Character: The first time she's mentioned is also the same episode where we learn that she died over a decade prior.
Sole Survivor: She was the last surviving assistant from the previous Archivist before Gertrude and his ill-fated attempt at re-defining the Dread Powers. That said, she did not survive Gertrude's tenure.
Unwitting Test Subject: She was unaware until her final day that Emma was using her as a guinea pig.

Emma Harvey (Unmarked Spoilers)

Emma Harvey

First Mentioned: MAG 154

A former Archival Assistant who worked under Gertrude.

Affably Evil: Eric mentions her as someone who was nice to him, contrasting her against Gertrude, implying that she was a rather pleasant person when not sacrificing her coworkers to the Dread Powers out of morbid curiosity. This would also explain why neither Fiona nor Sarah suspected her.
The Confidant: Described as having been this for Gertrude, the only person she would trust enough to talk about her plans with and the only one who knew about her and Agnes' connection. This trust was part of the reason Gertrude never suspected her of treachery.
Dirty Coward: For all her curiosity and willingness to get her hands dirty to learn something new, Emma seems to have drawn the line at anything that would put her in actual danger. She only ever used her coworkers as test subjects, and avoided Eric specifically because Mary Keay, someone much more dangerous, had already claimed him.
Face Death with Dignity: As she burned to death, she refused to give the fire the satisfaction of being afraid.
For Science!: The only stated reason she had for pushing her coworkers into horrible and dangerous situations was out of curiosity, just to see what the Dread Powers would do.
Karmic Death: The woman who kept secrets from Gertrude died without ever realizing that she arranged her death. She also got Sarah killed by way of the Desolation, and was herself killed by Agnes, the Desolation's messiah.
Posthumous Character: She's been dead for a few years by the time she's mentioned, killed by Agnes Montague at Gertrude's behest.
The Resenter: Not explicitly stated, but it's strongly implied that she was resentful of Fiona and Sarah. At least part of her motivation for pushing Fiona and Sarah into dangerous situations seems to have been that both had an uncanny nack for getting out of them, and Jon mentions that Emma was "desperate" to see Sarah consumed by the Spiral, and disappointed when she survived.
Sadist: Apparently her entire motivation for taking Sarah as her unwitting test subject was to find out how much horror it would take to break her.
Token Evil Teammate: While Gertrude was no saint herself, Emma was far worse, letting her friends and coworkers die just to satisfy her curiosity.
Touched by Vorlons: She was, if not an avatar, then at least influenced enough by the Web to start manifesting physical signs of it, and had to wash cobwebs out of her hair every day from the day she lied to Gertrude about Fiona's death. The Web supplied her with whatever she needed to keep her true business secret from Gertrude.
Walking Spoiler: It's very hard to discuss her, since she's only discussed (outside of a single mention of her first name) in a single episode way into the fifth season.

Eric Delano

First Mentioned: MAG 62

Voiced by: Richard Soames

A former Archival Assistant who worked under Gertrude, husband of Mary Keay, and father of Gerard Keay.

Deader than Dead: Gertrude burned his page after he gave his statement and told her how to quit, on his own request.
Eye Scream: How he quit the Institute. According to him it's sufficient to destroy your eyesight (pointing out that one could do that without destroying the eyes with acid), but he went all out and destroyed his eyes entirely.
Good Parents: Part of why he wanted to quit the Institute is so he could be there for his son. Sadly, he never got the chance.
Nightmare Fetishist: Downplayed. Eric seems to have been pretty normal all things considered, but he describes Mary as beautiful in the same way a shark is beautiful, and his attraction apparently didn't lessen after learning she was a murderer.
Posthumous Character: He's been dead for a few years by the time we hear about him and his only statement is given posthumously.
Precursor Heroes: Downplayed in that he is hardly a hero (quite the opposite given that he helped Mary Keay with her business), but his work to discover a way to sever his connection to the Beholding is later used by Melanie to finally quit the Institute.
Offscreen Moment of Awesome: He somehow discovered how to sever ones connection to the Eye, something not even Gertrude could figure out.
The Resenter: His statement makes it clear that he is not fond of Gertrude, in particular her tendency to keep secrets and gaslight her assistants into thinking they were imagining whatever supernatural happenings occurred around them. Part of what drew him to Mary was that she was at the very least honest about being a horrible person.
Screw Destiny: As far as we know, Eric is the only person bound to the Eye that has fully managed to sever himself from its influence, a feat that would later be replicated by Melanie.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He was killed by Mary after he blinded himself, since she had no use of a blind husband.

Michael Shelley

First Mentioned: MAG 26

Voiced by: Luke Booys

A former archival assistant who worked under Gertrude Robinson, brought on to replace the late Fiona Law.For the entity he became afterward, see Michael/Helen under servants of the Spiral.

Ambiguous Situation: It's very vague how much of Michael is still alive inside the Distortion. It could be him driven mad, it could be an entity wearing his body, it could be a poorly made copy, or anything in between.
The Baby of the Bunch: Michael is described as too young to work as an archival assistant, and it's specifically mentioned that Sarah, who was hired after him, was older.
Et Tu, Brute?: He was betrayed by Gertrude, his boss whom he trusted a great deal. The betrayal hit him so hard that it carries over into the Distortion's poor recreation of him, manifesting as anger towards the Archivist.
Irony: Michael was kept wholly unaware of the supernatural as part of Emma's experiments, yet he's the only one who became something like an avatar, while Fiona and Sarah simply died (or worse).
Locked Out of the Loop: Done on purpose. Emma wanted to know how long a person could be kept in the dark while working directly with the supernatural. As it turns out, their entire life, however short that may be.
Unwitting Test Subject: Like Fiona and Sarah, he was used as part of Emma's experiments. Unlike them, he was not used to observe the Powers, but rather how long someone could be kept in the dark about the supernatural.

Sarah Carpenter

First Mentioned: MAG 27

A former archival assistant who worked under Gertrude Robinson, brought on to replace the late Eric Delano.

Determinator: Sarah was described as having had a fire to her, which gave her an uncanny nack for getting out of encounters untouched. It's mentioned that she spent an entire night staring up into the night sky with a Vast-possessed book, or sleeping in a house haunted by the Spiral, and got out perfectly fine both times. Even her untimely death was not due to a failing of character, but simply being caught off-guard by a monster of the Desolation.
Early-Bird Cameo: She's mentioned as early as in episode 27 as having followed up on Paul MacKenzie's statement, making her the earliest appearing of Gertrude's assistants (aside from Michael).
Exotic Eye Designs: After an incident in which she stayed under a night sky mapping the stars with a book implied to have been touched by the Vast, one could glimpse the reflections of uncanny constellations in her eyes.
Famous Last Words: "Hello? I’m from –” Said moments before a monster of the Desolation burned her to death and consumed the ashes.
Last of Her Kind: She was the last new archival assistant hired by Gertrude, as she would never have another.
Posthumous Character: Already dead by the time the series starts.
Unwitting Test Subject: Emma used her the same way she used Fiona, pushing her into dangerous situations just to see what would happen.

Gerard Keay

First Mentioned: MAG 004

Voiced by: Jon Gracey

A young man heavily involved in the supernatural. The son of Mary Keay, he appears in numerous statements at various stages of his life including after his own death.

Affectionate Nickname: “I always wanted my friends to call me Gerry”. Tellingly, whenever Jon talks about him after meeting his skin book spirit, he usually refers to him as "Gerry".
Ambiguous Situation:
- The exact nature of his connection to the Eye is never elaborated upon. Gertrude implies that the Beholding is fond of him and he occasionally displayed the Archivist ability to know things he should not have, such as being able to detect that the statement giver in MAG 48 was marked by the Lonely. His tattoos also seemed to protect him against the abilities of other Avatars. Despite this, he never actually joined the Institute and only assisted Gertrude as a freelancer.
- There's also the circumstances around his death. While traveling with Gertrude, Gerard had a massive seizure and when brought to a hospital, they discover he's dying of a brain tumor. However, neither Gertrude or Gerry can explain to the doctors why he didn't seek any treatment and it's implied he might not have displayed any symptoms before. So did he die of natural circumstances or was there something supernatural about it? Was the Eye perhaps protecting him from certain death, similar to how the Hunt kept Trevor alive? And if so, why did it decide to let him die?
Badass Bookworm: Though not enough of the latter to stop him from destroying dangerous ones, his mother gave him a very particular form of homeschooling and however it happened he's noted to be a lot stronger than he looks. Enough so that Word of God has described him as a "scrawny goth bookworm" when teasing listeners getting Gerard and Jared confused.
Deader than Dead: Gerard died of brain cancer, then had his soul bound to the skin book. In exchange for his help, Gerard demands that Jon burn his page, thus rendering him really, really and eternally dead. Probably.
Disappeared Dad: His father was once one of Gertrude's assistants at the Magnus Institute. His mother killed him after he finally found a way to "quit" to raise Gerard.
Goth: Described as one by Jurgen Leitner.
Hero of Another Story: Unusually for recurring characters in statements not directly tied to the archives. Most of his appearences are either helping someone during their brush with the supernatural or getting rid of the things that cause the troubles in the first place. To the point it's revealed he did get directly linked to the institute, helping Gertrude stop The Unknowing.
He's Just Hiding: Though Gerard has been legally dead for several years, Jon stubbornly refers to his death as alleged. Considering Jon's intuitive abilities as Archivist he's probably on to something. In season 3 it is confirmed that he is indeed dead, but not gone, having been bound to the skin book against his will.
I Just Want to Have Friends: Implied to be a Type B. See the Affectionate Nickname entry for an example.
Mr. Exposition: Spends half of his statement laying out the ways that the Powers function.
My Beloved Smother: His mother decided even before he was born that he would follow in her steps. He eventually rebels and goes out of his way to track and destroy any Leitner book he can find.
Necromancer: Helped bind his mother to a magical book of undeath which he himself is now bound to.
Pet the Dog: He probably has the most of these out of anyone involved with the Powers, repeatedly saving civilians from A Fate Worse Than Death.
Phrase Catcher: When he appears in a statement he's often described as having poorly dyed black hair and likely wearing black or something leather. Even outside of statements Jon correctly identifies him as being Leitner's "angry goth" due to how consistent his appearance has been and tendency to show up where Leitners were involved.
Power Tattoo: When he was badly burned a nurse noted that the eye tattoos he had on every joint on his body were the only areas of skin undamaged from the neck down. Considering what eyes represent in this series and his apparent ties to it they are likely a lot more than just an aesthetic choice.
Who Wants to Live Forever?: One of the first things he demands upon being summoned by Jon is that Jon burn his page, effectively killing him. Jon reluctantly agrees.

Recurring Characters

Characters who do not work at the Magnus Institute, but play a prominent role nonetheless:

Adelard Dekker

First Mentioned: MAG 077

A friend and colleague of Gertrude Robinson's. He shows up in several statements, cataloging and fighting against servants of the Powers.

Anti-Hero: He's willing to do some very unscrupulous things for the sake of protecting the world from the supernatural.
Badass Normal: Through all of his accounts there is no indication that Dekker was anything more or less than human; at several moments he lamented his lack of Fear-given powers that would make his job easier. Nonetheless, through cunning, ingenuity, and cold-bloodedness he managed to disable, trap, or even kill numerous monsters and avatars much stronger than him.
Big Good: While he's a bit unscrupulous about it, he is a fundamentally heroic and moral figure, even more so than Gertrude. While Gertrude is only in it to stop the rituals and doesn't care about anything else, Adelard is out to protect the little guys from the horrors of the world.
Black and Nerdy: One of the few recurring characters to have an explicitly defined race and no less academically inclined than most of the main cast. Describes himself as being an avid reader since childhood.
Good Is Not Nice: Though not kind, or empathetic, or merciful, he might be the employee of the Archives that can be best counted on to do the right thing.
Hidden Depths: Despite his occasionally brutal and cold-blooded way of operating, he is revealed to be at least somewhat religious in "Rotten Core" (Episode 157). He also decides that one victim he interviews has had enough horror and protects their identity from Gertrude and a life of nightmares.
Occult Detective: Has shades of this, aiding individuals who have encountered the supernatural and taking it upon himself to destroy or contain certain entities.
Pragmatic Hero: Dekker was firmly on the side of good, but ruthlessly pragmatic in his hunts; his first appearance had him leave a man to die rather than try to save him from the avatar of the End that was killing him, because Dekker knew there was no point in picking a fight he couldn't win. Even his dying moments showed this attitude; when he decided to Mercy Kill both himself and the other victims of Amherst's final plague, he chose fire for the job instead of something more merciful, because it would make it easier for the ECDC to clean up the plague site.
Posthumous Character: According to "Rotten Core" (Episode 157), he died in 2013, fighting a manifestation of The Corruption.
Sadist: When he lobotomizes a servant of The End, the description he gives of it is... very detailed.

Georgie Barker

First Mentioned: MAG 028

Voiced by: Sasha Sienna

The host of the popular What The Ghost! podcast, and colleague of Melanie King. Had a relationship with Jon Sims at one point that didn’t end well. They seem to have made up.

Amicable Exes: Is friendly enough with Jon to let him crash at her place indefinitely. When they later have a falling out, it's only because Georgie recognizes he's going to continue on a self-destructive path and decides to set boundaries to protect herself.
Anti-Magic: Her total inability to feel fear means that none of the Powers have any claim on her, and she can even pull people out (although not too many, or the Powers counterattack).
Cult: Episode 189 ("Peers") revealed that she and Melanie have been pulling victims out of domains and hiding them in the old tunnels; because of Georgie's inability to feel fear, they apparently see her as some kind of Messiah figure and have formed what Georgie and Melanie both call a cult around her.
Fearless Fool: Averted. She is well aware that her inability to feel fear could lead her to make reckless decisions and get other people hurt. Her attempts to correct for this actually make her too cautious sometimes, which Melanie gently chides her for.
Has a Type: Given her relationships with Jon and Melanie, her type is apparently paranormal academics, which fits with her own interest in the subject. Both her partners were also turned into avatars of the dread powers against their will.
Heroic BSoD: Suffered this after an encounter with an avatar of The End, and never regains her ability to feel fear.
Morality Chain: To Melanie, as Georgie is the person who convinced her to go to therapy and overall supported her as she recovered from nearly becoming an avatar. In season 5, Melanie remarks that she might have killed the people they rescued from the domains if Georgie wasn't there.
Muggle Best Friend: She's the only major character who is not associated with any Powers and, aside from a minor encounter in her youth, has no foot in the supernatural world. She actively refuses to get involved in anything dangerously supernatural, even cutting contact with Jon when he gets too deep into it, and only remaining in contact with Melanie because she's actively trying to get out.
Final Girl: She's one of only three surviving main characters of the entire series, alongside Melanie and Basira.
Official Couple: With Melanie, starting from season 4.
Unfazed Everyman: Her response to Jon’s revelations about the existence of monsters and the Powers, and the fact that he is beholden to one is essentially "okay”. Justified as an encounter with the avatar of the End removed her ability to feel fear.

Jurgen Leitner

First Mentioned: MAG 004

Voiced by: Paul Sims

A rich Scandinavian eccentric who would pay exorbitant sums for various books. Unfortunately, the books in question were... Rather unsettling.

As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Despite being Norwegian by birth, his given name is spelled the German way (In Norwegian, it's "Jørgen") and his last name also sounds more German.
Be Careful What You Wish For: He put custom bookplates with the name of his library at the front of every book he tried to contain, ostensibly to make them easier to track if they got out, but ultimately because he hoped that the library would eventually become famous and his name would be known the world over. It's safe to say that when both of those things happened, they did not happen the way he had hoped.
Big Damn Heroes: His first in-the-flesh appearance in the podcast is rescuing Jon from Not-Sasha in Episode 79.
But Not Too Foreign: Despite being initially presented as a "Scandinavian recluse", speaks with a British accent and admits that he barely knows any Norwegian; apparently, he and his family emigrated to England when he was very young and English has always been his first language.
Character Death: Beaten to death by Elias at the end of Season 2.
Collector of the Strange: The foremost collector of esoteric and rare books linked to the Powers.
Decoy Antagonist: Set up as a shadowy figure of influence in the first two seasons, and is hinted to be responsible for the various tomes bearing his name. When he finally appears in season 2 , he is revealed as a vain, somewhat pathetic old man whose only real power was his ungodly amounts of money.
Didn't Think This Through: Built his library to contain the incalculable power of the books held within it. The thought that the defenses should also be outside never occurred to him.
Failure Hero: His goals in setting up his library, while selfish in some ways, were ultimately noble: he wanted to make sure that the horribly dangerous books connected to the Powers weren't causing damage in the greater world. His failure to realize that there might be people (for lack of a better word) who would want the books out in the world led to his downfall. It's not outright stated, but it's implied that his efforts to search out lost tomes for his library simply allowed far more books out into circulation once the library was destroyed.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: He mentions that his only real talent was shopping, but goes on to explain that's more impressive than it sounds: Leitner had an uncanny knack for not only tracking down supernatural items (specializing books out of scholarly vanity), but for convincing their owners to part with them. Part of this had to do with his resources, but it also required no small amount of networking, social adroitness, and determination. If he had been ethical enough to use his abilities and fortune to fight the supernatural instead of just hoarding evil books, he could have been a genuine force to be reckoned with through the power of smart shopping.
Magic Librarian: The closest thing to one that exists in the series, anyway — though his magical books are the true source of his supernatural abilities, and the library he created is less whimsical and more terrifying.
Mr. Exposition: Most of his brief time appearing directly in the show is spent explaining the cosmic horor metaphysics that drive the setting.
Non-Idle Rich: Was fantastically wealthy enough to do nothing with his life, but chose to become one of these, collecting all the books he could get his hands on.
Pride: Admits that this was his primary sin, in thinking he could contain all his books.
Spanner in the Works: Leitner's appearance at the end of season 2 is the first time Elias appears to have been genuinely caught off-guard, nearly spoiling his plans entirely by revealing too much to Jon too early, and forcing him to act rashly.
Tome of Eldritch Lore: He collects these, and marks them with his insignia — or he did, until the Powers' servants collectively trashed his library and scattered the so-called "Leitners" across the globe for unsuspecting civilians to come upon.
We Have Reserves: Had a very cavalier attitude towards the lives of his assistants.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Subverted. He mentions that he told himself that he was collecting the books to act as a sort of "reverse Pandora", keeping the public safe from them by containing them and studying them. Marking the books as "Leitners" was ostensibly to make them easier to recapture if any got out, but he admits deep down he'd always hoped people would learn of his collection and be suitably awestruck. It was all about pride in the end.
What the Hell Is That Accent?: A few statements describe him as having spoken in a strange accent. When he appears in person, and speaks fluent English with a British accent, he admits that he did it as an inside joke to himself.

Mary Keay

First Mentioned: MAG 004

Voiced by: Carrie Cohen

The owner of Pinhole Books and mother of Gerard Keay.

Abusive Parents: Gerard has very little nice to say about her, as she had him help her in truly despicable actions from an early age and seems to have treated him more like a servant and road to building a dynasty. She also claims that her father committing suicide was the best thing he did for her family, but given that she's a truly vile woman it might be that she just didn't like him for other reasons.
Bald of Evil: She keeps her head shaven in undeath, which may be because she can't actually grow hair.
Came Back Wrong: In her opinion. She blamed Gerard for not helping her complete the ritual that she killed herself doing since her "immortality" wasn't quite what she wanted. Unlike other bound spirits it sounds like she didn't need to be summoned to exist, but she also couldn't stay that way indefinitely.
Connected All Along: She's the descendant of Albrecht von Closen, an associate of Jonah Magnus, on her mother's side.
Deader than Dead: Gertrude and Gerard burned her page in the skin book, destroying her for good.
Deal with the Devil: Averted. She isn't bound to any of the Powers, instead dabbling with all of them as needed.
Even Evil Has Standards: In a weird way; when she was young, she discovered that a doctor in her neighborhood was killing people and turning them into skin books - and was greatly offended that the doctor had this kind of power and only used it to get financial information from the book spirits.
Human Notepad: Postmortem example, when she's seen after her "death" she's described as having a lot of tattoos written in Sanskrit. Given how that's the language of choice for the skin book's rituals it's likely a side effect from binding herself to it in an attempt to achieve a form of immortality.
In the Blood: Attempted to invoke this, as her son theorizes that she wanted to build a kind of occult dynasty with herself as matriarch. He would have none of it, so those plans fell flat.
Pet the Dog: She's implied to have destroyed any evidence that would convict her son of her death, though this might have been for her own benefit.
Vague Age: She claims to have been 9 years old in 1955, which would put her at 62 years old at the time of her bodily death in 2008. However, MAG 023 mentions that a Mary Keay was born in 1924, making her 84. It's unclear if this was a different Mary Keay, if she lied about her age, or if the author just mixed up the dates.
Thanatos Gambit: She deliberately killed and skinned herself in a ritual that was supposed to give her power over the skin book that contains the souls of the dead. It doesn't seem to have worked properly, possibly because she needed outside assistance and her son was unwilling to help.
The Undead: After her supposed death of overdose, she reappears manning her bookshop, through that statement actually appears before the one revealing her death. It's later revealed that she "survived" through a ritual binding herself to the skin book.
Wicked Witch: She doesn't wear a hat or ride a broom, but fits the bill otherwise. A wicked old woman who used magic to further her evil ends, and cannibalized (in the sense of flaying and using their skin, not literal eating) innocent people to gain more power for herself. Jon and Gerard even remark on it.
Gerry: Reckoned her tradition was less the academic and more the, uh...
Jon: Village witch?
Gerry: Hah. You sure you don't know her?

Mikaele Salesa

First Mentioned: MAG 014

Voiced by: Ray Chong Nee

A black-market fence for paranormal artifacts. Little is known about him beyond the fact that he is Samoan and is quite good at his job.

Affably Evil: He was apparently quite chummy with his crew and is a very friendly host to Jon and Martin when they stay with him for a while in Episodes 180 ("Moving On") and 181 ("Ignorance").
Badass Normal: He's an entirely ordinary human who, at least so far as the listener currently knows, has escaped ill effects from his immensely dangerous wares. He also survived working for Leitner, whose OSHA compliance was apparently as good as his external security, which is to say nil. And he is to date one of the only people who survives extended contact with the Powers and goes out on his own terms.
Black Market: Is willing to buy and sell artifacts, both magic and mundane, of questionable origin.
Benevolent Boss: Surprisingly, the statement giver of Episode 141 ("Doomed Voyage"), who was part of the crew on Salesa's ship for a few years described him as a good boss who treated his workers well, was honest about the legality of the operation and kept things organized. However, he lost quite a few people along the way and he was very strict about only him being allowed inside the cargo bay, throwing a crew member who tried to break into it overboard on one occasion. Episode 115 ("Taking Stock") shows that he used to be far more benevolent, but he gave up on being that chummy of a boss when his ship's cook got ahold of an undisclosed artifact and ended up causing a serious headache...which incidentally is why he stopped letting anyone else look at the merchandise. He was also all too willing to leave his final crew in the lurch, promising them a significant payday for his last job and then abandoning them with nothing but his ship when he went into hiding.
Intangible Price: Some of the items he deals in come with this. Salesa himself deals in cold, hard cash.
Killed Offscreen: In Episode 194 ("Parting"), we learn that Annabella Cane killed Mikaele and took his invsibility-granting camera.
Lack of Empathy: Salesa doesn't remotely care about the damage caused by the artifacts he sells, only caring that he gets paid and letting the buyers take the burden of risk. It's clear from some of the statements featuring him that he isn't heartless, he just can't afford to care about the wellbeing of everyone he sells to if he wants to keep in business.
Large and in Charge: In Episode 141 ("Doomed Voyage"), he is said to have been a "big guy", but never to have used it to intimidate anyone (though it came in handy in case things ever had to get physical).
Not Quite Dead: In Episode 180 ("Moving On"), he turns out to still be alive, somehow, and apparently working with Annabelle Cane in some way.
Posthumous Character: Apparently died circa 2014, if Episode 141 ("Doomed Voyage") is to be believed. Episode 181 reveals that he just faked his death.
Punch-Clock Villain: Unlike some of the other players in the supernatural world, Salesa's actions seem to stem from a desire for profit, rather than evil. That being said, he will happily sell customers immensely harmful objects without bothering to inform them, and he's not above making bets or jokes out of their effects.

Robert Smirke

First Mentioned: MAG 026

A 19th century architect whose works and theories somehow moderate or even nullify some of the effects of the Powers.

Balance of Power: His works and theories give prominence to the balancing of the Powers against one another.
- Which makes sense, given his real-life work in Greek Revival style.
Balance Between Evil And A Slightly Different Kind Of Evil: His architecture was centered around balance, allowing his buildings to serve as effective countermeasures against the influence of the Powers when correctly tended.
Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Smirke is best known for his role in the early 19th century Greek Revival style, as well as his use of concrete foundations. Here, he is a scholar of the arcane, balancing the Powers against one another.
Failure Hero: His attempts to get other prominent intellectuals to join his crusade against the Powers simply led to them becoming powerful minions, his efforts at categorizing and controlling the Powers gave their new servants all the tools they needed to empower them, and his hopes of covering his failures with churches simply led to these churches being aggressively haunted. No matter how noble his goals, everything he did simply strengthened the Powers and left the world a more dangerous place.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His own mission was to contain & control the Powers for the safety of the world, but apparently everyone he brought into his confidence on this mission would themselves become servants of the Powers, going on to cause untold suffering & spreading their influence.
Obsessively Organized: Chastises a former student who forgoes utility for symmetry in his buildings as not being sufficiently obsessed and for using shortcuts.
Historical Domain Character: Sir Robert Smirke (1780-1867), British architect known for his work in 19th Century Greek Revival, most famous for designing the British Museum.
Historical Hero Upgrade: The real Robert Smirke was, as far as we know, a fairly normal architect who didn't do any work battling eldritch abominations.
Horrible Judge of Character: He sincerely believed that the people he was bringing into his confidence would be just as dedicated to combating the Powers as he was, even as his students and counterparts continuously showed that they were far more interested in getting power from their patrons than fighting them. His final moments were spent desperately trying to implore Jonah Magnus to abandon his plans, despite Jonah by many accounts being the worst of them all.
Insufferable Genius: Knew more than any other human about the Powers and was more successful at fighting them than anyone before Gertrude Robinson came along. His theories are still portrayed as being wildly overconfident — Smirke's List, which both in- and out-of-universe is used by nearly everyone as an "official" list of which Powers exist, is repeatedly said to be disastrously oversimplified — and post-Change the Powers themselves have created a mocking Monument to his legacy where his successors are trapped in a cycle of self-destructive futility.
Token Good Teammate: Of the numerous Victorian intellectuals and aristocrats to learn of the Powers, he was the only one not to be taken in by them to any extent, and for all his faults he went to his last day desperately trying to fight them. Deconstructed somewhat, as he was directly responsible for a number of his counterparts finding and succumbing to the Powers, mistakenly believing that they would be as invested in stopping them as he was.

Vampires

First Mentioned: MAG 10

Human-like creatures that kill people by draining the blood out of them. They make some appearances throughout the story, mostly in connection with Trevor Herbert, who has spent the better part of his life hunting and killing them. It's unclear what specific Power they might belong to, if they even belong to a single one, though they exclusively appear in statements involving the Hunt.

More Teeth than the Osmond Family: They have several rows of very sharp teeth.
Our Vampires Are Different: Use their long, bulbous tongues to drain the blood of their victims after using their sharp teeth to rip their throats open.
Starter Villain: They served this purpose for drawing Trevor into the Hunt, and their appearance exclusively in statements involving the Hunt imply that they serve this purpose for many avatars; cutting their teeth on prey that is dangerous, but not too much for an average human to kill, drawing hunters in until they give up their humanity entirely.
Telepathy: Can make telepathic contact with people by making eye contact with them. They're not capable of physical speech due to their gruesome mouths, but their allure means their victims never realize that they're being addressed telepathically, not aloud. Outside observers, which vampires do their best to avoid, can tell that the victim is having a one-sided conversation.

Characters / The Magnus Archives

Edit Locked

The Magnus Institute

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Head Archivists

Jonathan Sims, The Archivist

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Gertrude Robinson

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Angus Stacey

First Mentioned: MAG 167

Jon's Assistants

Martin Blackwood

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Sasha James

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Timothy "Tim" Stoker

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Later Hires

Melanie King

First Mentioned: MAG 028

Basira Hussain

First Mentioned: MAG 043

Alice "Daisy" Tonner

First Mentioned: MAG 061

Peter Lukas, Avatar of the Lonely

First Mentioned: MAG 033

Administration

Elias Bouchard

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Rosie Zampano

First Mentioned: MAG 11

Jonah Magnus

First Mentioned: MAG 023

Elias Bouchard

First Mentioned: MAG 001

Gertrude's Assistants

Fiona Law

First Mentioned: MAG 29

Emma Harvey

First Mentioned: MAG 154

Eric Delano

First Mentioned: MAG 62

Michael Shelley

First Mentioned: MAG 26

Sarah Carpenter

First Mentioned: MAG 27

Gerard Keay

First Mentioned: MAG 004

Recurring Characters

Adelard Dekker

First Mentioned: MAG 077

Georgie Barker

First Mentioned: MAG 028

Jurgen Leitner

First Mentioned: MAG 004

Mary Keay

First Mentioned: MAG 004

Mikaele Salesa

First Mentioned: MAG 014

Robert Smirke

First Mentioned: MAG 026

Vampires

First Mentioned: MAG 10

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