Character page for Netflix's The Midnight Club (2022)
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The Midnight Club
The Midnight Club
- Adaptational Diversity: All five members are white in the book, but of the nine members seen in the series, only Anya and Kevin are white.
- Adaptational Expansion: In the book, it's an Oddly Small Organization, with only four members, despite their being many more patients in the hospice. In the series, it's implied to include all the patients at Brightcliffe.
- Adaptational Mundanity: Inverted. In the book, the club is simply a fun activity started by four patients to make their stay at the hospice more exciting. The agreement to contact each other after death comes only weeks after its founding. In the series, the club was founded 30 years previously by Julia Jayne, originally had some disturbing cultish overtones, and its explicit connection to death and the possibility of an afterlife is a given from the start.
- Age Lift: The club itself is implied to have been around for at least 30 years, and none of the current members have any idea who founded it (though they discover it was Julia Jayne), as it already existed when Spence, who is the oldest patient at the start of the series, started at Brightcliffe. In the book, Spence, Anya, Ilonka, and Kevin all founded it together.
- Littlest Cancer Patient: The teen-variety. All its members are dying, mostly of cancer, but all of them take an emotional beating in the series and survive it.
- No Last Name Given: Ilonka is the only whose last name is spoken onscreen, and her last name does not even appear in the credits. The others all go by their first names.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In the book, the club ceases to exist when Ilonka dies, as she was the sole living member at that point. In the series, the club is explicitly designed to outlive all its current members, as each new patient at Brightcliffe is eventually initiated, meaning it won't disappear when the current roster dies.
Word of God states that the club itself outlives all the patients' stays at Brightcliffe after the story concludes. - To Absent Friends: At the beginning of every meeting of the club, the members give the same toast."To those before. To those after. To us now. And to those beyond. Seen or unseen. Here but not here."
- Tragic Keepsake: Each of them have at least one item that reminds them of something they have lost, usually due to their illness. almost all of them get burned in the failed attempt to use a Paragon ritual to cure Anya.
Ilonka Pawluk
Played by: Iman Benson
Illness: Thyroid Cancer
The series' protagonist. An ace high school student and foster child, who recently lost her foster mother, Molly, leaving her with her foster father, Tim. She discovers Brightcliffe after researching treatments for her illness, and discovering the seemingly-miraculous story of Julia Jayne. She convinces Tim to let her try it out on a trial-basis, despite his reluctance to leave her there. She tells two stories; "Julia Jane," and "Witch."- Adaptational Personality Change: Book Ilonka is mostly defined by her desired to be loved. Series Ilonka is mostly defined by her desire to survive and solve the deeper mysteries of Brightcliffe.
- Affectionate Nickname: Shasta calls her "bright girl."
- Baldness Means Sickness: At the beginning of the first episode, she loses her gorgeous mane to chemotherapy, which hits hard as her hair was a key visual part of her identity. Thereafter, following her ceasing chemo, she grows a very tiny amount back. Cheri later gets her an expensive, handmade wig, which looks nearly identical to how her hair previously looked.
- Black and Nerdy: She's an African-American girl who loves literature, was salutitorian of her class, was basically guaranteed to go to a good college, and, even after no longer attending school due to her illness, is shown to have a vested interest in medicine and history.
- Broken Ace: She was a straight-A student, is clearly an intelligent and curious girl and was basically guaranteed to get into a good college, but her diagnosis essentially made all of her desires for a good future obsolete.
- The Determinator: She will not give up on investigating the deeper mysteries of Brightcliffe in order to cure herself.
- Establishing Character Moment: Her geekout over the history of Frankenstein and the invention of science fiction at the college party. It comes off more like the basics of an Other Wiki article on the subject, rather that a nuanced analysis, demonstrating that while Ilonka is book-smart, she still has a teenager's understanding of the world and has yet to grasp the greater intricacies of the story.
- Granola Girl: Downplayed, but since her diagnosis she becomes very interested in alternative treatments for her condition, such as drinking an assortment of special organic teas. As it turns out, this is common for new patients at Brightcliffe.
- New Transfer Student: Well, patient not student, but she fits this role, as the newest resident at Brightcliffe at the start of the series.
- Race Lift: She is white and of Polish descent in the book, but is black here.
- Rage Breaking Point: After she learns Sandra was misdiagnosed and the ritual did nothing, she happens to run into Katherine and unleashes a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech on her as a means of venting her frustration and despair. Katherine is completely caught off guard by this and devastated by her words.
- Reincarnation Romance: Word of God states that she is in one with Kevin, and is the reincarnation of Brightcliffe's original founder.
- Too Clever by Half: She's used to being (academically) the smartest person in the room, but when academics cease to matter in her life, she is left floundering for a way to apply her intelligence. This, combined with her desire to find a cure for her illness, gets her obsessed with the story of Julia Jayne. This in turn leaves her open to Shasta's manipulations, especially how Shasta frequently compliments her intelligence by calling her "Bright Girl".
- Unknown Rival: She's slowly falling for Kevin over the course of the series, but his girlfriend Katherine is completely oblivious.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: She thinks she's on a potentially magical quest to find a cure for her illness. She's actually just grasping at straws and really living out the end of one cycle of her Reincarnation Romance.
Kevin
Played by: Igby Rigney
Illness: Leukemia
The first member of the club that Ilonka meets. He has been at Brightcliffe for several months when the series begins, which he came to after his diagnosis. He has a loving, if pressuring, family back home, along with his girlfriend, Katherine. He tells the story of "The Wicked Heart."- Adaptational Backstory Change: Book Kevin is formerly a skilled painter, but his disease robbed him of the energy and motivation to continue to do so. Series Kevin is instead a former athlete and honor student.
- Adaptational Personality Change: In the book he is almost saint-like, being kind, open, and sensitive to everyone. The series rounds out his personality and gives him more flaws. The three-part story he tells is also quite darker and more horrifying than the story he tells in the book, giving him more of an edge.
- Broken Ace: His family sees him as The Ace, but it makes clear he's tired of being seen this way, and may even see Brightcliffe as an escape from that. The fact that his mother holds him up as an example to his little brother also fills him with dread.
- Cannot Spit It Out: He doesn't really want to be with Katherine anymore, both because of her difficulty in understanding his situation, and because he feels like he's dragging her down. Naturally he refuses to tell her this for fear of hurting her feelings.
- Deadpan Snarker: He's very sarcastic and a bit downcast, but still remains quite friendly.
- Delicate and Sickly: Comes with the territory of being a Brightcliffe patient. However he stands out because he moves more gingerly than the other patients, and has a subtle limp occasionally, in stark contrast to formerly being a star track runner. He's also so pale that his girlfriend convinces him to wear makeup when he attends prom with her.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: In "The Wicked Heart", Dusty seems to be greatly inspired by the feelings of guilt and anger that he feels about how his illness has affected everyone around him, such as his mom, his brother, his girlfriend Katherine, and Ilonka to an extent. Dusty similarly kills the people he feels affection for, and his story ends with him being alone, miserable, and locked away from everyone else.
- Red Herring: He has a somewhat mysterious attitude and actively tries to persuade Ilonka from her investigation at numerous points. The might make one believe he's somehow connected to the Paragon. He's not.
- Sleep Walking: He has an issue waking up in places he's not supposed to be. It culminates with Ilonka discovering him wandering around the Paragon subbasement.
- Uncanny Valley Makeup: When he attends his high school prom with Katherine, he has Ilonka give him makeover to downplay the pale sickly appearance that his illness causes. He comments, jokingly, that it makes him look like he fell face-first into a bucket of paint.
- Vocal Dissonance: When telling a story or speaking quietly he has a tendency to slip into a heavy vocal fry, which is at odds with his boyish appearance.
Anya
Played by: Ruth Codd
Illness: Bone Cancer
An orphaned Irish immigrant and Ilonka's acerbic roommate. Her illness has cost her the lower portion of her right leg (and with it her promising ballet career), and she is subsequently confined to a motorized wheelchair. She tells the story of "The Two Danas".- Adaptational Nationality: She's an Irish ex-pat in the series, but in the book was American.
- An Arm and a Leg: She's missing her right leg below the knee, and uses a wheelchair to navigate Brightcliffe. This is implied to be the result of her cancer, with the brittleness of her bones preventing her from getting a prosthetic.
- Baldness Means Sickness: Like Ilonka, she is implied to be coming off of chemotherapy, and has only recently been growing her hair back.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: She reveals to Ilonka that her parents died in a car accident when she was still plagued by her addiction.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: She starts out aggressive and rude to almost everyone, but gradually thaws as she gets to know Ilonka and the whole club come together to show their genuine love for her.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the book she dies from assisted suicide, with Spence euthanizing her at her own request. In the series she slips into a coma as her disease progresses and dies in her sleep.
- Dying Dream: The majority of her titular episode turns out to be this, as the entire sequence of an older Anya living her life eventually becomes frightening and blends in with the previous stories of her friends, only for it to turn out that the real Anya was lying in her hospice bed and succumbing to her disease.
- Fighting Irish: She's from Ireland and very volatile and abrasive.
- Functional Addict: She's a former heroin addict, who was trying to stay clean but can barely function without heavy painkillers due to her illness causing horrific pain. She generally does okay because the staff monitor her intake, and her fellow patients refuse to share, but later starts palming her pills and accidentally overdoses (non-fatally).
- I Coulda Been a Contender!: She was on her way to becoming a skilled ballerina, who immigrated to the states to study at an American academy. However, her brush with drug addiction ruined her burgeoning career, and the amputation of her leg destroyed any chance of her dancing again.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She is outright rude and mean to just about everyone, but she is fiercely protective of her fellow club members, and will verbally destroy anyone she views as being cruel to them.
Sandra
Played by: Annarah Cymone
Illness: Lymphoma
A friendly and devoted, though liberal, Christian. She prefers telling stories involving Angels to the Midnight club, which they jokingly refer to as "Angel Porn", although she also is a fan of black-and-white noir films. She tells the story "Gimme a Kiss."- Adaptational Personality Change: In the book, she is defined by being the most boring member of the Midnight Club, having a generally bland, if friendly, personality, and she never tells a story. Ilonka even goes so far as to say she was never really a member of the club because of her misdiagnosis. The series makes her devoutly religious, she is happy to tell stories, and her membership of the club is never questioned even after she leaves Brightcliffe.
- Baldness Angst: Like the other girls, she lost her hair due to treatment and now wears an obvious wig and is very sensitive about it, to the point that Ilonka is advised not to talk about it.
- The Cutie: She is perhaps the most morally rigid of the cast, but acts as an emotional center for the gang, usually is the one to prevent them (or try to) from doing anything crazy, and everyone is genuinely sad when she leaves after discovering she was misdiagnosed, although happy that she will survive.
- Decomposite Character: Her book counterpart's habit of never telling a story goes instead to Cheri.
- Genre Savvy: When the kids come across the hidden basement where the Paragon performed their rituals, she's one of the most hesitant in the group. Once they notice signs of occult activities, she's the first to leave. She's also able to bring up a number of secular reasons why the kids should stay out, such as the fact that it's unsanitary and a lot of them are immunocompromised.
- Hidden Depths:
- Despite appearing to be a reserved and polite young girl, "Gimme A Kiss" is a dramatic Film Noir story about a convoluted plot that acts as a roundabout way for her to make up with someone she'd disrespected, implying that Sandra has some hidden Cold Ham tendencies.
- While the rest of the gang get annoyed at the "angel porn" that she tends to tie into her stories, she also admits that she enjoys old Film Noir from the 1930s.
- Innocently Insensitive: She tries to talk about God after Tristan dies, and Spencer lashes out at her. Considering that his mother disowned him because of her religion, and that Sandra's promotion came right after someone had died, it's a bit justified.
- Jerk Ass Has A Point: While Jerkass is not an apt descriptor for Sandra, her urging the others to join her in church triggers Spencer, who was disowned for being gay by his religious mother, and he lashes out at her for being insensitive. While his reaction was understandable, her primary motivation was keeping the club from following the teachings of a literal cult, the founder of which murdered a bunch of her followers in the hopes of extending her own lifespan. She turns out to be completely right that it is a bad idea.
- Race Lift: She's white in the books, but African-American in the series.
Spence
Played by: Chris Sumpter
Illness: AIDS
The only openly queer member of the midnight club, who's mother has disowned him because of her conservative Christian beliefs, although his father still visits him. He's sensitive about the stigma surrounding his orientation and illness, and subsequently has some prejudices towards organized religion. He tells the story "The Eternal Enemy".- Adaptational Personality Change: He's closeted in the book, and experiences so much shame around it and his illness that he only confesses both when he is near death. While his angst and shame are present in the series, part of his character development is learning to let both go, and he is always out of the closet to the club members and with his family. Additionally, in the book he euthanizes Anya with a Vorpal Pillow (at her request) and drugs Ilonka so that she won't witness it. In the series Anya dies of the disease and Spence does nothing to break his friends' trust in him.
- Defrosting Ice King: Not to most people, but he starts out disliking Mark at the beginning of the series. However, Mark's continued efforts to help him work through his issues while also being a queer mentor warms makes Spence gradually warm up to him.
- Gayngst: Spencer contracted AIDS from a boy he liked, and ended up at Brightcliffe after his mother disowned him for his sexuality. Mark is steadfastly trying to help him work through it.
- I Have No Son!: His fundamentalist mother has disowned him following the double whammy of his coming out and his diagnosis. He understandably has a very hard time with this. His father maintains a relationship with him, but it is also strained from his mother's behavior.
- Race Lift: He's implied to be white in the book, but is black in the series.
- Spared by the Adaptation: He dies from his disease in the book, but Word of God was that he was to have survived the series, having lived long enough for the AIDS cocktail to reach a point where it could make his conditional survivable.
- Team Dad: He is the oldest of the cast aside from the adults, and also the one to give Ilonka a tour and provide a friendly face. As the oldest, he also seems to act like an older brother to the rest of the group and the others tend to get advice from him.
Cheri
Played by: Creator/Adia
Illness: Unknown
A member of the Midnight club whose past is uncertain because her story is subject to change, although she does have very wealthy, but completely absent, parents. Despite this, she is very friendly, and will go out of her way to use her parents' wealth to help her friends when she can. The specifics of her illness are known only to herself and the staff.- Baldness Means Sickness: She covers her head when in he room, implying this, presumably due in some way to her illness, and wears a fancy wig to disguise this. She later gifts Ilonka one as well.
- Canon Foreigner: She has no counterpart in the book.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Downplayed but present. The other characters are sometimes confused by her behavior.
- Compulsive Liar: Maybe. Her fellow patients treat her like this, as the stories she tells about her past seem somewhat far-fetched. However, they aren't cruel to her about this.
- Multiple-Choice Past: Her past is a mystery, as she either frequently changes/adds to it, or invents it entirely. However, the most consistent backstory is that her parents are very wealthy and well-connected, but have basically dumped her at Brightcliffe and forgotten about her. Notably, she is the only member of the club who refuses to tell a story at the nightly meetings, meaning the other characters never learn anything about her this way.
- Nice Girl: She is kind to all of her fellow patients, and even goes out of her way to raise their spirits. Best example, she surprises Ilonka with an expensive handmade wig, because the latter told her she missed her hair after losing it to chemo. She also helps Amesh fulfill a wish from his bucket list by using her connections to get him a new Playstation several months before it hits the market.
- Soap Opera Disease: Unlike the other characters, who all have named and defined illnesses with specific symptoms, her disease is never named, (although probably some form of cancer judging from her hair loss). It makes her more mysterious, as she is definitely dying, but only her and the staff know why.
Natsuki
Played by: Aya Furukawa
Illness: Ovarian Cancer
A member of the Midnight club who has recently been diagnosed with Clinical Depression. She has a close friendship with Tristan, whom she frequently reads to through the intercom system. She tells the story "Road To Nowhere" and an unnamed horror story in the very first episode.- …And That Little Girl Was Me: Her story is a metaphor for her depression during her suicide attempt, with one side of her wanting to continue and another wanting to die for the sake of relieving her pain.
- Bilingual Dialogue: She converses with her mother using a mixture of Japanese and American English.
- Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Gender-inverted with her and Amesh. He is an upbeat Plucky Comic Relief Deadpan Snarker while Natsuki is a superstitious and withdrawn girl who was diagnosed with depression.
- Canon Foreigner: Her character is an invention of the series.
- Disappeared Dad: Her father was a soldier who was killed in combat before the start of the series.
- Driven to Suicide: She once tried to kill herself, but was saved by her mother. After this incident, she decided she wanted to live, but in a twisted bit of irony, her subsequent trip to the hospital revealed that she was dying of an unrelated illness anyway.
- Large Ham: When telling fun stories, she tends to get very into theatrics. During her first story, she leaps on the table in front of everyone to make the perfect Jump Scare, and spooks Sandra so much the latter falls out of her chair. When telling a serious story, however, she dials it down considerably.
- Nightmare Fetishist: A downplayed version. She's certainly not a dangerous person, but both of her stories are horror-related, and she often brings up superstitious beliefs she has, hinting at an interest in dark subject matter in general.
- The Pig-Pen: Following her roommate Tristan's death, she has a major depressive episode where she stays in her room for a week and lets her personal hygiene suffer. She acknowledges that she smells awful when she emerges, which Amesh tries to deny but then is forced to admit she's right. She gets better about this.
- Tragic Keepsake: The dogtags she wears are implied to have belonged to her father, a war veteran who died in combat.
Amesh
Played by: Sauriyan Sapkota
Illness: Glioblastoma
The second newest arrival to Brightcliffe, after Ilonka. At the start of the series, he is approaching his "Death Day", the approximate date his doctors had calculated he could reasonably survive until. He is also a fan of video games, and keeps a list of all the goals he has before he dies.- Baldness Means Sickness: He has the least hair of any of the patients, having recently come off of chemo. It shows off the large scar from a failed surgery on his right temple.
- Bollywood Nerd: He's a gamer who wants to live long enough to see the release of the Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation. The story he tells, "See You Later", is also based around video games and Time Travel.
- Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Gender-inverted with him and Natsuki. He is an upbeat Plucky Comic Relief Deadpan Snarker while Natsuki is a superstitious and withdrawn girl who was diagnosed with depression.
- Canon Foreigner: He's an invention of the series, with no book counterpart.
- Deadpan Snarker: While Anya's brand is far crueler, Amesh is very much a jokester who cracks at the oddest times.
- Immigrant Parents: Amesh's parents don't live in the United States and are trying to enter the country to see him again, but they are having significant legal difficulties with immigration. This is especially stressful for both sides because he may die before they are successful.
- New Transfer Student: He was this before Ilonka arrived, as he had been the most recent arrival at Brightcliffe before hand.
- Sad Clown: He likes to joke around and generally puts on an air of being lighthearted and fun, but it is clear from the beginning that this is at least partially a mask to hide his despair.
Tristan
Played by: Jenaya Ross
Illness: Unknown (Possibly autoimmune)
The sickest patient at Brightcliffe, who is bedridden at the beginning of the series, and in quarantine to protect her remaining immune system. She is also a close friend and former roommate of Natsuki.- Canon Foreigner: She has no book counterpart.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Tristan only gets a few lines before she dies. Justified considering the fleeting nature of the patients stay at Brightcliffe.
Brightcliffe Hospice Staff
Dr. Georgina Stanton
Played by: Heather Langenkamp
The enigmatic founder of Brightcliffe Hospice, she is kind but slightly patronizing to her patients, although is doing her best to help them deal with the stresses of their lives coming to an end.
- Adaptational Bad Ass: Her book counterpart never has to physically defend his patients, while here Dr. Stanton threatens Shasta with a fire poker when she nearly kills Ilonka.
- Adaptational Name Change: Combined with Gender Flip and Age Lift. The elderly male Dr. White in the books becomes the late-middle-age female Dr. Stanton.
- Baldness Means Sickness: The finale reveals that she is secretly bald, and wears a wig like many of her patients. Word of God states that she has had cancer, but is in remission, and keeps this from her patients because they would see her survival as unfair when compared to their own terminal diagnoses.
- Beneath the Mask: She generally presents herself as being able to take the deaths of her patients in stride, as she has witnessed at least dozens-if-not-hundreds in her time running the hospice. She does her best to council them and be seen as a kind authority figure. However, patient deaths actually do hit her very hard, and behind closed doors she outright sobs after Anya's death, and self-medicates with by smoking marijuana. It's also made clear that she is dealing with a lot of childhood trauma, including growing up in a cult and having a homicidal mother.
- Did You Actually Believe...?: The kind type. Following Anya's death, she confronts the patients on their nightly gathering and spells out that she and the staff have always known about the meetings of the Midnight Club, but have chosen to silently support it, as they view it as a positive way for the patients to deal with their feelings. She has let them think it is a secret because it makes it more fun for them.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Her own son died of a terminal illness, which allows her to understand on some level what the patients are going through, but also what their grieving loved ones are as well.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Dr. Stanton is a kind and intelligent woman who wants the patients to live the last of their days happy and fulfilled, so she's typically quite lenient of them, but is naturally livid when they put themselves and each other in danger, such as doing the ritual to Anya in the building's basement and when Ilonka invites Shasta into the building.
- Red Herring: Played with. There are hints that something more sinister may be behind her motives of founding the hospice, and she is evasive whenever asked about Julia Jayne or the Paragon. Turns out she's a former member of the cult and knew Julia personally, but has no shady intentions and Brightcliffe serves the exact purpose it is advertised for.
Mark
Played by: Zach Gilford
The Nurse Practitioner at Brightcliffe, and the member of staff who has the most interaction with the patients. He is unfailingly warm and kind to his patients, and offers empathy and help to all of them.
- Canon Foreigner: While there are nurses in the book, they never do anything plot-related besides giving the patients medication, and are rarely named. Mark is therefore invented for the series.
- Cool Teacher: His general vibe, despite actually being a nurse. At times he also comes off like a college RA. The fact that he's a committed queer rights activist in the 90s also helps.
- Hope Springs Eternal: In contrast to Stanton, who emphasizes how the patients should be given permission to "leave the battlefield", Mark encourages Spence to keep fighting because new treatments for his disease are in actual development and aren't too far away.
- The Lost Lenore: It's implied that he had a boyfriend who died from HIV-related complications a few years prior to the series, and Mark is a passionate Queer-rights advocate in part to honor his memory.
- Nice Guy: He's the warmest and friendliest of all the staff. At one point while sewing up a cut on Spence's hand, he wears gloves and a face mask, but takes time to emphasize that he is wearing them for Spence's protection, not his own, as he's not afraid of Spence infecting him with HIV, sometime Spence was legitimately terrified of doing.
- Seen It All: In a nice way. Being the person who has to deal with the patients' ever worsening conditions on a day-to-day basis, he often takes the news of new symptoms in stride while calmly and helpfully advising them on how to cope with them.
The Janitor
Played by: Robert Longstreet
The so-far unnamed Janitor, who is tasked with cleaning up a patient's bedding after they die. He goes out of his way to be sensitive about his duties, and offers words of comfort to the patients he encounters.
- Angel Unaware: Word of God states that, in Season 2, he would have been revealed to be Death. He only appears to patients when they are near the end, and he only wants to help and comfort them during the transition. A clue to this is that a single janitor is not the proper person to clean up after a patient's death. Stanton would actually hire a cleaning service.
- Canon Foreigner: No mention is made in the books of any cleaning service for the rooms after patients' deaths.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: The living shadow that haunts several patients? That's one of his forms. However, he doesn't deliberately try to scare them, and is instead trying to gently ease them into their deaths. The problem is they usually misinterpret the shadow as being malevolent.
- Face Framed in Shadow: Inverted. He's introduced casting a long shadow with his dead framed with light, which in turn casts s deep shadow over his face.
Patient Family Members and Loved Ones
Tim
Played by: Matt Biedel
Ilonka's recently-widowed foster father. He is deeply conflicted about letting Ilonka stay at Brightcliffe, as he sees this as akin to abandoning her, despite her requesting to go. He finally lets her go on a "trial" basis, but tries to keep in close contact with her, despite living across the country.
- Canon Foreigner: Ilonka isn't a foster child in the book, and neither are either of her birth-parents named therein.
- Good Parents: Tim clearly loves Ilonka and desperately wants to keep her safe and healthy, and only allows her to go to Brightcliffe if it'll make her happy, despite how he feels like he's abandoning her. Even when he lives across the country, he's arguably the only parent of the main cast who shows up most consistently and whose love for his child is never questioned.
- Happily Adopted: Ilonka loves him dearly.
- Parents as People: It's clear that he's already grieving the potential loss of his daughter and being forced to outlive both her and his wife, and part of his overprotectiveness stems from this.
Maggie
Played by: Crystal Balint
Ilonka's deceased foster mother and Tim's wife. She died before the start of the series.
- Good Parents: From what the audience can glean, she was a kind and loving mother to Ilonka, and her death weighs heavily on her loved ones.
- The Lost Lenore: Tim and Ilonka are still grieving her throughout the series.
- Posthumous Character: Maggie herself only appears in photos, but Ilonka later adapts her likeness in "Witch" for Imani's mother.
Katherine
Kevin's girlfriend who tries to put on a brave face for him, and at times has difficulty accepting that he is dying.
- Innocently Insensitive: She doesn't mean to be hurtful to Kevin, but her continued insistence that they continue their relationship as if nothing has changed does hit him hard. It doesn't help that he refuses to actually tell her how hurtful some of her actions are, and deliberately downplays the debilitating effects of his illness so as not to worry her.
- I Reject Your Reality: Downplayed but she really doesn't want to face the fact that Kevin is dying, preferring instead to try act as if their relationship as is merely long-distance and he's at a boarding school. She tries to therefore do romantic activities with him when she visits, unaware that her actions aren't helping him.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: On the receiving end of a brutal one from Ilonka after she catches her at just the wrong moment and innocently asked for help in planning a date for Kevin. Ilonka spells out to her in no uncertain terms that Kevin is dying and that her actions are the opposite of helpful.
Other Characters
The Paragon
- Drinking the Kool-Aid: Every iteration of the cult has a ceremony where someone attempts to heal themself by sacrificing other members by having them (knowingly or unknowingly) drink poison.
- Mystery Cult: The organization was a cult focused on healing and worshipping the Greek goddesses of health, and they kept much of their rituals hidden.
Aceso
Shasta/Julia Jayne
A spiritualistic Granola Girl who lives on Brightcliffe's property and whom Ilonka gets along with quite well.
- Ambiguous Situation: When her identity as Julia Jayne is revealed, it's made clear that she seems to believe that the ritual is what cured her of her disease. However, considering that Sandra received a misdiagnosis, its entirely likely that her cancer merely receded in a perfectly mundane way, and her obsession with the occult led her to believe that the supernatural was at play.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Initially, she appears to be a kind and calm woman who encourages Ilonka's quest to cure herself. However, she apparently has a history of trying to break into Brightcliffe to perform a ritual that is meant to kill five other women, and was perfectly willing to have Ilonka be one of them.
- Canon Foreigner: She has no basis in the original book, as the Genre Shift meant that the original had both no mystery and no antagonist.
- Foil: To Dr. Stanton. Both are older women who act like mother figures to Ilonka, but Stanton is a practical Reasonable Authority Figure who tries to help Ilonka come to terms with her illness, while Shasta is an optimistic Granola Girl who tries to encourage Ilonka to pursue a cure beyond all odds. Stanton can also appear a bit clinical and strict, but she also clearly cares for her patients and wants them to be safe and happy, while Shasta, despite being initially nice, turns out to be willing to sacrifice others for her own ends. When its later revealed that Dr. Stanton is actually Athena and Shasta is Julia Jayne, the parallels are directly drawn to how Athena rejects her past with the cult while a desperate Julia seeks it out.
- Granola Girl: Like Ilonka, she is very much interested in natural and spiritual healing, although, unlike Ilonka, she leans more on the spiritual aspect and less on the natural.
- The Nicknamer: She gloms onto the fact that Ilonka's name means "Light", and continuously refers to her as "Bright Girl", which she claims is both a description of Ilonka spiritually "shining with light", and a compliment of her intelligence. However, it soon becomes clear that this is a manipulation technique to flatter Ilonka's intelligence, as she has felt that her illness has rendered her academic intelligence basically moot.
- Shadow Archetype: To Ilonka. As a girl, she was a patient at Brightcliffe with the same terminal illness as Ilonka. Like Ilonka, she has an interest in alternative medicine and believes that something at Brightcliffe can heal her. That being said, it's clear that Shasta represents what would happen if Ilonka became too obsessed with preserving her own life to the degree of risking the lives of others, as Shasta reveals herself to be untrustworthy and deranged.
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: She may be an original creation for the series, but her appearance is this and clearly a Shout-Out to author Christopher Pike's love of characters described as such.
