Memorable TV Characters of 2021
NORA BRADY (Marin Ireland) Y:The Last Man
We get several versions of Nora, the first being a press aide promoting the ideas of a politician with with whom she entirely disagrees. The apocalypse makes her, first bewildered, then desperate, hopeless, and finally ferocious. At the end of the show’s first (and hopefully not last) season she realizes that the post-apocalyptic world in which she finds herself is where she was born to be and reverts to the name she was given at birth: Victoria. Showrunner Eliza Clark described Nora to SyFy Wire: “She’s stripped of the things that she thought her life was made of, and what her identity was made of. I think she feels oddly strange about being alone with her daughter. I don’t think that was ever in her plan. You see in the pilot that the kid wakes up from a nightmare and is calling for her dad. That scene, and Nora’s discomfort with motherhood continues in a way that I think is really exciting, and you don’t see a lot of that on television.”
IVORY (Jennifer Cheon Garcia) Van Helsing
She was made a vampire by Michaela, who saved her from being burned at the stake by Spanish invaders for refusing to adopt their religion. After five centuries in the Sisterhood, Ivory is turned human again, and tries to adjust to this new condition. Michaela is dead, the Dark One is vanquished, and all of her friends from her vampire days have been slain, or have failed to survive as humans. She and Jack are in love, but Ivory ultimately decides that her priority is to find and assist other surviving members of the Sisterhood (be they vampire or human). She must do this alone, and Jack understands that, and promises to wait for her. There is much more to Ivory’s story, but it has yet to be written.
MEGAN DONOVAN (Tennille Read) Surrealestate
A med student with a rational, scientific mind, Megan is suddenly confronted with a house full of unexplainable phenomena. At the start of things, it seemed like she might just be the love interest for Luke (Tim Rozon), but after the scene in which she distracts a hellhound in her basement by tossing it a pork chop, it became clear that she is Luke Roman’s Scully, and is essential to the story. We find out little about her past, but Megan’s email provider is the ISP for Greenland (see Episode 6). And just why did her grandfather buy that house to begin with?
MARCO INAROS (Keon Alexander) The Expanse
The charismatic and megalomaniacal leader of the Belt’s Free Navy. Marco Inaros’ personal conflict with James Holden brings back memories of James T. Kirk and his nemesis Khan Noonien Singh. Inaros clearly has ambitions beyond leading Belters to independence, and has allied himself with renegade elements of the Martian military, gifting them with a sample of the protomolecule, and getting a mystery weapon in return. He tellingly refers to Medina Station (in Episode 6.4) as the “crossroads of empire.”
MOIRAINE DAMODRED (Rosamund Pike) The Wheel of Time
When Rand asks her how he will learn to use the One Power, Moiraine tells a very revealing, personal story. “There was an Aes Sedai at the White Tower when I was a novice. She was everything I wanted to be. She was strong, controlled, precise. She was terrifying. And she took a liking to me. She said she wanted to help make me everything that she thought I could be…She came to my room at night, alone, and she beat me with the One Power. Lashes of air and fire. And she wouldn’t stop until the pain and the fear was so overwhelming that I grabbed the Power myself and stopped her. Without even thinking about it; without even trying. I promise you, when your life’s on the line, the Power will be there.”
Exiled from the White Tower by her lover Siuan (Sophie Okonedo), and severed from the One Power by the Dark One, she and her warder Lan head into Season Two facing many unknowns, but Moiraine is, and will continue to be, the glue that holds The Wheel of Time together.