History Characters / TheHauntingOfHillHouse2018

* BodyHorror: As a ghost, his body is nearly fleshless and missing one leg. Combined with how he shuffles madly along the floor like some feral zombie, Edward is by far the most frightful of the Hill House ghosts.

* AMindIsATerribleThingToRead: Theo's TouchTelepathy is powerful enough for her to learn and know a lot of things using it. However, some of these things are deeply traumatizing for her: outside of everything she had to deal with in [[EldritchLocation Hill House]], she ends up reliving the molestation of one of her young patients in her search to treat her, and when she touches Nell's body to try to understand why she killed herself, she experiences TheNothingAfterDeath and ends up wailing and emotionally numb from the experience.

* [[CoolUncle Cool Aunt]]: She's the fun aunt to her sister Shirley's children, especially Allie.

* GallowsHumor: When he sees Nell in her open coffin, he jokingly says "That's her, detective!" like a character in a crime drama. He doesn't keep up the facade for long and hurries away before he can start crying.

* TheTeamNormal: The only one of the Crain siblings to not inherit any supernatural abilities from his mother. Fittingly, he's the biggest AgentScully in the group. However, it's revealed in Episode 8 that [[spoiler: Steve can actually see ghosts; he's just too stubborn and unyielding to believe it.]]

* CruelToBeKind: She does some seriously cruel things (noticeably, throwing Luke out of Nell's wedding), but she really thinks she's doing it to safeguard them from being hurt by him. Seeing as it's implied that Luke had escaped from rehab and pretty much looked like shit, Shirley probably thought that his presence would take the attention away from Nell on ''her'' day, and considering how much Nell dotes on him, she was probably right.

* PromotedToParent: It's implied that after Liv died, she and Steve had to step up to the plate and help out, especially since Hugh became distant around this point.

** Theo claims to be helping Shirley by staying in the outhouse. She doesn't do much good, considering that its major outcome is that she kisses Shirley's husband (although it's actually a major case of NotWhatItLooksLike).

* AdaptationalSexuality: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]]. She is introduced as a lesbian, as her equivalents in the [[Literature/TheHauntingOfHillHouse novel]] and [[Film/TheHaunting1963 1963 film]] are heavily implied to be, but she is later found apparently having an affair with Kevin, making her bisexual like her [[Film/TheHaunting1999 1999 counterpart]]. However, it is later revealed that this was very much a case of NotWhatItLooksLike, and she is not shown to have any attraction to men otherwise.

* ButchLesbian: Downplayed because Theo is still quite feminine, but she also has a lot of the traits: she dresses androgynously, always in pants and usually in dark colors; she has a GenderBlenderName (although her actual name is feminine, she's never known by it); and she enjoys a lot of stereotypical "masculine" activities like sleeping around with random women and heavy drinking.

* FriendToAllChildren: Pretty much the only people that she doesn’t throw up an enormous shield against is her young charges (who she even deigns to grasp with her own naked hand in order to help them) and her young niece who she is seen having a wordless conversation with at the dinner table and whom [[IrritationIsTheSincerestFormOfFlattery has started to wear gloves indoors.]]

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: A situation is truly alarming when it's calm and collected Theo doing the panicking. Such instances include Theo [[spoiler: finding out about and experiencing her patient's molestation via her powers]].

** Another example is when she's caught having an affair with Shirley's husband, Kevin, after it has been repeatedly established that she is only attracted to women. [[spoiler: Subverted with the reveal that the only reason they had been that close in the first place was because Theo had lost all feeling after touching Nell's corpse and was therefore looking for anything to "turn it on" again.]]

* TomboyishName: Theodora nearly always goes by "Theo" which is representative of her sexuality.

* BreakTheCutie: Luke's life generally sucks. As a kid, he encounters ghosts, but none of the adults around believe him. Then he sees his friend [[spoiler: get poisoned by his mother, but is told she was just imaginary;]] and after his mother appears to commit suicide, his father withdraws from the children, leaving them to be raised by their aunt. As an adult, he keeps seeing ghosts, can't get rid of his drug addiction, is belittled and dismissed by his siblings, is betrayed by his friend/LoveInterest, and finally loses his twin sister, whose death he experiences through their [[TwinTelepathy psychic connection]]. Whew.

* ImColdSoCold: Despite [[spoiler:not actually nearing death himself,]] this happens to [[spoiler:Luke when he unknowingly feels Nell's death through their TwinTelepathy.]]

* BreakTheCutie: Everything just seems to go wrong for Nell. Ever since she was a child, Nell was tormented by the Bent-Neck Lady, giving her nightmares and sleep paralysis all the way into adulthood. After meeting her husband, Arthur, her life seems to get better for a little while ... until he randomly suffers from a brain aneurysm in front of her, with a [[ForcedToWatch sleep-paralyzed Nell being unable to help]]. Desperate, she forces Theo to use her powers to sense if he is still around--a deed that Theo attacks her for and drives a wedge between the two sisters. After this, she starts seeing the Bent-Neck Lady more often, and even though she tries to reach out to Steve, Shirley, and Hugh, all of them fail to give her any help. She then tries to face her fear alone and goes back to Hill House, only for it to [[spoiler: distract her with illusions and ultimately drive her to her death, where she finds out that ''she'' was the Bent-Neck Lady all along.]]

* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: Eleanor in the books drives into a tree and breaks her neck. Nell apparently hangs herself. [[spoiler:In reality, the house and Olivia's ghost trick her by disguising a noose as a locket she'd always wanted and Olivia pushing Nell off the balcony with a kiss.]]

* YourWorstMemory: Any point where The Bent-Neck Lady shows up seems to signify a miserable point in her life, but the death of her husband has to be the worst of all of them... making her eventual fate of [[spoiler: ''becoming'' the Bent-Neck Lady and witnessing that moment again all the more painful.]]

* OffscreenTeleportation: What the House can do to people it has entranced, at least from various occurrences witnessed in-show (Olivia suddenly appearing in places she couldn't have reached without being seen during the storm, the Crain siblings being transported (one by one) into illusory and initially "perfect" scenarios inside the Red Room, and so forth).

* UnfazedEveryman: Hugh was this in the past and it backfired on him badly. He is especially calm when Olivia holds a blade to his throat.

An architect and the matriarch of the Crain family. She and her husband repair old houses together. Before the House managed to get the best of her, she was shown to be a very loving and kind person. Due to her mother's side of the family being 'special,' Olivia has a connection to the supernatural--a gift she has managed to pass on to some of her children.

* HeadacheOfDoom: Liv had migraines all her life, but while staying at the eponymous house, the "color storms" became much more intense. As the flashback sequences make clear, her growing pain seemed to coincide with her escalating SanitySlippage, Olivia suffering hallucinations, sleepwalking, and odd fits of possessiveness as the migraines turned agonizing.
* HeelFaceTurn: An ImpliedTrope, though [[ZigZaggingTrope somewhat zigzagged]]. In the final episode, [[spoiler: Hugh pleads with her to open the door to the Red Room and let their remaining children live, and she seems to come around, but we never actually see her fully agree with him or open the door. Additionally, part of her apparent bargain with Hugh was that he would agree to die and stay in the house with her, and given that he was already a ghost by the time the door opened, it's unclear how much, if any, of the rescue was aided by Olivia.]]

* KnightTemplarParent: All she wants is to protect her children. [[spoiler:She's just so insane and twisted by the House that her idea of "protecting" them is to kill them so the world outside the House can't hurt them]].

* KarmaHoudini: She's never seen again after running off with Luke's 200 dollars. Strongly downplayed, though, since those actions signify her falling back to addition, losing everyone she met in rehab and possibly ending up on the streets, hardly a happy ending.

* {{Catchphrase}}: "I can fix this."

* OutlivingOnesOffspring: He's unable to stop the house from murdering an adult Nell. [[spoiler:Downplayed in that he appears to stop it happening with any of the others.]]

* BigSisterInstinct: Towards the twins when they were all younger. For example, when Mrs. Dudley grabs Luke and snaps at him for playing with the dumbwaiter, Theo coolly orders her to let go of his shoulders and points out she should have just said it was dangerous, while staring her down. She also goes to great lengths to prove that he was telling the truth about the unmapped basement. Adult Theo, however, seems to have lost this, not having spoken to Nell in what seems to be months and talking derisively about her. It's later revealed that this was because Nell had tried to force her to use her gift to investigate [[spoiler: Nell's husband's death]], which doesn't work--but, as later episodes show, could've really hurt Theo if it had.
** When Nell is accused of vandalizing a wall, Theo tells Nell that she believes she didn't do it and even helps her clean up with no complaint.

* BrokenBird: By the end--hell, by barely the ''middle''--of her focus episode ("The Bent-Neck Lady").

* GoneHorriblyRight: In Episode 6, Hugh mentions that Nell was always the one trying to get everybody to reunite. She succeeds on two occasions: [[LifeDeathJuxtaposition her wedding ... and her funeral.]] Even Olivia's ghost was present for both.

* AdaptationalHeroism / AdaptationalNiceGuy: All over the place, for all of them. Those who are already nice in the original (Theo) become heroic. Hugh, especially, was particularly awful in the book.
* AloofBigBrother and AloofBigSister: It's notable that Nell, the youngest sibling, is TheHeart. The rest all tend to be aloof as a defense mechanism for their previous experiences at Hill House.

* OneHitWonder: In-universe, everybody's favorite book by Steve is The Haunting of Hill House (his first).

* CruelToBeKind: She does some seriously cruel things (noticeably, throwing Luke out of Nell's wedding), but she really thinks she's doing it to safeguard them from being hurt by him.
** Seeing as it's implied that Luke had escaped from rehab and pretty much looked like shit, Shirley probably thought that his presence would take the attention away from Nell on ''her'' day, and considering how much Nell dotes on him, she was probably right.

* BigSisterInstinct: Towards the twins when they were all younger. Adult Theo, however, seems to have lost this, not having spoken to Nell in what seems to be months and talking derisively about her. It's later revealed that this was because Nell had tried to force her to use her gift to investigate [[spoiler: Nell's husband's death]], which doesn't work--but, as later episodes show, could've really hurt Theo if it had.
** When Mrs. Dudley grabs Luke and snaps at him for playing with the dumbwaiter, Theo coolly orders her to let go of his shoulders and points out she should have just said it was dangerous, while staring her down. She also goes to great lengths to prove that he was telling the truth about the unmapped basement.

* BlessedWithSuck: Theo has extremely powerful TouchTelepathy, a gift she often employs to help out her child patients. However, it also means she has to avoid touching other people at all costs, and is often seen wearing gloves as a result.
** Due to her sensitivity to the supernatural, younger Theo was often cold and had to wear sweaters all the time, even though it was the height of summer during their stay in Hill House.

* [[CoolUncle Cool Aunt]]: She's this to Shirley's children, especially Allie.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Theo is abrasive and closed-off, with Steve outright describing her as "a clenched fist with hair", but she's still a good person with a strong sense of moral duty.
** She's a child psychologist who uses her TouchTelepathy to help her patients. That's about as heart-of-gold as you can get, and it's notable that her young patients are the only people she acts warmly towards.

* MiddleChildSyndrome: By her own admission, she is very self-aware about the fact that she suffers from this, and sees it as the reason for her difficulties with getting truly close to other people.

* TheShrink: The "awesome" kind with her young patients.

* TouchTelepathy: She's able to sense things about objects and people by touching them with her bare skin: it's the most active of the Crain's various PsychicPowers, to the point that she can't turn it off and has to wear gloves to block it out.

* WanderingWalkOfMadness: Episode 4 ("The Twin Thing") features Luke being put through a TraumaCongaLine that features him being left homeless, betrayed and robbed by his only friend, beaten up by a gang of thugs, and mugged for his jacket and shoes. Worse still, he's experiencing phantom withdrawal symptoms that are actually due to him picking up on [[spoiler: Nell's death via TwinTelepathy]] and being actively haunted by the Bowler Hat Ghost. Teetering on the edge of a DespairEventHorizon, all he can do is pace aimlessly back and forth through the streets, reciting his SurvivalMantra as he tries to ignore the ghost pursuing him.

* BreakTheCutie [=/=] CosmicPlaything: Everything just seems to go wrong for Nell. Ever since she was a child, Nell was tormented by the Bent-Neck Lady, giving her nightmares and sleep paralysis all the way into adulthood. After meeting her husband, Arthur, her life seems to get better for a little while ... until he randomly suffers from a brain aneurysm in front of her, with a [[ForcedToWatch sleep-paralyzed Nell being unable to help]]. Desperate, she forces Theo to use her powers to sense if he is still around--a deed that Theo attacks her for and drives a wedge between the two sisters. After this, she starts seeing the Bent-Neck Lady more often, and even though she tries to reach out to Steve, Shirley, and Hugh, all of them fail to give her any help. She then tries to face her fear alone and goes back to Hill House, only for it to [[spoiler: distract her with illusions and ultimately drive her to her death, where she finds out that ''she'' was the Bent-Neck Lady all along.]]

* CreepyLongFingers: See above.

* TheSponsor: Is this for Luke and presumably also Joey.