Characters / Euphoria

Some unmarked spoilers below.

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Main Characters

Rue Bennett

Ruby "Rue" Bennett

"If I could be a different person, I promise you, I would. Not because I want it, but because they do. And therein lies the catch."

Played By: Zendaya

The main character of the series, a seventeen-year-old girl struggling with drug addiction and her identity. She often latches onto other people as a way to feel complete.

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• Abusive Offspring: In the depths of her addiction, she verbally abuses Leslie, lies to her, violently assaults her, and kicks down a door.
• Addiction Displacement: Gets clean just to become addicted to Jules, who she compares to fentanyl at one point.
• Affectionate Nickname: Cassie likes to call her Rue-Rue.
• Aimlessly Seeking Happiness: In the pilot, Rue explains that doing drugs makes her feel better and that she's been "chasing" that feeling for as long as she can remember. But of course, the high is only temporary.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Though the "aloofness" part mainly comes from her personal issues, the resemblance is there.
• Amazon Chaser: Downplayed. Rue's second impression of Jules - her threatening Nate and cutting herself with a knife — captures her interest.
• Anger Born of Worry: She's upset out at Jules when she schedules a risky date with a guy on the Internet. Of course, the fact that she has a crush on Jules herself probably contributed to her anger somewhat.
• Anti-Hero: Despite her many flaws and numerous Kick the Dog moments that make her a borderline Villain Protagonist, there's still evidence she does care about people and tries to do the right thing.
• Attempted Rape: Fezco's supplier Mouse tries to push sex onto Rue when she can't afford to pay for the Fentanyl he gave her. Fez puts a stop to it pretty quickly.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: Of courbetse, by virtue of being played by Zendaya. Her talent is best displayed in the very confusing season finale.
• Berserk Button: She's prone to severe anger when she's out of drugs, as is usual for addicts in real life.
• Broken Bird: She appears to be this at the beginning (following her drug addiction and her father's death), and it only gets worse later on.
• Big Sister Instinct: She has this towards Gia, as "The Next Episode" shows.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Some of her scenes with her mother indicate that she is this, albeit a justified version, as she has no shortage of personal issues to account for it.
• Broken Tears: Rue collapses sobbing after Jules leaves her for LA in the end of season 1.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: A unique example with two girls. Though they both have their share of trauma, the tomboyish Rue is far more angsty and brooding than carefree, cheerful, and very feminine Jules.
• Butch Lesbian: A downplayed example; Rue is a lesbian who dresses in mostly masculine, rugged clothes (Jules likened her fashion sense to Seth Rogen) but is otherwise pretty ordinary.
• Character Narrator: Serves as the show’s narrator while also being its main character. Her thorough yet jaded exposition is our primary source into the characters’ backstories.
• Childhood Friends: With Lexi, though they've grown progressively more distant over the years.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Rue is this out of love for Jules, which ironically ends up pushing Jules away from her.
• Cluster F-Bomb: She uses variations of "fuck" a lot over the course of the series.
• Coming of Age Story: In a strange, fucked-up way.
• Coming-Out Story: The closest to one we have seen was when Ali misunderstood her relationship with Jules and was corrected. Her sexuality is the least of her issues.
• Cool Big Sis: Gia clearly sees her as this. She worries about not living up to it.
• Country Matters: Rue drops the C-word on occasion in her narration.
• Covert Pervert: She tries to keep it cool when Jules asks her to help her to take Jules's nudes. In the beginning of "'03 Bonnie and Clyde" she's masturbating to the thought of Jules.
• The Cynic: Her pessimistic narration occasionally slips into this.
• Daddy's Girl: Rue was very close to her father growing up and took care of him at home during his battle with cancer. After he passes, she wears almost nothing but his clothes now.
• Deadpan Snarker: Her narration has shades of this, befitting her very jaded view of the world.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: She seems to feel this way, but it's mostly because her mother is trying to get her off drugs (and she hates her mother's new boyfriend).
• Disappeared Dad: Her father died of cancer some years before the series begins. During the first season, Rue still misses him as it's revealed that she wears his clothes, notably her signature burgundy hoodie, likely for memorial reasons.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: For Gia. Gia adores Rue, but it doesn't stop Rue from gaslighting Gia and relapsing because of Jules even when she knows how much it means to Gia that she stay sober.
• Drowning My Sorrows: The reason she started using drugs.
• Drugs Are Bad: Having zig-zagged Drugs Are Good all of season 1, this is fully in effect by Season 2; she's destroyed all her relationships and is forced to go crawling to Laurie, who seems planning to force her into prostitution.
• Drugs Are Good: Zig-zagged. Though she's obviously fond of the effects of a high, she often talks negatively about the side effects of addiction as well.
• Easily Forgiven: By Ali. She accepts that she said something potentially unforgivable to Ali, but he forgives her almost immediately. Justified, as he's been where she is.
• The Eeyore: A fully justified trope. Rue is struggling so intensely with depression and addiction that it often turns her into this.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite the fact that she herself had a similar breakdown earlier because of her addiction and had her own Kick the Dog moments, Rue is clearly saddened and disgusted at Cassie verbally abusing Lexi during the play because she knows Cassie is doing it for no reason other than mere sadism and spite and realizing that dating Nate has turned Cassie into an abusive monster.
• Fangirl: Of The Wire based on her ability to list half of the main cast and several fringe characters in an offhand threat she makes to one of the McKay twins.
• Fictional Fan, Real Celebrity: Rue is a big fan of The Wire, which is ironic for a girl with her own drug addiction.
• First-Person Smartass: She has her moments.
• Functional Addict: Played with. Though she's not exactly functional, she does go through periods of time in which she can mime sobriety.
• Girliness Upgrade: Played with. In episode eight, she lets Jules dress her up for a dance, but she's visibly uncomfortable with the results.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Like just about everybody else in Euphoria, but Rue is notable for on top of drinking and partying too much and is still hooked on drugs.
• Hollywood Atheist:
  • Rue, while speaking with Ali during "Trouble Don't Last Always" on her difficulty regarding step two of the NA program (acceptance of a higher power) says she doesn't believe in God. This appears to largely be because of her dad's death from cancer, plus many people who also died senseless deaths while others lived. She particularly finds it annoying when people thank God for their survival, which to her seems arrogant since this comes off as saying they're so special while others die. Ali, though a Muslim, is sympathetic and freely admits not to have the answer about that, asserting that the "higher power" need not be God.
  • Played With a bit. Whenever Rue is in a particularly dangerous situation, she will call on “God” to not let her die, and has a rather religiously-influenced hallucination during a drug binge where she speaks to her dead father.
• Imagine Spot: Sometimes slips into these as an extension of her narration. Notable mentions include her powerpoint lectures, her fantasy about burning Nate alive, and the notorious drug-induced Gainax Ending of Season 1.
• Improvised Weapon: A flashback shows that she once threatened Leslie with a shard of glass from a picture frame.
• Insecure Love Interest: For Jules - she's constantly scared of being left alone.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Rue can be very reckless and self-centred, frequently prioritizing her desire for drugs over her relationships with friends and family. However, she still genuinely cares about the people close to her and does regularly apologize to them when she lashes out or mistreats them.
• Kick the Dog: There is no way to spin Rue's actions in episode 3 of season 2 as positive. She deliberately gaslights Gia into thinking she's just smoking weed, playing off suicidal ideations to get Gia to trust her. She also violently attacks Leslie. Then she brings up the worst pain of Ali's life to hurt him when he confronts her over her using.
• Kick the Morality Pet: When she screams at Gia that smoking weed is the only thing that stops her from killing herself, which is one of Gia's biggest fears.
• Leitmotif: "All For Us" by labrinth and Zendaya.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Not personally, but Rue's desire to be loved and taken care of leads to her turning Jules into this far too quickly and actually alienating her.
• Meaningful Name: "Rue" means "to regret". Rue spends a significant amount of time regretting her actions throughout the series.
• Morality Pet: Seems to be a downplayed version of this to Fezco.
• Never My Fault: In "Standing Still Like A Hummingbird", Rue blames Jules for leaving her at the train station when in reality, she was the one who decided not to go with her out of panic despite Jules pleading to come with her.
• No Social Skills: She doesn't have a filter at social events.
  Kat: Tequila makes me aggressive.
  Jules: Tequila makes me want to dance.
  Rue: I, uh, I once took, like, ten Vicodin and drank an entire thing of tequila, and then I, like, blacked out for three days. But while I was blacked out, I, like, still went to school and did homework and shit. It was really weird.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Everybody calls her Rue, to the point where it was assumed by everyone that that was actually her first name. Season 2 reveals that her first name is actually "Ruby", but she's only called that by the supporting antagonist Laurie.
• Out of Focus: Despite her case not being as bad as Kat and Jules, she still ends up on the backburner for most of Season 2 as Cassie ends up being the Villain Protagonist of that season.
• Parent with New Paramour: She hates her mother's new boyfriend Rick.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Her main conflict, especially with Jules most of all, which makes the ending of Season 1 so much worse for her.
• Potty Failure: In "The Trials and Tribulations of Trying to Pee While Depressed", Rue suffers urinary difficulties as a result of severe depression, culminating in her peeing herself while trying to get to the bathroom.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: With Jules. They cuddle, fall asleep beside each other, and even tell each other they love one another. Their relationship becomes romantic in "Shook One Pt. II".
• Quirky Curls: Although her quirkiness extends to her severe mental illness, these are often emphasized at times when she's particularly distressed.
• Quirky Girl, Quirky Tux: She wears one to a Halloween party.
• Recovered Addict: What Rue pretends to be to her family and her fellow addicts. She finally comes clean with her support group in "Shook One Pt. II." She later relapses when Jules leaves her. But after that, her sobriety becomes permanent at the end of Season 2.
• Security Blanket: Rue wears her dad's burgundy hoodie constantly and is shown cuddling it when she needs comfort.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Rue, a tomboy comfortable in masculine clothing, doesn't look too bad when dressed up at McKay's party and the winter formal (the latter courtesy of Jules).
• Significant Birth Date: Rue was born three days after 9/11.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Is possibly the most foul-mouthed character on the show.
• Stereotype Flip: Of the Black drug addict. She is addicted to narcotics, but it's shown to be a sympathetic struggle that she gains strength by overcoming.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl:
  • The "tomboy" to Jules's "girly girl", although she is a bit of a Tomboy with a Girly Streak going by how she dresses at parties and wears the elaborate eye makeup every now and then.
  • Also the "Tomboy" to Lexi's girly girl.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Season 2 as she completely spirals into her drug addiction and loses control of herself. A checklist: she brings a suitcase full of drugs to an AA meeting, throws back in Ali's face what he confided in her about being violent during his own addiction, gaslights Gia into thinking she was only smoking pot when she rightly suspected that Rue was back on opioids, commits a series of spree burglaries, and violently attacks her family and friends when they find out about her relapse.
• Tragically Disabled Love Interest: To Jules. She's an addict, depressed, and suffering from a handful of mental disorders.
• Tsundere: Played with. Most of the time, Rue is a Deadpan Snarker who pretends to be aloof, while secretly being extremely needy and desperate for affection or a high. This, however, seems to be largely a manifestation of her addictive personality.
• Twofer Token Minority: Technically triple: she's Black, gay, and struggles with mental illness.
• Undiscriminating Addict: Rue's addictive personality is so profound that she'll take just about anything that comes in a pill bottle, to the point that after she nearly overdoses on fentanyl in the second episode, her dealer flat-out refuses to sell her any more drugs.
• Unkempt Beauty: She often dresses in a very masculine, stripped-down way with messy hair and a plain face, but her beauty is clear. Even when her makeup gets ruined, she's still gorgeous. She's also played by Zendaya, who's regarded as one of the hottest woman in Hollywood.
• Unreliable Narrator: Rue admits this about herself.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: During her withdrawals, Rue exposing Cassie's affair with Nate to Maddy results in Cassie becoming free to embrace her darker and volatile side and becoming one of the biggest threats and obstacles the rest of the main characters have to deal with in the future. Starting with her becoming abusive towards Lexi especially during her play.
• Was Too Hard on Him: In "The Theater and Its Double", when Rue sees Jules again for the first time after their break up during her withdrawal, she acknowledges that she was too harsh towards her and seems really remorseful for it. But then she realizes how she ended things with her, Rue realizes it's best if they have some space from each other and look for the right time to heal their friendship, if not their relationship.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Though she and Lexi have known each other since kindergarten, their relationship is often shown to be reluctant or strained.
  • As of "Standing Still Like a Hummingbird", hers and Jules relationship is permanently destroyed. However as of "The Theater and Its Double", it's implied that Rue acknowledges that she and Jules would be Better as Friends after they take time to heal in their own spaces.
• When She Smiles: Rue doesn't smile a lot, but when she does it's precious, especially when she's around Jules.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Although through despair, her monologues demonstrate that she is this, as she is very perceptive even about characters who hide their true feelings, like Cassie or Nate.

Jules Vaughn

Jules Vaughn

"She hated her life, not because it was bad, but because when you hate your brain and your body, it's hard to enjoy the rest."

Played By: Hunter Schafer

A pretty and fashionable trans girl who befriends Rue at a party. She tries to help other people with their problems, but often ends up wearing herself thin.

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• Age-Gap Romance: She often engages in sexual activities with older men she meets on Grindr.
• Badass Adorable: Despite being a sweet and friendly girl, her first conversation with Jerk Jock Nate has her pointing a knife at him after he threatens her.
• Betty and Veronica: The Betty to Maddy’s Veronica.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Jules is a real sweetheart but the fact that she threatens Nate with a knife when he goes too far show that she isn't someone to mess with.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: She appears to believe this, as she's easily impressed by a photo of Tyler's (or, technically, Nate's) large penis.
• Blithe Spirit: She's a vivacious, funny girl with Manic Pixie Dream Girl tendencies, as is amplified when she meets the depressed Rue.
• Blue Is Heroic: She has blue streaks in her hair and is one of the only unquestionably good characters in the show.
• Break the Cutie: Implied. She's a sweet girl who's been through... a lot in her childhood years.
• Broken Bird: In addition to all her other problems, especially once Nate has hold of her nude pictures.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: A unique example with two girls. Though they both have their share of trauma, Jules is free-spirited and cheerful (most of the time) while Rue is far more angsty and brooding, and Rue is a tomboy, while Jules is very feminine.
• Closet Key: In "Part Two: Jules" Jules tells her therapist that Rue is the first girl she's ever kissed.
• Crying After Sex: She does this after engaging in intercourse with Cal Jacobs for the first time, due to how violent he was with her.
• Daddy's Girl: She's shown to be very close to her father.
• Demoted to Extra: Jules is arguably one of the two main characters in Season 1, but she becomes a significantly less important of the ensemble in Season 2; she doesn't have a centric episode.
• Endearingly Dorky: She's sweet and awkward, which often leads her to come across as such (at least in comparison to the men she sleeps with). Lampshaded by Cal:
  "You're so clean. And you don't know how rare that is."
• Establishing Character Moment: In-Universe. She threatens Nate with a knife after seconds of meeting him at a high school party (granted, he was very physically aggressive towards her first). This is the first impression all of the other characters have of her.
• Even the Girls Want Her: She often attracts the attention of both guys and girls.
• Everybody Loves Blondes: Jules has light blonde hair and almost everyone is attracted to her.
• The Fashionista: Apparently, if her criticism of Rue's dress sense is any indication; depending on your perspective, this may be an Informed Attribute.
• Fictional Fan, Real Celebrity: Jules loves Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and is inspired in her own styling as the new girl in town to emulate magical girls.
• Fille Fatale: She's often seen as this by the older men she hooks up with through Grindr.
• Gender-Blender Name: Hers is one. It may be representative of her trans identity.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Jules has white blonde hair, and is extremely kind and sweet.
• Hidden Depths: She can quote Shakespearean sonnets, while drunk no less.
• Horrible Judge of Character: This is repeatedly lampshaded as being one of Jules's biggest flaws, especially with her desperate need for affection.
  • She hooks up with the much, much older Cal, and participates in his S&M game while he films it.
  • While sending nudes to Nate is defended, Rue calls Jules out on what a truly horrible idea it is to go to meet the stranger by the lake, by herself.
  • Jules also frequently misreads situations between those she cares for; she manages to miss how insistently Rue depends on her and, when she finds out, she handles it very badly specifically because she hasn't been able to see it before.
• Hypocrite:
  • She's quick to cast judgement on Rue's drug-induced idiotic decisions, and rightfully so. However, she similarly makes terrible decisions without the involvement of drugs and at the expense of other people, though at Rue's expense primarily.
  • In Season 2, she gets upset and jealous at Rue for hanging out with Elliot without telling her. Later in the season she cheats on Rue several times with Elliot and is implied to have slept with him after she and Rue have a fight.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Jules gets utterly trashed on Halloween in order to cope with Nate blackmailing her into giving false testimony to help her beat an abuse rap.
• In Love with Love: Although not a reliable narrator, Rue accuses Jules of never loving her, but simply only loving that Rue loved her. Jules is shown to be a romantic at heart, though, and even still attracted to Nate after everything he did to her.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Played with. Jules likes to dress for the male gaze (at least, at first), which involves a lot of pink, matching underwear, and skimpy dresses. She is also genuinely pretty innocent and insecure about her appearance, but it's clear that this is something she does for men rather than for herself.
• Innocently Insensitive: She is not a mean person by nature, which has the side effect of making her occasionally oblivious to when her actions harm others. For instance, she would never dream of blackmailing Cal over the time they had sex, so it doesn't occur to her that teasing him in public might be construed as an extortion attempt. And she had not planned to dump Rue, so it doesn't occur to her that when she sleeps with Anna and then tells Rue how great it was, Rue might feel that she was planning to leave her.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Jules is more of a lipstick bisexual, hooking up with tons of guys and then finding love with Rue, her female friend. She has long hair and very femme looks.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Rue tries to turn her into this, depending far too quickly on their relationship, which causes Jules to freak out.
• Locked Out of the Loop: In Season 2, she was the only major player who wasn't aware of Nate and Cassie's affair or the manner it transpired (especially Cassie's intimidating and dreaded nature being the factor behind it and her betrayal of Maddy). It isn't until Cassie's menacing public meltdown at Lexi's play that she finally pieces together what really went down.
• Made of Iron: Compared to Cassie's alcohol bender during Maddy's birthday party in Season 2 which ends with her vomiting and flaying around, Jules also drank too much nearly on the same level as her during the Halloween party, but she didn't have any effects like that.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Subverted and deconstructed. When Jules moves to town, Rue is at her lowest emotionally and physically in the aftermath of an overdose and she immediately is drawn to Jules, whose high-on-life personality makes her rethink her previous decision to not try to avoid drugs. While Rue does make a slight effort to do better because of Jules, it's gradually shown that her attraction to Jules is becoming obsessive and their relationship starts to splinter because of it. Indeed, when Jules leaves town at the end of the season, Rue falls back into addiction after some time clean. Additionally, all of Rue's problems (such as her depression and bipolar disorder) don't go away because Jules is there. The trope is further subverted because Jules herself, though a Nice Girl, has many issues of her own that causes her to neglect Rue and question their relationship at various points during the first season. So, in short, Jules acts like a MPDG if she were given a plethora of realistic issues and her deeds to help her girlfriend might've not paid off in the end.
• Missing Mom: Her mom "went away" some time after Jules left the institution, implying she had/has mental illness. The specials go deeper into this by revealing that Amy, Jules' mother, had depression and alcoholism, which causes Jules to push her away when Amy attempted to reconcile.
• Meaningful Name: Her name has two meanings;
  • Her name is a gender-neutral one, used for both girls and boys, fitting for a transgender woman.
  • As for the meaning, it means “Youthful, soft, and Downy," fitting for her Endearingly Dorky personality.
• N-Word Privileges: She drops the word "faggot" on occasion, though she mainly uses it towards homophobes who are themselves in the closet.
• New Transfer Student: She moves to LA with her father shortly before the start of the series.
• Nice Girl: Jules is a genuinely kind, sweet-natured and friendly person.
• Occidental Otaku: It is shown that she is a fan of anime such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica. In fact, her phone wallpaper is of Homura and Madoka.
• The Ophelia: Played with in "The Next Episode." An inebriated Jules drunkenly recites Shakespeare as she flounders in a pool. Complete with an ethereal white dress and disheveled hair (not to mention the fact that she’s literally dressed as Juliet).

Jules: I have no joy of this contract tonight. It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be.

• Out of Focus: Jules is demoted significantly in terms of screen time after her special episode, which lasts throughout Season 2.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: With Rue. They cuddle, fall asleep beside each other, and even tell each other they love one another. Their relationship becomes romantic in "Shook One Pt. II."
• Really Gets Around: After transitioning, Jules began to have sex with a lot of men. And Anna.
• Really 17 Years Old: She pretends to be twenty-two when she has sex with Cal.
• Revenge Porn Blackmail: Nate blackmails Jules with her naked photos in order to get her to falsely confess to someone else beating Maddy on the night of the carnival.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: She runs away to LA at the end of Season 1, but she comes back quickly.
• Secretly Selfish: Or so Rue accuses her, saying that she never loved her, just how much Rue loved her. She also ditches the relapsed Rue to hook up with Elliot.
• Self-Harm: As a child, Jules self-harmed to cope with her gender dysphoria and anxiety. And in the first episode, she pulls out a knife and cuts herself at the party.
• Shipper on Deck: She squees at seeing Fez & Lexi hang out together at the New Year's eve party, clearly rooting for them to be something more.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Leaving outside her sex sessions with much older men, Nate becomes immediately obsessed with Jules the minute he sees her.
• Stepford Smiler: Jules tries to keep a friendly and happy face in public, despite her many problems, and it becomes much more obvious once Nate blackmails her.
• Trans Equals Hypersexual: Happens to Jules and is treated as, for her, an essential and identity part of her gender identity. She feels affirmed by men which leads her to meet them on apps and have sex with them. A lot of them. This becomes a problem for her when she has sex with Nate's dad, Cal, who is a Trans Chaser.
• Trans Tribulations: Between self-image and self-harm issues, bad encounters with men, and being blackmailed by Nate, Jules has a lot of problems.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Jules is the girly girl to Rue's tomboy.
• Your Makeup Is Running: Jules after she returns from drunkenly jumping into a pool during "The Next Episode."

Kat Hernandez

Katherine "Kat" Hernandez

"There's nothing more powerful than a fat girl who doesn't give a fuck."

Played By: Barbie Ferreira

A withdrawn, sensible Big Beautiful Woman who slowly starts gaining confidence and popularity as she gains more traction with boys.

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• Artists Are Attractive: A guy interested in her compliments her artistic choice of make-up.
• Beautiful All Along: A strange version. Kat discovers that she's genuinely been attractive her whole life, and that her insecurity about her weight prevented her from seeing it. Once she gets confident, she has multiple men wanting her attention.
• Be a Whore to Get Your Man: She really wants to lose her virginity in order to appear as less of a "prude", at least among the male population of the school.
• Big Beautiful Woman: She's regarded as such online and in real-life. She later uses this to her advantage by booking sex cams in order to get money.
• Brainy Brunette: Downplayed, but she's said to be a talented writer and is a lot more level-headed than some of her peers.
• Casual Kink: The show doesn't make a big deal about the fact that she's a dominatrix.
• Clueless Dude Magnet: She spent the majority of her adolescent years believing she wasn't physically attractive due to her size. Over the course of the show, she slowly develops confidence in her looks.
• Dominatrix: She acts as one as part of her cam sessions. Her leather, latex, and rubber clothing highlight this side of her.
• Downfall by Sex: Played with. Though she's humiliated by her leaked sex tape, the positive reactions to her body online are what lead her to realize that she's actually a very attractive girl, and causes her to gain confidence throughout the entirety of the season.
• Fan Disservice: Her camming sessions. Though she herself is beautiful, her clients are often shown to be middle-aged unattractive men with microscopic penises. Truth in Television, as many "pay pigs" are proud of their less-than-satisfactory appearances.
• Fat and Proud: Her character quote says it all. She's fat, she's conventionally beautiful, and she's proud as hell about both of these characteristics.
• Fat Best Friend: Subverted. While she is fat, Kat is more layered than this trope suggests, actually having storylines and not acting like a Satellite Character to her thin friend Maddy.
• Fictional Fan, Real Celebrity: Kat is a fangirl of One Direction, and writes fanfic that centres around Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson as a fulfilment for her own thwarted sexuality.
• Friends with Benefits: She proposes this situation with Ethan, who politely declines, as he's not interested in anything other than an actual relationship with her.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: She starts out the show wearing wire-rimmed, cat eye framed glasses and after she becomes a cam girl, she is seen without them. Also enforced, in that she's shown wearing her glasses when she's alone and/or insecure, but wears contacts when she's with other people or camming.
• Good Girl Gone Bad: She's a sixteen-year-old virgin in the first episode, but she starts to become more promiscuous as the show goes on, and ends up as an online dominatrix.
• Hypocrite:
  • After Ethan finally gets the courage to kiss her, she mocks him for being a virgin despite being one herself just a couple of months before.
  • She accuses Ethan of gaslighting and manipulating her during their break up when that's exactly what she was doing, lying about a terminal illness and then accusing him of being paranoid and mistrustful when he saw through it and trying to use that reaction as a way to make him the bad guy.
• Insecure Love Interest: With Ethan, although she is the protagonist while he is a supporting character. This is played realistically in that we can see how her insecurity can drive her to put up a unpleasant front to avoid displaying vulnerability (like her anger at thinking Ethan was flirting with another girl) and if one can see it from his point of view, it's mind-boggling that she is doing the Grapefruit Diet and that she can't believe he liked her even before her makeover.
• Kick the Dog: Breaking up with Ethan and claiming that she has a brain tumor before gaslighting him that she's not lying — when she clearly is and then trying to manipulate the conversation to make him look like the guilty party. He even tells her he doesn't mind being dumped, just how she is going about it.
• Lady in Red: She is seen wearing red a lot (which looks good with her Raven Hair, Ivory Skin) and especially wears a dress in red for Winter Formal.
• Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls: Kat is a very popular fanfiction writer (especially those of a NSFW nature) online.
• Ms. Fanservice: Kat is a camgirl and she is frequently shown in revealing lingerie and sexual situations.
• Never My Fault: She tries to manipulate her breakup with Ethan to make him the guilty party, twisting everything he says and accusing him of bad behavior, a fact he calls her out on and even she seems to recognize as wrong.
• Obliviously Beautiful: She used to be this due to her weight, believing that she couldn't be fat and pretty at the same time. As she gains confidence, she eventually subverts this trope and becomes very confident in her appearance and sexuality.
• Out of Focus: Gets a noticeable decrease in screentime and development in Season 2. Touched upon in Lexi’s play, where her fictional counterpart suffers the exact same fate.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Like her portrayer Barbie Ferreira, Kat has very dark ink-colored hair and alabaster skin, and is universally seen as beautiful and works well with her dominatrix look.
• Real Women Have Curves: Kat has numerous suitors alongside a curvier figure.
• Secret Sex Worker: After her hook-up with Wes is posted on the internet, Kat decides to make the most out of an awful situation by using her new internet fame to become a Dominatrix cam-girl. She is unexpectedly good at it and starts raking in a lot of money, buying herself a new sexed-up wardrobe and adopting a confident persona to go with it, all while keeping it a secret from her friends and Love Interest, who are left wondering where this new money and confidence is coming from.
• She Is All Grown Up: Her backstory showed that she was average-looking (especially compared to her peers and given that she was surprised Daniel was interest in her pre-weight gain), now as a High School Junior she is drop-dead gorgeous like a model and it's enough so that Daniel doesn't really remember her.
• Slut-Shaming: Initially, when a video of her having sex with a boy circulated on the Internet. However, Kat quickly bounces back from it by having Roy and Troy delete the video and telling the school that it wasn't her.
• Unproblematic Prostitution: Zig-zagged. Camming is initially portrayed as extremely empowering and good for Kat's self-esteem and body image issues, and it actually helps Kat to recover from Roy and Troy leaking the video of her having sex with them. However, one of her last clients unnerves her so much that she ends their session early. Plus she's underage.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Maddy, particularly during the first season. At one point, when Maddy calls her after Nate is arrested, Kat blows her off to hook up with a guy (which results in a bitter argument between the two later in the season). That being said, they do often proclaim their care for one another, as evident when Cassie's affair with Nate is exposed and Kat immediately stands by Maddy.
• Weight Woe: Subverted. Her arc is mostly accepting that her fatness is not a flaw, thus giving her more self-confidence.
• Will They or Won't They?: She has this with Ethan throughout season 1. They get together, but it doesn't last past Season 2.
• With Friends Like These...: She doesn't help out Maddy when she could, especially considering the many issues that Maddy faces, but this is downplayed as Maddy also isn't a good friend to Kat.

Maddy Perez

Madeleine "Maddy" Perez

"She quickly realized that there were two kinds of people in the world: people who sit in the chairs with their feet in the footbath, and the people who kneel in front of the footbath."

Played By: Alexa Demie

A Silk Hiding Steel cheerleader who desperately doesn't want anyone (bar her abusive boyfriend Nate) to see her more vulnerable side. Her trust issues and internal conflict sometimes make it hard to be a good friend.

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• Alcoholic Parent: Her father is "in between jobs", but often spends his days drunk in front of the TV.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: She's in a relationship with the aggressive, violent Nate, though she doesn't always like his crueler tendencies. But, it got deconstructed later on.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: At times, although it's implied mostly to come from the Stepford Smiler necessity of staying with Nate, a domestic abuser.
• Beauty Breeds Laziness: Maddy's life plan was to use her good looks to land a rich boyfriend and become a kept woman. Unfortunately for her, she's ended up in a toxic relationship with Nate Jacobs, the abusive scion of a wealthy, dysfunctional family, and he takes advantage of her lack of self-preservation instincts in order to control her.
• Beauty Contest: Maddy participated in these throughout her childhood, and she was pretty damn good at it, too. That is, until her parents forced her to stop.
• Betty and Veronica: The Veronica to Jules’s Betty. Yet again the Veronica to Cassie’s Betty in Season 2.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Justified. Nate is extremely manipulative and bullies and abuses Maddy, to the extent that she feels that her whole worth depends on him.
• Country Matters: She calls Nate's mother the c-word at one point.
• Destructive Romance: With Nate. And she knows it.
• Domestic Abuse: At the receiving end of it by Nate.
• The Dog Bites Back: After enduring the pain and suffering caused by Cassie when the latter's affair with Nate was exposed, Maddy finally stands up to Cassie when she tries to ruin Lexi's play and beats her up.
• The Dreaded: Due to her volatile temper, Cassie and even Nate are both wary of ever crossing her and both are frightened at how she will react upon learning of their affair. Cassie even runs away when Maddy goes to fight her during the play. But it doesn't mean Cassie isn't capable of being a manipulative and abusive bully herself, showing that Maddy has met her match.
• Eviler than Thou: After she finds out about Nate sleeping with Cassie, she resolves to destroy Nate's life by releasing his father's illegally made sex-tapes. Unfortunately for her, Nate anticipated this and shows up at her house with a loaded gun. She initially thinks this is a game and bluffs remarkably well, until Nate starts playing Russian Roulette on top of her. Mercilessly exploiting her lingering feelings for him, he gets her to surrender the disk. Afterwards Maddy's so shaken, she pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Mother: Maddy's mom pulled her out of pageants when she was a child after a judge was outed as a child molester. Maddy also thinks she's trying to ruin her life by cutting her away from Nate. However, since Nate is a Jerkass and a potentially dangerous domestic abuser, her mom has a point in this regard.
• Freudian Excuse: Her desire to be nearer to expensive, high quality things due to her family's poverty leads her to stay with abusive Nate.
• Former Friend of Alpha Bitch: In Season 2 she becomes this for Cassie after the latter's affair with Nate is exposed.
• Gold Digger: Although a much more sympathetically portrayed and nuanced character than this trope suggests, Maddy hates being poor and just longs for a rich man to take care of her.
• Good Is Not Nice: Maddy is a very aggressive Alpha Bitch, but she does genuinely care about her friends as well as her Jerk Jock boyfriend, despite all that he's put her through.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Maddy tends to be very short-tempered and confrontational and admits she enjoys getting into arguments and some flashbacks even show her being physically violent when provoked.
• Hot-Blooded: Maddy is very emotional and quick to anger.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Alexa Demie is 5'4" while Jacob Elordi is 6'4".
• Informed Poverty: Maddy comes from a low income family, yet is almost always wearing high quality clothes and make up. Though it's shown that Nate showers her with gifts regularly, explaining where they come from.
• Jail Bait Taboo: She has sex with Tyler in order to get back at her boyfriend, which ends up with disastrous consequences for him as she's only seventeen. This might be covered by a Romeo and Juliet law,^note Which permits consensual sexual contact between a minor and a person who is only a few years older. but he might be unaware of that, and it could have social consequences anyway.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Although she can be mean and crude at times, her anger with Cassie upon learning of the latter’s relationship with Nate is very justified.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Maddy is surly, abrasive and very bad tempered but she has a soft side, cares deeply about her friends and is capable of being very kind and loving.
• Kick the Dog: She had her moments in season 1, such as gaslighting and threatening Cassie when she asked about the dick pics on Nate’s phone and giving the police false testimony about Tyler in order to prevent Nate from going to jail. While the latter moment is not very justifiable, her other less-than-pleasant tendencies can be understandable as her relationship with Nate was becoming more toxic throughout the season.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Ironically in Season 2, she turns into a more kinder and nicer Light to Cassie's more vile and selfish Dark.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: It's hard not to sympathize with her despite her less-than-friendly tendencies; Season 2 depicts a sweeter, caring side of her (now that she is away from Nate) and contrasts her with Cassie regarding Lexi (one scene shows her lovingly applying makeup on her to show how beautiful she is while Cassie mocks Lexi's cup size).
• Morality Pet: Two: the little boy she babysits in Season 2, and Lexi.
• Moral Myopia: Fully acknowledged. Maddy loves Nate (very destructively), but it doesn't stop her from cheating on him, although she remains greatly afraid of what will happen to her if he leaves her.
• Odd Friendship: With Lexi, although downplayed because the two do not interact often onscreen. Maddy is an assertive, confident Lovable Alpha Bitch, whereas Lexi is quiet, shy and bookish. Lexi lampshades it during the play, saying she was intimidated by Maddy but the two grew closer when Maddy helped her with her makeup and encourages her to become more confident.
• Official Couple: With Nate. Not that it has stopped them from cheating on each other at various times. Additionally, the series depicts their relationship as being toxic since Nate is an abuser who manipulates people for personal gain while Maddy isn't willing to leave him.
• Pet the Dog: Despite being very abrasive, Maddy is shown to be fiercely protective of her friends, calling BB a cunt for making fun of Kat being a virgin, or calling out Kat for being a bad friend when Cassie has her issues with Mckay. She gets along very well with Theo, the kid she babysits in Season Two, and their scenes together show a softer side to Maddy who genuinely likes him. She also has a sweet moment with Lexi encouraging her to be more confident.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Tends to call stuff she dislikes "retarded", even after Kat tells her the term is no longer acceptable.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Maddy is livid when she learns that Cassie (her best friend too and a fellow Psycho Ex-Girlfriend herself) has been sleeping with her ex-boyfriend Nate since the New Year's party.
• Secret-Keeper: It's implied that Maddy now knows of Cal Jacobs' secret, as of the Season 1 finale.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: While all the characters swear, Maddy has probably the foulest mouth on the show, especially when she's angry.
• Spicy Latina: She's a Latina, very fiery, and promiscuous, though it's not played stereotypically.
• Technical Virgin: She views herself as this when she had sex with Nate for the first time, even though she technically lost her virginity when she was 14 (and had other sexual encounters after that) because those times weren't with Nate.
• Took a Level in Kindness: While still hot-headed and emotional, she's a lot kinder in season two away from Nate's influence.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Kat.

Cassie Howard

Cassandra "Cassie" Howard

"She fell in love with every guy she ever dated. Whether they were smart or stupid or sweet or cruel, it didn't matter. She didn't like to be alone."

Played By: Sydney Sweeney

A popular but naïve girl ostracized for her infamous sexual past. She often searches for male validation in order to develop a sense of self-worth.

• All for Nothing: After destroying her friendships, walking out on her family, and allowing Nate to completely control her life, Nate ends up dumping her and kicking her out of his house after Lexi's play mocks him.
• Attention Whore: Seemingly falls in love with anyone who gives her attention as shown with her relationship with Nate and her poor attempt to slit her wrists with a corkscrew while crying on the floor in a fit of dramatics about how she “just wants to die”.
• Bad Liar: When Rue outs her affair with Nate to their friend group, she breaks immediately, nervously laughing, devolving into tears, and not giving any real defenses apart from claiming Rue's word shouldn't be believed since she's a drug addict. All of this proves not nearly enough to stop Maddy's wrath, and she's promptly chased offscreen.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Convinces herself that Maddy and Nate being broken up makes Cassie sleeping with him okay.
• Berserk Button: Calling her out for her horrible actions, not treating her like an innocent victim and/or being a Sore Loser will easily set her off.
• Betty and Veronica: In Season 2, the Betty to Maddy's Veronica.
• Big Sister Bully: In Season 2, after she starts to fall madly in love with Nate Jacobs, she lashes out at Lexi several times when the stress of keeping her secrets frustrates her — when Lexi calls her out on her terrible behavior once the secret gets out, Cassie very cruelly insults her to deflect. It’s downplayed though, in that Lexi snaps back at Cassie just as harshly and even uses moments in her play to humiliate Cassie.
• Birds of a Feather: Cassie and Nate were both traumatized by their fathers in such a way that largely forms their characters, and both also hold up an idealized dream of a domestic future. They both even have so much internal rage simmering up to the point they become violent, abusive and controlling towards those who try to ruin their perfect dream.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When Nate becomes attracted to her during the New Years Eve party, it seemed like at first Cassie would be an innocent victim like Jules being taken advantage of by Nate. However, when she gets together with him, she ends up becoming so codependent to him that she prioritizes her relationship with him over her friends and family.
  • In season 1, she cheats on McKay with Daniel on two separate occasions, indicating that she was always a disloyal person.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Lampshaded by her own mother.
• Broken Bird: In episode seven, she gets an abortion, and it's implied that she was mostly coerced into this decision as opposed to making it on her own. It impacts her psyche quite a bit.
• Broken Pedestal: She becomes this for everyone around her, including her mother Suze and Maddy after her affair with Nate is exposed.
• Bungled Suicide: Downplayed. "A Thousand Little Trees of Blood" sees her holding a corkscrew to her wrist, loudly crying that she wants to die, but is stopped by Lexi and her mother catching her on the act, who seem more annoyed than anything. They also predicted she might attempt self-harm and took all the knives outside the house.
• Butt-Monkey: Is consistently humiliated during the course of Season Two.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Played with, she is a slender, busty young woman and loves showcasing her figure but the attention she got from older men as a younger girl (men she grew up knowing and were leering at her) can be degrading.
• Cool Big Sis: A realistic one to Lexi, despite one outburst where Lexi calls her out as benefiting from peoples' attention to Cassie's beauty (when Cassie was clumsily asking her if she looks pregnant), she and Lexi are shown to be close, loving, supportive confidants who get on well. In Cassie's backstory when their parents are heard arguing, we see the two girls (then younger teens or preteens) sharing a bed together and comforting each other. However, after Cassie dates Nate, she ends up disowning her sister altogether and hating her by the end of Season 2 after Lexi humiliates her using the play.
• Daddy's Girl: Shown to be very close and attached to her father. To the point where after becoming a heroin addict, her father knows she is the one to contact to give him valuables to sell and that if he asks her not to, she won't tell anyone.
• Dirty Coward: Cassie hides in her bathroom from Maddy when Rue exposes the fact that she's been sleeping with Nate. In the season two finale, Cassie attacks the actress playing her in Lexi's show but then immediately tries to run away when Maddy runs up on stage.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father left the family after surviving a car accident and implicitly developing a drug addiction.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: It's shown that the intelligent Lexi thinks of Cassie as promiscuous and immature.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: When she sees Lexi’s play, she chastises Lexi for making it, based on her opinion that Lexi is judging her and their friends, when in reality, Lexi created the play so she have a healthy outlet for her feelings about her life.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • After rejecting a boy at a Halloween party who castigates her for "being boring" because she wouldn't have sex with him and feeling that McKay is just using her, Cassie starts hitting the bottle.
  • Her guilt over sleeping with Nate leads her to drink heavily at Maddy’s birthday party, eventually culminating with her vomiting in the jacuzzi and bawling her eyes out.
• Driven by Envy: The reason why she turns against Maddy in season 2.
• Dumb Blonde: She unknowingly believes whatever nice thing a boy says thinking he likes her, completely unaware of their true intentions of sleeping with her. A more dramatic example in the next season however, where she goes after Nate knowing very well how he abused Maddy and previously slut-shamed her. She also believes whatever lies he tells her like in the previous season.
• Ethical Slut: Cassie likes sex, there's nothing wrong with that, and she is also one of the nicest and sweetest characters. Later subverted when she sleeps with Nate.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: She's a popular girl with no trouble attracting attention from her male peers.
• Evil Former Friend: A downplayed example. She abandons her friendship with Maddy — and the rest of her friends as a result — in order to be with Nate.
• Evil Makeover: Thanks to Nate doing it for her, Cassie ends up having some of Maddy's trademarks for her new look, which signifies her letting out her dark side after repressing it for a long time.
• Face–Heel Turn: She goes through this in Season 2 where her relationship with Nate causes her to go from a weak, scared and innocent victim taken advantage of to a ruthless, wrathful and unforgiving young woman who is willing to ruin lives of the people close to her if they ever cross or provoke her, which shows that she is no different than Nate, Daniel or anyone who has ever bullied or hurt her.
• Female Misogynist: Not as an initial part of her character, but after Nate's influence. To defend Nate against his horrific behavior towards and abuse of Maddy, she blames Maddy for all the problems in their relationship and lashes out at the other girls who try to show her what their relationship is really like, especially Lexi.
• Flanderization: She becomes more desperate for love and male validation in season 2 as she falls in love with Nate.
• Flaw Exploitation: As a way to justify herself as an innocent victim for betraying Maddy by choosing Nate, her abusive ex-boyfriend and being determined to keep him under her strings and achieve her goals, Cassie is willing to exploit, manipulate and use her former friends and sister's weaknesses and flaws against them as a means to defend herself. Namely Maddy's behaviour towards Nate and loyalty to her, Rue's drug addiction and Lexi's neglectful past and insecurities.
• Foil: In Season 2, she appears to have been set up as a foil to Rue. Both of them experienced a traumatic event in their youth involving their fathers that caused them to develop an addiction to something (Rue to drugs, Cassie to love/sex/male validation) where they became willing to do anything to get that rush of dopamine. When they aren’t able to attain the thing they’re addicted to, their darker side comes out; they behave erratically, they lash out and hurt the people they care about, and make otherwise terrible decisions that they normally wouldn’t make. The difference between them is that, while Rue is able to recognize that she has a problem and eventually get help for it, Cassie denies that she is doing anything wrong and continues to dig herself deeper and deeper, and even when she appears to experience some remorse for her actions, she represses it. YMMV on this one.
• Freudian Excuse: Her father left when she was a younger teen; after using “love” to manipulate her into letting him in the house to steal from them to get money for drugs. She was also sexualized as a child after puberty and from there was coerced into making sex tapes that were then leaked against her consent and bullied as a result. However, this aspects becomes deconstructed in Season 2, as it shows how Cassie uses her traumas caused by those incidents to cross lines and get revenge on others while perceiving herself to be the blameless victim in everything to justify it.
• Good Bad Girl: She's a bubbly and sweet girl who's slept with multiple people. This isn't treated like a bad thing by the show.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Zigzagged. Cassie gets an abortion, which isn't portrayed as bad in itself, but she clearly had some mixed feelings about having it (McKay had pressured her into doing this), so it's also not a full subversion of the trope.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's a pretty blonde girl and, occasional ditziness aside, she's shown to be a very sweet person in most of her scenes.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Cassie is a popular girl who is often shown drinking or having sex. Overlaps with Ethical Slut, due to her good heart and friendly personality.
• Hannibal Lecture: Gives one to Lexi and Maddy for the play before the latter gives her a Shut Up, Hannibal!.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: After falling in love with Nate in Season 2, she becomes increasingly more destructive and selfish, begging the question of whether she is on the verge of becoming as bad as him. This is especially shown when Rue exposes the affair to the entire friend group during her intervention (albeit in a completely unprovoked way, only doing it to divert attention away from herself); Cassie does a very poor job trying to deny it by haphazardly reminding everyone Rue's a drug addict. By the end of Season 2, she fully enters a Face–Heel Turn.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Cassie attracts a lot of attention from the opposite sex, McKay even thinks that part of the fun of being with her is that other guys are jealous of him.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Possibly. In 2x04, Cassie fights with Nate before leaving his house, and at Maddy’s party she starts drinking heavily out of guilt until she projectile vomits and continuously apologizes to Maddy for "ruining everything," and seems to be contemplative at the end of the episode. In the very next episode, though, Rue reveals Cassie’s affair with Nate to Maddy and the rest of the friend group. This causes her to lose all of her friendships, and finding no support or sympathy from her mother or sister, who are disgusted by her actions, Cassie is only driven further into Nate’s arms, even moving in with him. From there, Cassie is completely dedicated to Nate.
• Heel Realization: It's implied that Cassie has finally realized what a terrible person she's become after getting beat up by Maddy in the season two finale. But for now, it's ambiguous if she genuinely feels remorse for betraying Maddy or is just upset about being publicly humiliated by her sister and then beat up after Nate dumped her.
• Hot-Blooded: Even worse than what Maddy had, but from Season 2 anything can set Cassie's temper off if an individual unintentionally provokes her and gets on her bad side.
• Hypocrite: She becomes full of hypocrisy in Season 2. Despite the below trope, Cassie blames her friends and family for half the things she herself did. Namely accusing Lexi of being an Attention Whore for the play and using it to judge others when she herself did the same thing by making all the issues about herself and overshadowing Lexi and judged Rue, Lexi and Maddy for their flaws, weaknesses and perceived wrongdoings (she judged Maddy for being "toxic" for Nate before her birthday party and later, judged Rue for her drug addiction and exposing her affair with Nate) and then accuses them of betraying her when she herself betrayed Maddy and Lexi throughout Season 2. She even claims Rue to be a horrible selfish woman who uses others and discards them when no longer needed and shames Lexi's friendship with her when Cassie herself did the same and even abandoned and bullied Maddy after the latter found out about her affair with Nate.
• Ignored Epiphany: Even after seeing directly the pain she’s causing Maddy, and having some regrets about it, as well as it becoming increasingly obvious that Nate doesn’t care about her, Cassie digs her feet into the ground and stays with Nate.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: According to Rue, Cassie fell in love with every guy she dated. Incidentally, this occurs after her father left the family.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Cassie had one on a carousel in front of dozens of people while high in "Shook One: Part II".
• Informed Judaism: It's revealed in the Season 2 premiere that she and Lexi, on Suze's side are of Jewish descent.
• In Love with Love: She appears to be fixated with the idea of finding a boyfriend, particularly after her father left her when she was fourteen.
• I've Come Too Far: In Season 2 after she gets together with Nate and especially after he breaks up with her, Cassie isn't willing to go back to the person she was and uses the break-up to empower her dark side and never go back.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Increasingly consumed by her obsession with Nate and the anger and revenge caused by the years of slut-shaming and abandonment, she ends up doing this to Maddy and Lexi throughout Season 2.
• Lady Macbeth: After sleeping with Nate and entering a relationship with him, she slowly becomes this for him. While Nate may be dangerous and manipulative to everyone around him, Cassie is revealed to have the similar intimidation as him as shown in their argument in 2x04.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Downplayed. In Season 1, she cheats on McKay by kissing Daniel in two instances after McKay has insulted or used her, but when she refuses to sleep with him, Daniel cruelly yells at her and mocks her insecurities.
  • A much clearer example in Season 2; after sleeping with her best friend's ex and antagonizing her friends and family for understandably not defending her, Cassie finally gets her comeuppance when Nate angrily breaks up with her and Maddy beats her up in public.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: Although more like "hookups", Cassie's sleeping around all goes back to her father leaving her and wanting to fill the affection she felt from him. This is most clear with Nate, whose manipulation of Cassie directly mirrors her father’s.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The Light Feminine to her friends and especially her sister. It shows up in her wardrobe which features pastels, neutrals, and bright shades (in contrast to Lexi's darker and jewel-toned shades and the colors worn by Maddy and Kat). She is also a bit more naive, insecure, taken advantage of, very kind, and bubbly. Season 2 inverts this with her becoming the Dark Feminine to her friends and Lexi.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Overlaps with Love Makes You Evil. In Season 2, she ends up falling madly in love with Nate to the point that she slowly grows more and more unhinged, even outright flaunting to him at one point that she's "crazier" than Maddy.
• Love Martyr: Loses her friends and her family, and completely surrenders her dignity and autonomy to Nate, just to be loved by him.
• Manipulative Bitch: As Season 2 progressed, she ended up inheriting this trait from Nate during their affair and used that power as a means to an end and against her enemies.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Incites this reaction from onlookers immediately before her on-stage breakdown during Lexi's play.
• Meaningful Name: One of the meanings of Cassie's name is "She who entangles men," fitting for her sexually desired and romance-obsessed character.
• Mirror Character:
  • To Rue, particularly in Season Two. Both Cassie and Rue are the older of two sisters, lost their father as a young teen, and developed addictions ("love" from men and drugs, respectively) as an unhealthy coping mechanism to that loss. In Season Two, both of them use duplicitous means to satiate their addictions and are willing to hurt and betray those they love for a fix. Tellingly, when their actions are revealed, Rue and Cassie each try to throw each other under the bus to divert attention. Becomes a Shadow Archetype in the end of Season Two, as Rue’s mother and sister get Rue the psychiatric help she needs and she begins to sober up. Meanwhile, Cassie’s mother is merely exasperated with Cassie’s mental instability and Cassie ends up leaving to live with Nate. Cassie’s behavior after Nate dumps her, attempting to ruin Lexi’s play and refuse to apologize for betraying Maddy, clearly remind Rue of her own actions after her addiction was taken away.
  • To Jules as well. Cassie and Jules are both blonde, have one parent, who is an addict, leave them, Cassie’s dad and Jules’ mom, and the parent that stays is overly permissive. They both crave male validation and seek it by allowing themselves to be sexually exploited by men, and both are told that they "love to be loved" and are called out for being Prone to Tears and having an idea of themselves as innocent.
  • Surprisingly, for Nate as well. Both are individuals who were at first known to be sweet and kind in the past but after their traumas caused by their fathers, they end up conforming to the usual gender norms, are known to be a star in the football and cheerleading teams respectfully and their dream for a heteronormative life while battling with their self-identity and eventually, it results in them developing more aggressive and violent tendencies where they begin to abuse and bully their loved ones if they unintentionally set them off and even manipulate and blackmail them to get what they want and breaks their victims' will and bravery if they cross them. Eventually, they are later beaten up by their archenemies (Fez and Maddy) who threatened to "kill them" for their wrongdoings .
• Ms. Fanservice: Cassie has the most nude and sex scenes of the cast, with the camera focusing on her large bust heavily. However, this is deconstructed, as she finds the attention degrading.
• Mugging the Monster: The years of being abandoned, insulted, bullied, stepped on and used for sex by almost everyone around her desensitised Cassie as she was shown to be slowly letting out her dark vicious side after she fell in love with Nate and after he breaks up with her, she finally snaps and lets her darkness consume her by yelling at Lexi and Maddy before being beaten up by the latter.
• My Girl Is Not a Slut: Cassie is often slut-shamed, particularly by the guys she's dated in the past.
• Never My Fault: After her affair with Nate is finally exposed, Cassie refuses to take any responsibilty for hurting Maddy. She repeatedly insists that she's 'not the bad guy', because they were broken up at the time, glossing over that she repeatedly slept with her best friend's absuive ex.
• Nice Girl: For the most part, she does try to be kind and supportive to her sister and Maddy.
• No Accounting for Taste: Cassie was a sweet girl… and then she fell for Domestic Abuser Nate, and her efforts to stay with him lead her to abandon her friends and family, betraying Maddy in the process.
• Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: In Season 2, her girlier colours end up contrasting with her dark and wrathful side where she begins to toy with her friends and family in order to have Nate to herself.
• Offscreen Breakup: Her relationship with McKay ends offscreen between the first and second seasons.
• Pink Is Feminine: When she isn't in pastels or blue, she is seen wearing light pinks, such as for the Winter Formal. In Season 2, it becomes Psycho Pink when she falls for Nate.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Wasn't this at first but she ends up adopting most of Nate's conservative beliefs after she becomes obsessed with him. Especially when she becomes somewhat of a Rich Bitch who is misogynistic towards other women who do not fit her traits, especially Rue for her drug addiction and lifestyle.
• Prone to Tears: Very much so, and frequently called out for this.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Becomes this for Nate, especially when he breaks up with her and tries to get away from her.
• Really Gets Around: She has this reputation at school, though she seems committed to McKay.
• Replacement Goldfish: Fans have speculated that the only reason Nate decides to enter a relationship with Cassie is because he sees her as more socially acceptable replacement for Jules, the person he is actually in love with.
• Sanity Slippage: She experiences this in Season 2, competing with Rue's to see who will reach their breaking point. Due to her depression from her abortion, her low self-esteem and break-up with McKay, Cassie is on the edge of what's left of her sanity, which gets worse when she ends up falling madly in love with Nate, despite knowing he is Maddy's asshole ex-boyfriend. As the season progresses, she teeters more and more on the edge, culminating in her having a scathing public meltdown during Lexi's play.
• Secretly Selfish: Cassie likes to devote herself to her boyfriends, but Season 2 reveals that this is pretty masochistic for Cassie, who'll prioritize how they make her feel - including Nate - over people who genuinely care for her, like Maddy.
• Selective Obliviousness: In Season 2, she refuses to admit she did anything wrong and is instead proud of her actions and how far she has come. Even when someone tries to show both her good parts and flaws, she twists it into something worse. Like how in Lexi's play her good and bad parts were shown (because Lexi hoped that at least Cassie would realise her mistakes and return to her), Cassie completely ignores it after Nate breaks up with her and coldly lies and manipulates that Lexi wrote the play to humiliate her.
• Slut-Shaming: Between the videos of her having sex circulating online, to feeling used by McKay more than once, to being called "boring" if she doesn't put out for a boy, Cassie can't catch a break.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: Allegedly with every guy she ever dated.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Cassie is a very pretty girl and she is not afraid to show it off. However, this led to her being used by various guys who only saw her as a sex trophy. Part of the crux of her character is that she is repeatedly told that she is valuable because of her looks, while also implicitly or explicitly being told that her looks are her only value.
• Teen Pregnancy: High schooler Cassie falls pregnant with McKay's baby, though later undergoes an abortion.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: After Nate breaks up with her, she interrupts Lexi's play and talks about how since Lexi and her peers see her as a villain, she might as well live up to it. This lasts for about a minute before Maddy beats her up and leaves Cassie in a quiet and embarrassed state in the school bathroom.
  Cassie: Well, if that makes me a villain, then so fucking be it. I can play the fucking villain.
• Thin-Skinned Bully: She is willing to brutally bully her own sister Lexi or anyone else if they set her off, but runs away in fear once Maddy shows up on stage to beat her up.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Season 2. She sleeps with Nate shortly after he and Maddy broke up, showing little remorse of how Maddy would feel and only caring about getting Nate’s attention (and how Maddy would kill her if she finds out). When Rue outs her affair with Nate, she (unsuccessfully) tries to throw Rue under the bus by saying she can’t be trusted because she’s a drug addict. She also becomes a lot meaner and desensitised once she gets exposed, repeatedly screaming at her mother for not taking her side, insulting Lexi for criticizing her terrible behavior, and flaunting her relationship with Nate to Maddy. This all culminates in her having a public meltdown during Lexi's play, during which she calls out her sister for humiliating her and accuses her of being "a bystander." .
• True Blue Femininity: She is often seen in pastel blues and turquoises (one example being her costume for Alabama Worley)
• Unnecessary Makeover: In-universe. When she dates Nate, she undergoes a total makeover, with straightened hair, swapping out her preference for soft pink and loosely fitted clothes for crop tops, heavy makeup, and clingy dresses. The intention on Nate's part seems to be to try and make her look like Maddy or Jules.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: A heartbreaking example. Moments after her venomous breakdown, we see a flashback of Rue's father's funeral, where Cassie was shown to be more sweet, positive and innocent girl who comforted Rue over her father's death and hugged Lexi.
• Your Makeup Is Running: Cassie is frequently shown crying her eyes out with makeup streaked all over her face.

Lexi Howard

Alexandra "Lexi" Howard

"Lexi and I have known each other since pre-school. And like, in some ways she's my best friend, even though I think we've grown apart."

Played By: Maude Apatow

A shy, responsible Brainy Brunette who often ends up picking up the slack when it comes to her friends' reckless endeavors. Doesn't speak up much about her problems much, but it's clear that she's struggling nonetheless.

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• Allegedly Dateless: Lexi is supposed to be a more isolated, down to earth character who's unlucky in love and regarded as less pretty than Cassie. She has been asked out before and almost immediately in Season 2 forms a very close bond with Fez.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: She falls for drug dealer Fezco.
• All Take and No Give: Is the “Giver” in this type of dynamic with both Rue and to a lesser extent her sister.
• Ambiguously Bi: Lexi lacks a male love interest in the first season, unlike many of the characters in the show. Her mom makes mention of her “girlfriends” several times, and it is implied that she may have feelings for Rue, with her gazing longingly at her throughout the series, and her unreadable expression when Gia tells her she thinks Rue loves Jules. Plus there is a scene late in the season where Lexi states that she isn't interested in the guys who are enamored with her, and while Cassie tells her that she will eventually find a guy, she looks increasingly unsure. This is subverted to a degree come the second season when she develops a crush on Fez, indicating that at the very least she is not a lesbian.
• Author Avatar: Downplayed, but Lexi’s struggle to put on her play (mainly the backlash she faces for offending her classmates) mirrors the backlash creator Sam Levinson faced for certain aspects of the show’s first season.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Lexi is very softly spoken, but she's shown to be very alert and intelligent, and she uses the drama as inspiration for her play.
• Big Sister Instinct: Inverted, as she's the younger sister. Lexi runs interference to prevent McKay from finding out that Cassie's with another guy throughout "The Next Episode", and takes initiative to ask her friends about Cassie when she storms out of the car on the way to the New Year's party in "Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door".
• Brainy Brunette: She seems to have a better (brown-haired) head on her shoulders than her blonde sister, Cassie.
• Childhood Friends: With Rue, whom she’s known since kindergarten. Although they’ve drifted apart throughout the years.
• Closer to Earth: She's one of the very few characters who are not apart of any major drama.
• The Confidant: To Rue, even if the latter doesn't want her to be.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father left the family after surviving a car accident and implicitly developing a drug addiction.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Downplayed. While she and Cassie are both laidback and open-minded, Lexi is shown to be a lot more reserved and responsible than her older sister.
• Girl Next Door: She is Rue's Childhood Friend, very sweet and friendly, down-to-earth, the wholesome and earnest Only Sane Man of her family and the main characters, pretty but un-exotic.
• Good Counterpart: To both Rue and Cassie, spelled out by Rue in the season 2 finale. Their traumas are very similar (in fact, she has the exact same trauma as Cassie), but unlike their responses, which ended up with them developing extremely destructive and dangerous habits, Rue believes that Lexi "figured out" what to do with herself, and is extremely more put together than either of them.

Rue: I've been through a lot and I don't know what to do with it, but you've been through a lot and you know how to do with it.[...] Look what you made, I don't know how to do that, I don't know how to get where you are.

• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Lexi is shown to have an active imagination and often imagines herself as the director of her own life. She plays a thinly veiled version of herself in her own play.
• Hollywood Atheist: Subverted. She reveals she is an atheist in the season 2 premiere and even asks Fezco how he can reconcile his belief in God with drug dealing. Fezco admits he doesn't have an answer. He's mildly perturbed by hearing this, but Lexi's atheism otherwise isn't portrayed negatively (she's really nice overall, probably one of the most together characters on the show). She also doesn’t really judge others for their beliefs, and doesn’t mock or critique Fezco for his beliefs, merely asks him about them.
  • It’s also never stated if her atheism is a result of cynicism borne from her childhood trauma or not, but that backstory is there, making her fall into this trope ever-so-slightly.
• Iconic Outfit: Her Bob Ross costume quickly became this to the fans. The show's official Twitter page later posted a picture of the outfit calling it just that.
• Informed Judaism: When Fezco asks her if she's Jewish, she mentions she is on Suze's side.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The Dark to her sister's Light. Lexi is a kind person but she is much more mature and savvier (albeit slightly risk-averse and insecure) than her older sister and she is seen wearing neutrals, jewel tones, grays, autumnal tones, and dark colors.
• Mean Boss: In stark contrast to her normal Nice Girl attitude, Lexi is shown to be downright vicious to the actors and crew of her play during the showing: she makes the actor playing Cassie cry, compares a techie to a blind three-year-old (he was late on a light cue by two seconds), and insists a male actor keep applying a type of gloss despite making him breakout in hives. For what it's worth, they all still rally around her after Cassie hijacks the play, indicating that she isn't that horrible to them.
• Morton's Fork: What her sibling relationship with Cassie becomes in Season 2, as she witnesses her older sister's descent into darkness and corruption due to her obsession with Nate.
• Most Writers Are Writers: It's revealed in season 2 that Lexi's main way of coping with her difficult family situation has been to imagine it as a TV show and then taking to writing all her experiences down like a script, eventually ending up with a whole play.
• Muse Abuse: She writes, directs, and stars in a whole play about her friends and family, making most of them deeply uncomfortable; while almost everyone comes around to it by the end, Cassie is still infuriated, being so offended that she interrupts the show with a public tantrum. Lexi does worry beforehand that the play might hurt some feelings but decides to stage it anyway after Cassie repeatedly insults her.
• Nice Girl: Like her sister, she is pretty friendly and supportive, especially of Rue.
• Odd Friendship: Lexi, a bookish, shy, responsible type who’s an atheist and rarely gets into trouble strikes up a strong bond with Fezco, a drug dealing tough guy who had to drop out of school, and one who has a fairly strong faith in God. However, both characters are among the nicest and most genuine in the cast.
• Obliviously Beautiful: Some of her comments imply that she's insecure about her physical appearance.
• Only Sane Man: Alongside Fezco and Ethan, Lexi seems to be the only teenager of the main cast who doesn't seem to have major personal issues. She also serves as the most mature and responsible member of her family which has a naive and promiscuous teenage girl, an alcoholic mother who acts more like a Jaded Washout, and a drug-addict father who left the family.
• Practice Kiss: A flashback shows that after being asked to a dance by a boy, Lexi practices French kissing with Rue in preparation.
• Prima Donna Director: Shows shades of this during her play, yelling at and threatening to replace crew members who don't meet her standards.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Cassie lays into her pretty fiercely after interrupting her play. She chastises Lexi for judging her and their friends, claiming she is insecure about being inexperienced and dull. This could be chalked up to Cassie merely spewing vitriol during a harrowing Moral Event Horizon, but Lexi’s shameful expression indicates she may be onto something.
• Sexy Whatever Outfit: Averts, even defies the trope by going to Halloween in a perfectly normal Bob Ross costume.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Lexi is naturally very pretty but is not considered eye-catching In-Universe, but appears in a form-fitting red dress in her play that spurs a lot of positive attention from the audience.
• Shipper on Deck: She cheers very loudly when Kat and Ethan kiss at Winter Formal.
• Shrinking Violet: She's a lot less irresponsible and outgoing than most of her peers, but it often leads to her being overlooked or ignored (particularly in comparison to her sister Cassie).
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Downplayed; Fezco is a drug dealer, fitting more into All Girls Want Bad Boys, but his kindness to Lexi, and interacting with her instead of her sister, is what wins Lexi's heart. While Maddy and Cassie went after Nate, the bad boyfriend, Lexi prefers the levelheaded, nice guy Fezco.
• Slut-Shaming: Lexi does this to her sister Cassie in her play, and has done this in her daydreams.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The "Girly Girl" to Rue's Tomboy, as Lexi is often femininely attired and presented.
• True Blue Femininity: Although using a darker palette than her blonde sister, she is seen wearing a midnight blue shade and eyeshadow for Winter Formal.
• The Unfavorite: While it’s clear that Lexi’s mother loves her, it’s also very obvious that she gets along with Cassie more, due to having more in common with her, shown when she’s complimenting Cassie’s style after criticizing Lexi’s— in front of their friends. It’s also implied that her father favored Cassie, from the way he compliments her and not Lexi as well as the fact that it’s Cassie he (initially) keeps on touch with through secret text messages and no mention is made of him messaging Lexi. Season 2 turns the tables in Lexi's favor as Cassie becomes increasingly unhinged and outright hostile to both of them.
• We Used to Be Friends: Downplayed. Lexi and Rue are still kind of friends, but are much, much, much more distant than they used to be, and Lexi seems to feel that she's been replaced by Jules and Rue only contacts Lexi when she needs something.

Nate Jacobs

Nathaniel "Nate" Jacobs

Played By: Jacob Elordi

Maddy's aggressive and manipulative jock boyfriend, with severe psychological issues regarding his sexuality and masculinity.

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• Ambiguously Bi: He's in a relationship with Maddy, whom he's obsessed over and subjects to domestic abuse. At the same time, he has also seems to be following in his dad's footsteps by using Grindr, a gay dating app, but it later turns out he'd only used it to find Jules so that he could blackmail her into leaving his father alone. However, he does confess to Maddy to being confused, adding ambiguity to the situation. Plus there's the matter of him having numerous dick pics on his phone that aren't his.
• Armoured Closet Gay:
  • It's implied that his bigotry is at least partially born out of some repressed same-sex attraction. His distaste and attraction for Jules, a trans girl, ends up bringing him out even more.
  • He has a very visceral reaction to his portrayal in Lexi's play where he is portrayed as a "glass closet" gay man.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Towards his father Cal, whom he resents to the point of nearly assaulting him in the season 1 finale. In Rue's narration, she also mentions that Nate doesn't like his mother because he considers her "weak."
• Bait the Dog: Nate's preferred method to get people back on his side (as seen with Maddy and Jules in Season 2).
• Be Careful What You Wish For: He always wished for a girlfriend who fits his ideals of a perfect feminine woman that he can control and have a perfect heteronormative life with her. In Season 2, Cassie fits the mold, but it's because she turns out to be an insane Yandere for him and a sadist like him.
• Break Them by Talking: He's pretty damn good at psychological manipulation, as shown with Jules in "Shook One Pt. II".
• Broken Ace: He's a star football player who has ambiguous sexuality issues and anger problems, abuses his girlfriend, assaults the guy who slept with her, frames the guy for his girlfriend's abuse, goads a girl into framing the guy by using her solicited nudes as blackmail, and calls the police on a guy who knew what he did to the girl he's blackmailing.
• Big Bad: He's the central antagonist of the first season. Rue and Jules both hate him, and among his machinations is his abuse of Maddy and blackmailing Jules and framing Tyler. Eventually Cassie shares this role with him in Season 2 becoming his Lady Macbeth.
• Big Man on Campus: Extremely popular and a good sportsman.
• Bigot with a Crush: for most of the first season, it's implied he has a crush on Jules, who he's equal parts repulsed by and attracted to. He admits his feelings during Season 2, but it's too late by then.
• The Corrupter: He ends up being this for Cassie. As his behaviour and personality ends up influencing her to inherit his traits.
• Domestic Abuser: He is horrible to Maddy, who he physically abuses, but he's also this to Jules, as he blackmails her with the nudes she sent him while he was catfishing her. He can't do the same to Cassie as she is shown to be equally a bastard as him.
• Didn't Think This Through: He clearly didn’t think about the repercussions he would face for ratting out Fez, a drug dealer, to the police.
• Evil Is Bigger: He's easily the tallest of the cast at 6'4", and the most despicable.
• Extremely Protective Child: Reconstructed. Nate kept Cal's tapes a secret from his mother and everyone else. He changes his mind between trying to protect his dad (despite their antagonistic and at times abusive relationship) and only doing so to protect his dad's business.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He only genuinely apologizes twice in the series. The first is to Jules for how he treated her. He not only admits she didn't deserve it, but gives Jules Cal's sex tape as proof of his sincerity, despite knowing it would destroy his Dad's business.^note  This is the whole reason he went to such lengths to get it from Maddy The second is after playing Russian Roulette on top of Maddy, even admitting that was too far. He is even clearly disturbed by Cassie's sadistic and volatile behaviour.
• Faux Affably Evil: Nate can be at times very charming (especially to Maddy) but generally to get what he wants, and he usually drops the act to behave violently towards her. The only person he seems to truly care for is his mom, if their interactions are any indication.
• Gag Penis: According to the pictures he sends Jules, he's got a pretty impressive member (and a clean room to boot).
• Hate Sink: In the first season, at least; there was little redeemable about him. Season 2, however, made him a little kinder.
• Henpecked Husband: In an odd turn of events, he ends up being this for Cassie in Season 2 after they get into a relationship.
• Hollywood Healing: Nate is apparently Made of Iron if his healing post being brutally beaten up by Fez is any indication. He's in hospital and looks badly beaten up, to a potential point of even head injuries. However, he recovers within episodes and shows no lasting effects.
• Humiliation Conga: A little downplayed, but after smugly getting away with all the terrible things he did in the first season, the second season was a little less kind to him. After getting the shit beaten out of him by Fezco in the premiere, he's forced to hide and keep a low profile about his growing relationship with Cassie to avoid Maddy's crazy reaction, then his dad goes off the deep end after his own Humiliation Conga and leaves the family, his mother jabs at him about his faults and his unhealthy way of dealing with them, and then Lexi's play utterly humiliates him in front of everyone he knows. This culminates in him having his own father arrested for his belief in him inadvertently being the cause of all of this.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Jacob Elordi is 6'4" while Alexa Demie is 5'4". He is also this with Sydney Sweeney, who is 5'3".
• Hypocrite: Is he ever!
  • Beats the ever-loving crap out of Tyler under the belief that Tyler raped Maddy, and fantasizes about doing the same to hypothetical predators to protect Maddy. Nate also tried to sexually assault Rue prior to the series, forced a kiss on Jules after revealing he was catfishing her, first hooked up with Cassie when she was "very drunk," and then forcefully kisses Maddy while playing Russian roulette on top of her.
  • Nate makes fun of McKay for dating Cassie due to her sexuality history, repeatedly slut-shaming her, and insisting that McKay should dump her. In Season Two, Nate not only sleeps with Cassie, but almost immediately believes himself to be in love with her and starts a romantic relationship with her.
  • Nate calls out Cassie for sleeping with her best friend’s ex-boyfriend, despite him also sleeping with his friend’s ex-girlfriend.
  • When Cassie threatens to reveal their relationship to Maddy, Nate accuses her of blackmailing him, after blackmailing Jules and Tyler in Season One.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Played with. Nate is a total Control Freak, but he shows particular interest in more strong-willed girls, such as Maddy and Jules. In theory, Cassie should be his perfect girlfriend, since she's a Love Martyr who Desperately Craves Affection, but he seems to get bored pretty quickly with her desire to make him happy and treats her as a backup plan at best.
• Insane Equals Violent: Nate is unbalanced, domestic abuses Maddy, and even performs Russian Roulette with Maddy.
• Ironic Name: His name means "Gift of God," but he acts like anything but, especially towards his father or Maddy.
• Jacob and Esau: His father, Cal, adores him and dislikes his brother. (Ironically, Cal also moulded Nate into being the truly horrible person he is.)
• Jerk Jock: Nate fits this to a T.
• Jerkass: Nate is an abhorrent person who mentally and physically abuses his girlfriend, beats up a man for having sex with Maddy and blackmails Jules in the cruelest manner possible to secure his family's reputation. While not above flashes of humanity, he's a ridiculously nasty and cruel person for most of his screentime.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • For his horrible personality, Nate does points out to Rue that her relationship with Jules likely won't last.
  • He is also correct about how dangerous Jules's self-destructive tendencies are.
    "I can't trust you. Because you're so fucking broken, you can't even trust yourself. And that's scary."
  • Nate calls out Cassie's selfish behavior midway through the second season.
• Karma Houdini: By the end of season 1, Nate has gotten away with his domestic abuse of Maddy, assault on Tyler, and blackmailing Jules. And only a couple of people really know how despicable he really is.
  • Karma Houdini Warranty: The first episode of season 2 has Fez follow through on his threat of violence from the last season, beating the absolute shit out of Nate to the point of him needing hospitalization. However, it's also not that much of a vindication.
• Lack of Empathy: In the first episode of season 2, Nate and Cassie are having sex in the bathroom at a party when Maddy starts knocking on the door and recognizes Nate’s voice and demands he open the door. Cassie starts sobbing and Nate is completely bewildered as to why she’s crying as she "hasn’t been caught," evidently unable to understand Cassie’s guilt and panic.
• Leitmotif: "Nate Growing Up", which plays in various scenes that focus on him, including his backstory narration in episode 2.
• Manipulative Bastard: Much of his season 1 storyline has him blackmailing Jules so he would get off the hook for abuse charges.
• Misplaced Retribution: He breaks up with Cassie after feeling offended by his portrayal in Lexi's play despite the former having no idea of what the play was even about.
• Mr. Fanservice: While fans unanimously found his behaviour to be loathsome and the series depicts him as a violent Manipulative Bastard, Nate is still played by the handsome, muscular Jacob Elordi. The creators seem aware of this, giving him copious Shirtless Scene moments as well as shots of his butt in the first season. Downplayed, as many of his sex scenes - particularly with Maddy - are exploitative and played for Fan Disservice. Likewise in Season 1 Episode 2, the fanservice-y shots of his body post-Shower Scene are interspersed with close-up shots of Tyler on the floor, bloodied and barely breathing after Nate has brutally beaten him.
• Never My Fault: Nate is well aware he is a fucked-up person, but has a tendency to push the fault for his personality to others, especially his father and Maddy. He hates his father and believes that if it wasn't for his sexual repression, none of Nate's own psychosexual issues would have been born; when his mother mentions after Cal abandons the family that she worries where Nate will point his rage towards, Nate brushes it off by claiming that the sole reason for his anger was his father. As for Maddy, Rue narrates that he thinks that he was bad because Maddy brought out the worst in him, and believed it would be different with Nice Girl Cassie, even though he was still pretty abusive to her.
• Official Couple: With Maddy and then Cassie, although he manipulates this status through manipulating and/or abusing her.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He has some very rigid and old-fashioned views about what women are supposed to be like and is also quite transphobic to Jules. His view of the white, upper middle-class Cassie as more innocent and a good girl he could settle down with compared to the working class, Latina Maddy implies that he's also somewhat racist and classist.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Nate's beliefs about women are an inversion of this trope, as revealed in episode 2:
  Rue: "He made a long mental checklist of the things he liked and disliked about women. He liked tennis skirts and jean cut-offs, but not the kind so short you could see the pockets. He liked ballet flats and heels. He hated sneakers and dress shoes. What was fine with sandals, as long as they were worn with a fresh pedicure. He liked thigh gaps, hated cankles. He liked tan lines, long necks, slender shoulders. He liked good posture and fruit-scented body mist. He liked full lips and small noses. He liked chokers, but the lacy ones with flower cutouts or delicate patterns. He hated girls who sat like boys, talked like boys, acted like boys. But there was nothing on planet Earth he hated more than body hair."
• Secret-Keeper: To his father's filmed sexual encounters, though Nate makes it clear that he doesn't like keeping that secret.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Nate is highly attracted to, but also seems to almost despise, Jules, but it doesn't stop him constantly fantasizing about her and pretending that Maddy is her during sex.
  • It's indicated in both his comments in McKay's party and in another one made by Lexi in season 2 that he's one of the people that said mean things about Cassie and yet he has sex with her later on.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: He says the f word a lot in all of his scenes.
• Smug Snake: Nate had shades of this in his interaction with Fezco.
• Straw Misogynist: Subverted. Nate isn't the stereotypical straw misogynist, but it is clear through Rue's narrations about him that he has very antiquated views on women and he hates girls who don't fit into his version of what womanhood is. Because Nate is not overt in his misogyny, most people don't realize it (or don't care to), with his friends giving him a pass since he fits into the "All-American boy" stereotype on the surface.
• Took a Level in Kindness: It's VERY minor, but after what he goes through in season 2, he takes baby steps to become slightly less of a horrible person. He gives Jules the CD of her affair with Cal mostly out of altruism (the brutal method he used to obtain it notwithstanding) and apologizes for what he did to her. While he's still a horrible boyfriend to Cassie, it was not nearly to the level it was with Maddy, who he was flat-out abusive toward. Not perfect, but progress. Finally, he deals with his issues with Cal in a much healthier way by doing the right thing and getting the authorities involved, rather than resort to direct violence, as it was implied were his basic instincts on the matter.
• Troubled Abuser: Nate is an abusive partner to Maddy and has a heap of issues himself, particularly with his father. He has massive esteem and self-image issues, might be struggling with his own sexuality, and is a mess of psychological problems.
• Troubled, but Cute: He's an abuser with good looks and a brooding demeanor, which causes multiple people to trivialize his actions, both in the context of the show and in Real Life.
• Unfocused During Intimacy: As Nate becomes obsessed with Jules after seeing a video of his father having sex with her, he forces his girlfriend Maddy to let him have sex with her from behind so that he can imagine that she's Jules.
• Unholy Matrimony: With Cassie in Season 2.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: His mother talks lovingly about how he was very kind and used to look after her when he was a kid.
• Villain Has a Point: Nate points out that Fez has little room to take the high ground when he makes his living selling drugs to teenagers, regardless of whether or not he's friends with any of them.

Fezco

Fezco

"I don't know what type of fucked up shit you got going inside your head. I don't know how to help, but I could tell you one thing: this drug shit, it's not the answer."

Played By: Angus Cloud

A sweet, non-threatening drug dealer and one of Rue's close friends. Fezco has a mild demeanor, but can easily resort to violence when provoked.

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• Affably Evil: Fez is a drug dealer who will sell to children — but he's also one of the nicest characters.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • He threatens to kill Nate when he goes near Rue, and later beats a doctor into unconsciousness when robbing the man's home (though, to be fair, he didn't expect the man or his son to be home at that time).
  • In the premiere episode of Season 2, Fez has had it with Nate and violently assaults him at a party, brutally beating him into unconsciousness.
• Big Brother Instinct: A lot around Rue. He's constantly worried about her asking for drugs, especially when she was forced to take fentanyl. During a party, he admits that he actually cares for her wellbeing and to being scared as fuck when he found out about her overdosing and emergency trip to the hospital. After the fentanyl incident, he cuts her off from drugs.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: He's a drug dealer who's not opposed to physical violence when it comes to resolving fights, but he does seem to genuinely care for those close to him, namely Ashtray, Rue, and eventually Lexi in Season 2.
• Deadpan Snarker: Occasionally, he slips into this.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Evil is stretching it, but while he'll sell drugs to children, he draws the line when one of them is close to dying. He also refuses to sell fentanyl because he knows what it does to people.
• Extremely Protective Child: To his grandmother. Even after all the time he gives her, he finally throws Rue out after she tries to steal from his very ill grandmother.
• Fiery Redhead: He is red-haired and tends to be chill (once noting that he doesn't take what an addict says personally because they don't mean it, it's all the same to them) but the few moments he is fired up it's usually done out of impatience or panic (such as telling Rue to sit her "manic ass down").
• For Your Own Good: Fezco cuts off Rue's access to drugs after her fentanyl misadventure, being justifiably afraid that if she keeps doing drugs, she'll overdose again. Rue is not exactly grateful for this at the time. She does thank him later, however.
• Good Is Not Soft: As nice as he is, he has no problem being rough or harsh to do what's right. When he lets Rue into his house in "Stand Still Like the Hummingbird," he ends up catching her trying to steal some of his grandma's medication. When she rationalizes her actions by saying she'll only take a few pills, Fez denies her still, saying, "It's the principle, Rue. It's not right." He then tells her to leave, and when she gets violent, he has to resort to dragging and throwing her out.
• Hidden Depths: He's a drug dealer but a legitimately kind person who is also surprisingly intelligent and philosophical in his own way.
• It's the Principle of the Thing: He immediately throws out Rue after he catches her trying to steal pills from his comatose grandmother. Even though he is surely able to replace the stolen medicine, he tells her that he has to follow "the principle".
• Mama's Boy: To his grandmother. She took him in, raised him, taught him everything he knows, and he loves her dearly.
• Meaningful Name: Fez' name means "Brother," and he’s protective of the people he loves.
• Nice Guy: One of the few nice guys among the cast. Drug dealer or no, Fezco cares about others and prioritizes Rue's wellbeing over profits.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: After Nate gets a bit too smug after hurting people Fez cares about, Fez slams a bottle over his skull and proceeds to beat his face in. Nate can't even try to fight back and Fez doesn't stop until he's forced to.
• Odd Friendship: He strikes one up with Lexi in the season 2 premiere that develops into them having mutual feelings for each other over the course of the season. By the finale, he even acknowledges how unlikely their pairing is.
  "That's what I like about you the most, though, like... we don't really have nothin' in common."
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Currently, his real name is unknown.^note Some sources give his last name as O'Neill, which was mentioned as his maternal grandmother's last name, but that's no guarantee it's also his.
• Parental Substitute: He has a close relationship with the younger Ashtray, though actor Angus Cloud states they aren't related. In season 2, it’s revealed that Ashtray was abandoned as a baby at Fezco and his grandmother’s home and they have raised him ever since.
• Promotion to Parent: He wasn't always in Ashtray's life, but Fez's grandmother took him in, and since her stroke, he looks after Ashtray.
• Properly Paranoid: Fezco keeps a supply of Narcan (an opioid blocker) on hand, just in case.
• Raised by Grandparents: His grandmother raised him from childhood.
• Real Men Love Jesus: A tough-as-nails drug dealer who beats up the much bigger Nate and shows a genuine faith in God. He outright states as much to Lexi, and is seen praying before embarking on a dangerous mission.
• Ship Tease: With Lexi. During the first episode of season 2, he's seen slyly flirting with her during a party and asking for her number before he has to go.
• The Stoic: He's not the one to express overt emotions.

Leslie Bennett

Leslie Bennett

Played By: Nika King

Rue and Gia's strong and empathetic mother, who struggles to keep her two daughters in check. It appears as if she's still mourning the loss of Rue's dad, even though she does gain a string of boyfriends.

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• Glamorous Single Mother: Subverted. It's made abundantly clear that Leslie is fearful for Rue's health while also appearing frightened at the possibility of her daughter Gia going down the same route.
• Has a Type: Based on her late husband and her boyfriend Rick, she likes long-nosed, somewhat dorky white Nice Guy types.
• Ironic Name: Her name means "Joy," when she feels anything but that, considering she lost her husband and has to deal with Rue using drugs.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: In "The Theater and It's Double", she tells Rue she will no longer be overseeing Rue's drug use. When she turns 18, she will be an adult and out of her house and might as well do any drugs she wants by then, because Leslie now needs to focus on Gia, who is getting into detention, losing sleep, and falling behind in school. Leslie tells her bluntly that she can't convince Rue to value her own life as long as she doesn't want to, and the focus she gives to Rue is missing when focusing on Gia, so she will focus on the daughter she is most likely to be able to save.
• Mirror Character: Generally speaking, the Bennetts and the Howards have a lot in common. Leslie and Suze both recently lost their husbands and are raising two daughters alone. Both also attend more to their elder daughters before shifting their priorities to their younger ones: Leslie aids in treating Rue’s addiction until she realizes Gia also needs help, while Suze relates with Cassie more until Cassie goes off the deep end. Downplayed in that they are not rivals but good friends; Suze attended Robert’s funeral and assists Leslie in trying to stage an intervention for Rue.
• Open-Minded Parent: It is casually shown Leslie doesn't care about Rue's being a openly lesbian at all.
• Parents as People: She is a kind woman with progressive views but her panic for young Rue obsessively counting ceiling tiles led to her later addictions after being prescribed medicines to keep her calm.
• Parent with New Paramour: When Leslie begins dating Rick, Rue outright tells him to go fuck himself.
• Properly Paranoid: She fears that her daughter Rue might fall back into drug use since she returned home from rehab, unaware that Rue has already started back up on drugs and has no intention of stopping.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She is trying to get back to the dating scene and actively is seeking men who remind her of her husband and she can bring to see her daughters.

Gia Bennett

Georgia “Gia” Bennett

Played By: Storm Reid

Rue's sweet younger sister, who ends up dabbling in drugs by the end of season one. One of the few people Rue genuinely cares about.

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• Annoying Younger Sibling: Subverted. Gia seems close to her older sister.
• The Baby of the Bunch: She's one of the youngest characters and an absolute sweetheart.
• Break the Cutie: She's absolutely adorable, which makes it even more heart-wrenching when she starts using drugs.
• Broken Bird: Gia spends most of Season 2 crying for understandable reasons, as she's being gaslit by her sister's drug use and trying to defend her.
• Celebrity Crush: She has a thing for Jordan Catalano.
• Harmful to Minors: Gia (13 years old) was the one who found Rue after she overdosed the first time.
• Intoxication Ensues: When she smokes weed offered by the McKay twins.
• Little Sister Instinct: She cares for Rue and defends her from their mother in "And Salt the Earth Behind You".

Cal Jacobs

Cal Jacobs

Played By: Eric Dane

Nate's strict father and a closeted bisexual, who is hiding some predatory behavior from the rest of his town.

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• Affably Evil: He seems to have cultivated an image as a traditional family man in the town. In reality, he consistently and often cheats on his wife, mainly with much younger partners such as the seventeen-year-old Jules. He can also be a huge bully, as seen in season 2 when he aggressively pressures Cassie into revealing who assaulted Nate (in front of Lexi and their mother no less), but he never loses his affability, even seeming genuinely disturbed by finding out that Jules is underage.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • When Jules reveals herself to him at the chili cookoff, Cal finds her when she's alone and says he knows she can destroy him by revealing they had sex. He outright begs her not to, unaware Jules has no intention of doing so.
  • In the season 2 finale, Nate approaches him and lets him know about the trauma he suffers as a result of having seen his videos at a young age. He produces a flash drive containing all of the videos, and Cal hears the approaching sirens of police, which were tipped off by him ahead of time. He begs Nate not to send him away, in the most vulnerable and fearful state we've ever seen him in thus far, but Nate simply says that he doesn't believe he will ever change, and the police arrive and arrest him shortly after.
• AM/FM Characterization: Cal seems to have an affinity for new wave, adult contemporary and synthpop spanning the 1980s to 2000s, such as INXS, Sinéad O'Connor, Ministry, Spanish Ballet and Kylie Minogue. It reflects his inability to move on from his past and his emotional stunting as he wound up getting Marsha pregnant shortly after high school when he was about to begin his college life — and perhaps explore his sexuality in a healthier way.
• Anti-Villain: While there's no doubt his sexual behavior is very predatory and borderline illegal, it's made clear as the first season progresses that he's not really a malicious person (e.g. in episode 4, he's horrified to find out that Jules is an underage teenager and politely begs her not to tell anyone about their hookup).
• Depraved Bisexual: He's married to a woman, but frequently indulges his sexuality in seedy sessions behind his wife's back with hookups consisting of men or transgender women (most of whom are definitely on the younger side such as Jules).
• Dirty Old Man: He seems to have a serious preference towards very young-looking people, with whom he cheats on his wife.
• Fan Disservice: As a result of his many hookups, he gets quite a few nude scenes that show he is in very good shape for a man his age, but considering his demeanor and the fact that they're often with teenagers, they're very much not titillating.
• Freudian Excuse: Cal fell in love with his male best friend as a teenager, which was reciprocated, but then his girlfriend Marsha got pregnant. This pregnancy led him into a convenience marriage and questionable sexual behavior while becoming a terrible parent who shaped his younger son into the toxic mold that Cal was expected to live up to.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He notes that Maddy and Nate's relationship will bring them both down, implying that he senses that their romance is toxic.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: He committed statutory rape multiple times, but got away with it until the main events of the show. He finally experiences some consequences in Season 2, getting beaten up by Ashtray when trying to intimidate Fez and getting turned in to the authorities by his son.
• My Greatest Failure: He claims that he feels this way about Nate.
• Parental Favouritism: Zig-zagged; while he tells Nate to his face that he is his biggest regret, he much prefers him to Aaron.
• Parents as People: He is a pervert who frequently cheats on his wife and plays favorites with his children, but he seems to truly love his family and is otherwise not an evil person. He comes to regret his actions when he realizes what a cruel man he's molded Nate into with his parenting.
• Pervert Dad: Subverted. He doesn't seem to have much of a perverted interest in his kids, but he and Nate both share some warped sexual tastes, rooted in Nate seeing his videos.
• Put on a Bus: He's absent for a few episodes in Season 2 after leaving Marsha.
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual: He presents his games as this with Jules, but he gets far, far too rough with her and is not that concerned with her safety during them.
• Silver Fox: A non-binary hookup actually remarks to him (upon seeing his face), "Oh my God, you're actually hot," as a note that it's unusual for someone in Cal's position to be physically attractive.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In the Season 2 episode "You Who Cannot See, Think of Those Who Can", he chews out and walks out on his wife and sons in the middle of the night for their perceived involvement in the unhappiness he's experienced in his adult life (in a mixture of drunkenness and just simply not caring anymore after his humiliation at the hands of Fez and Ashtray). He is seen again in the season 2 finale, where he is arrested because Nate decided to take revenge on him.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: He views his elder son as a disappointment. Ironically, Cal's younger son Nate, whom he more or less helped form into his image, is worse.
• You Hate What You Are: Cal might respect Nate more than Aaron, but he definitely doesn't like him. Most of what he criticizes about his two sons are also reflections of his own flaws, though (like being disgusted by Aaron's porn taste and saying Nate was his biggest mistake).

Ethan Daley

Ethan Daley

Played By: Austin Abrams

A boy who sits next to Kat in one of her classes. He has a crush on her.

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• Disappointed in You: When Kat tries to manipulate him to break up with her, he sees through the ploy and walks away. He doesn't say it outright, but it's clear that he's very upset and irritated moreso than angry.
• Dogged Nice Guy: He's consistently nice towards Kat, who initially rebuffs him (granted she thought he was flirting with another girl). However, this doesn't stop him from still being kind to her and pursuing her.
• Hidden Depths: Ethan wasn’t given much development outside of Kat until Lexi’s play showed him to be a versatile and talented actor, playing a multitude of roles - particularly the parodies of Nate and Cassie's and Lexi's mom - and receiving adoring reactions from the crowd.
• Jizzed in My Pants: Ethan does this while giving Kat oral sex, to his embarrassment.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Not cheating per se, but when Kat sees him talking to a slim blonde supermodel type, she thinks the worst of him, but the girl was a platonic acquaintance who works with his sister (and has a boyfriend) and was just asking him to ask his sister to cover her shift.
• Meaningful Name: His name means "Wise Man," and he's one of the few sane people in the show.
• Nice Guy: Generally a decent and patient guy who has a crush on Kat, whom he eventually hooks up and enters a relationship with by the end of season 1. He might be one of the few characters who is sincerely this.
• Only Sane Man: He's one of the few characters linked to the main friend group that's not apart of any of their insanity, otherwise being just a normal, likable guy.
• Promoted to Opening Titles: In season 2.
• Sex God: He is a virgin, as in he has never had any sexual contact, and yet he manages to perform oral sex on Kat and make her climax.
• Stalker with a Crush: What Kat initially believes he is (there may be some projection here).
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: His frame is slender and toned while Kat is voluptuous and a bit large, their size differences being far more emphasized when she's wearing heels to add to her height (Austin Abrams is actually two inches taller than Barbie Ferreira).
• What the Hell, Hero?: He rightly calls out Kat on trying to manipulate their breakup to make him look like the guilty party so she won't have to feel bad afterwards, bluntly telling her that he doesn't mind being dumped, just how she is trying to do it. He simply walks away from her afterwards, more disappointed in her than angry, and even Kat recognizes that she messed up.
• Will They or Won't They?: He and Kat do, at the end of season 1, but they break up in season 2.

Ashtray

Ashtray

Played By: Javon Walton

A scarily childlike drug dealer who doesn't appear to be older than around thirteen. He's Fezco's younger brother, and the pair appear to be relatively close.

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• Character Death: Killed in the final episode of Season 2.
• Dirty Kid: He's a scrawny-looking adolescent with tattoos and a surprising amount of experience with illicit drugs.
• The Dragon: A non-villainous example. He’s Fezco's right-hand man and seems to handle the day-to-day and distribution side of their business. While Fez is slow to respond to business complications, Ashtray usually takes decisive action to solve problems. The two biggest plot events in their arc, the killings of Mouse and Custer, occur by his hand.
• Everyone Has Standards: Invoked, he says he draws the line at human trafficking.
• Fatal Flaw: Aggression. Ashtray has a habit of acting before thinking things through, and immediately resorting to violence whenever he feels any sign of a threat. Killing Mouse to protect Fezco at the start of season 2 turns out to only cause trouble, culminating in Custer cornering the two at the end of the season, trying to get Fez to reveal his role in the murder. Even when Faye tries to get the situation under control, Ashtray still decides to kill Custer against Fez's wishes. Fez makes one last attempt to save him by telling him to surrender to the police and let him take the fall for Custer's death, but Ashtray's instinct still tells him to fight, to which he locks himself in the bathroom with multiple guns and engages in a shootout with the police that break in. This not only results in his death but also leads to him unwittingly shooting Fez in the stomach.
• Little Brother Instinct: He's overly protective of Fezco resorting to deadly attacks when his brother is in peril.
• Oh, Crap!: The final shot we see of him before he's killed is of him looking at Fez with genuine fear in his eyes as a police officer's red dot sight slowly travels up his body and rests on his head.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Similar to his foster brother Fezco, it is unclear what Ashtray’s actual name is.
• Parental Abandonment: His drug-addicted (presumably) single mother abandoned him with Fezco and his grandmother when he was a baby.
• Practically Different Generations: Fezco is a man in his twenties while Ashtray looks like he's barely out of middle school.
• Promoted to Opening Titles: In season 2.
• Trigger-Happy: He goes to bat for his big brother Fezco any time he senses he's in danger, but also before he’s really assessed the situation fully. It leads to his death and Fez's arrest.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: He has a scary amount of knowledge on drugs, and doesn't look like he's out of middle school. In Season 2, this goes further as he kills Mouse and Custer and wounds several other people.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His killing of Mouse has major repercussions that push a lot of season 2 forward: Fezco must go with Custer to meet Laurie, where Rue meets her; Custer is then pressured into cooperation with the police which leads to the circumstances wherein Custer and Ashtray himself are killed and Fezco arrested. By protecting his brother, he winds up hurting him.

Elliot

Elliott

Played By: Dominic Fike

A new student at East Highland who becomes friends with Rue and infatuated with Jules.

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• Ambiguously Bi: When asked by Jules about his sexuality, he responds he is "kinda" straight and "kinda" gay. He says he has fucked 3 women, but they were bad, and jokes of having sex with 43 men.
• Distaff Counterpart: To Rue. He's a Functional Addict with a similar style of dress (right down to the black Converse) and feelings for Jules, but maintains much healthier relationships and has less Kick the Dog moments, showing much more support for his friends.
• Hypocrite: Is one for telling Leslie about Rue's relapse despite being a major purveyor of drugs for Rue.
• Satellite Love Interest: He mainly exists to cause problems between Rue and Jules and to derail their relationship again, as we know very little about him beyond that.

Recurring Characters

Ali

Played By: Colman Domingo

A wise man whom Rue meets in Narcotics Anonymous. He calls her out for lying about being clean, and makes her think about how her addiction could and has impacted her family, particularly her little sister Gia.

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• Abusive Parents: He had an abusive father during his childhood and vowed not to be like that to his daughters, especially after he had struck their mother in an argument during his days as an addict.
• As the Good Book Says...: When Rue is Easily Forgiven by Ali and she asks him why, he answer with a poignant quote from The Qur'an.
  "The Hour is certain to come, so we must forgive graciously."
• The Atoner: It's implied that his Tough Love affection for Rue stems from a deep need to make amends with the family he's harmed in the past.
• Brutal Honesty: Ali does not believe in mincing his words. When Rue's mother asks if Rue can get clean, he says very clearly he doesn't know, while Rue is right there.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Implied. He mentions that he was a firefighter who later became addicted to cocaine. It's also suggested that he lost his family as a result of his addiction, as his daughters live in Texas and he tries to contact them when he can.
  • The Christmas special goes into this further by revealing that he relapsed for a year and a half, but has been sober for the past seven years.
• Older and Wiser: He's justifiably concerned for Rue's welfare, and can easily tell when she's lying about being clean.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His birth name is Martin, but he changed it to Ali when he converted to Islam. Rue was surprised to learn this.
• Parental Substitute: To a degree, he acts like one to Rue, whose father passed away years ago.
• Real Men Love Jesus: A strong and tough recovering addict who shows signs that he’s unafraid of conflict. Also a practicing Muslim.
• The Redeemer: Ali is shown to be able to believe the best in people, especially Rue, as demonstrated when he forgives her easily for hurting him.

Christopher McKay

Christopher "Chris" McKay

"The truth was McKay was shy, but winning gave him confidence. And that confidence was the result of his dad's beliefs. Routine. Routine. Routine."

Played By: Algee Smith

McKay is Cassie's boyfriend and a gifted football player. He has trouble adjusting to college, citing a worry of not being "the best of the best".

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• Child Hater: Downplayed. He proclaims that "children are fucking scary" upon finding out that Cassie's pregnant and eventually pushes her to get an abortion, as he doesn't feel ready to be a dad.
• Demoted to Extra: McKay is a fairly prominent character in the first season, but after he breaks it off with Cassie for good and brings an injured Nate to the hospital he is not seen for the rest of season 2.
• Fiendish Fraternity: After McKay's fraternity brothers see Cassie at a party, they pin McKay down and shout sexual things at him. He's deeply affected by the experience.
• Freudian Excuse: His dad pushed him to be the best in football and to suppress his emotions, though this pressure has led to McKay having jerkass tendencies.
• Jaded Washout: Downplayed, as he is still young, but his football dreams have essentially gone bust. He used to be a Big Man on Campus and the star of the team, and at the college level he's surrounded by athletes who are equally if not more so talented than him, and barely gets time on the field.
• Hidden Depths: McKay knows that his chances of going pro are near nothing and doesn't adjust well to college.
• Insecure Love Interest: A lot of his jealousy comes from his insecurities both about his future prospects, and that he feels another guy might take Cassie’s attention away from him.
• Jerk Jock: Downplayed. McKay is a lot more sensitive and sensible than Nate, frowns upon a lot of the casual misogyny of his peers and seems to struggle with a lot of Frat Boy rites. However, peer pressure often pushes to toxic behaviours.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: McKay appears to be a shallow jock at first, but he does genuinely like Cassie.
• Last-Name Basis: He's mostly known by his surname.
• Moral Myopia: Much of the drama in his relationship with Cassie stems from his issues with her leaked nudes and sex tapes, seeing it as evidence of her “low respect for herself.” McKay has no issue with, however, asking Cassie to send him nudes.
• My Girl Is Not a Slut: Struggles with this trope in regards to his relationship with Cassie. On one hand, he genuinely values her and defends her when his brothers bring up her leaked nudes. On the other hand, he's quick to downplay their relationship to Nate, and seems significantly more comfortable with physical intimacy than emotional intimacy with her. He engages in some casual Slut-Shaming from time to time as well.
• Out of Focus: Aside from the premiere episode, he sits out all of Season 2.
• Pet the Dog: Recognizes and sincerely compliments Lexi’s Bob Ross Halloween costume, and is the only character to do so. It’s a particularly sweet moment, as Lexi had been teased about by her mom and her friends, and outright beams at McKay’s comment.
• Stepford Smiler: McKay regularly hides his real emotions. For example, after being hazed, he doesn't discuss the incident with Cassie (who was right there when it happened) though it appears to have troubled him.
• Tough Love: His father is a strict man who pressured McKay into football, while also warning him of the dangers of "acting out" when out in public. However, this has led to insecurity and anger issues in McKay since he really took the "bottle your emotions up" advice to heart.

Suze Howard

Suze Howard

Played By: Alanna Ubach

Cassie and Lexi's well-meaning alcoholic mother, who's implied to be suffering from depression over the course of the show.

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• Actually Pretty Funny: Unlike other characters who are either deeply uncomfortable or furious, she is delighted by the version of her Lexi writes in her play and by Ethan's portrayal of her.
• Alcoholic Parent: There isn't a scene with Suze where she isn't drunk or drinking.
• Brutal Honesty: Suze doesn't have much of a filter, least of all towards her daughters.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In flashbacks she's shown getting extremely jealous whenever someone flirts with Cassie's handsome father, but then hypocritically has an affair of her own.
• Deadpan Snarker: Suze has a witty remark for every occasion:
  Suze: "Hey, creepy. The whole point of Halloween is to look attractive."
  Lexi: "No, it's not."
  Suze: "Oh really? You do me a favor and you count how many girlfriends of yours are dressed up like 50-year-old men. Report back to me."
• Functional Addict: Being an alcoholic doesn't completely put her down; she's able to manage herself and be there for both her daughters when necessary. She even has her own limits, like when she calls Cassie out for betraying Maddy to sleep with her abusive ex Nate and treating both her and Lexi like crap.
• Glamorous Single Mother: Subverted. She's attractive but has depression and is an alcoholic, which has led to her neglecting her parental duties towards her daughters.
• Informed Judaism: She's revealed to be Jewish in the Season 2 premiere.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Suze is quite brash and occasionally dismissive of her daughters, but she does comfort Cassie when the latter falls pregnant.
  • She is also very supportive of and enthralled by Lexi's play, and is even brought to tears from watching Lexi revisit her good times with her father.
• Parents as People: Suze means well, but her depression, alcoholism, and marital problems have taken quite a toll; she’s not incredibly warm or attentive to her daughters and does little to stop Cal from interrogating them about Nate's assault right in front of her.
• Sanity Ball: She has her moments of responsibility as the series goes on, likely due to needing to manage the increasingly chaotic events brought on by her daughters (Cassie's obsession with Nate and Lexi's play). She's very sympathetic towards Rue's addiction and regularly defends her against Cassie's deflections. Later, during Lexi's play, she is the only adult present who tries to stop Cassie's interruption, politely working the audience while pointedly urging Cassie to calm down.
• Sleepy Depressive: There are some scenes where she's passed out, although they could be from drinking. However, Cassie mentions that Suze has depression.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: She and Lexi fulfill this, as Suze is often perplexed by Lexi's unwillingness to partake in normal high school activities. See their exchange above regarding Lexi's Halloween costume.

Daniel

Played By: Keean Johnson

Kat's ex-boyfriend who takes an interest in Cassie.

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• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: After going steady for a long time as kids, Daniel breaks up with Kat for her weight gain. As a young adult, he admits to only being interested in Cassie because he wanted to have sex with her. He ends up having sex with Kat, and despite her valuing their brief previous relationship, he says he already forgot about that and leaves Kat with a hurt look on her face.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: After hooking up with Kat, she mentions them dating when they were younger, something he doesn't even remember. Meanwhile, for Kat, it was a pretty big deal, and a focal point in her body image issues.
• Break Them by Talking: What he enjoys doing the most.
• For the Evulz: He degrades almost every woman he dates, namely Kat and Cassie and ruins their self-esteem just for his own amusement.
• Hate Sink: Daniel is nothing but a Straw Misogynist who degrades and uses both Cassie and Kat and spitefully hurts them when he gets bored of them.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Unfortunately, as horrible as he is about it, he isn't exactly wrong about telling Cassie that there are some people who are only interested in having sex, but not be in a relationship for love. He is also right about Cassie being a hypocrite for willingly flirting with him and kissing him, but then feeling guilty about Mckay.
• Karma Houdini: He receives no comeuppance for emotionally abusing both Kat and Cassie.
• Put on a Bus: He is absent in season 2.
• Romantic False Lead: Initially, he seems to be a Foil to McKay; he's warm and openly affectionate with Cassie. Reveals himself to be a huge Jerkass who reduces her to tears and tells her she's worthless outside of sex later on.
• Small Role, Big Impact:
  • He only appears in a few episodes, but his childishly cruel decision to dump Kat way back when they were kids is responsible for a lot of Kat's self-esteem issues.
  • It’s implied that some of Cassie’s behavior in Season Two is a result of Daniel brutally tearing into her self esteem and “confirming” thoughts she’s already had about her worth.

Tyler Clarkson

Played By: Lukas Gage

A man Maddy cheats on Nate with.

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• Frame-Up:
  • In order to not be held accountable for cheating on Nate publicly, Maddy claims she was blacked out, painting Tyler as having raped her while she was too drunk to consent. While he did have sex with an underage girl, he assumed she was in college.
  • Using that information, Nate blackmails Tyler into a falsely admit to be the one to attack Maddy, so the blame is out of him.
• Butt-Monkey: Seriously, this guy cannot catch a break and the majority of his screentime is spent getting beaten up or humiliated.

Troy McKay

Played By: Tyler Timmons

One of McKay's twin brothers.

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• Always Identical Twins: He looks just like his brother Roy.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: He has shades of this towards Chris in the first episode.
• The Stoner: Enjoys weed and is often seen stoned.
• Theme Twin Naming: His name sounds similar to his brother's.

Roy McKay

Played By: Tristian Timmons

The other of McKay's twin brothers.

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• Always Identical Twins: He looks just like his brother Troy.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: He has shades of this towards Chris in the first episode.
• The Stoner: He enjoys weed and is often stoned.
• Theme Twin Naming: His name is similar to his brother's.

Luke Kasten

Played By: Will Peltz

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• Jaded Washout: He used to be a BMOC and is a famous Sex God but now he is a mediocre guy working in retail and is fucking a teenage dominatrix who concludes he is pathetic.
• Urban Legend Love Life: He's famous at the group's school because of this even years after he graduated.

David Vaughn

Played By: John Ales

Jules's dad. He works from home and seems to structure his whole life around his daughter.

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• Extreme Doormat: He seems to have structured his whole life around keeping Jules happy, and doesn't seem to lay down any kind of rules.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: In the first-season finale, as Jules and Rue head out to the dance, he jokes that he and Leslie plan to get plastered.
• Open-Minded Parent: He loves his transgender daughter, and doesn't bat an eye at her bringing her black girlfriend home to sleep over all the time.
• Satellite Character: His role is limited mostly to being Jules's dad.

Marsha Jacobs

Played By: Paula Marshall

Nate's mother and Cal's wife.

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• The Beard: Downplayed. Cal is bisexual and was shown to be genuinely in love and attracted to her as a teenager; however, it's clear he'd much rather had ended up with a man (specifically Derek, his male best friend from high school) and never truly wanted to marry her. This is as evident in his adulterous hookups, none of whom seem to be cisgender women.
• Female Misogynist: Type 6, in that she looks down on Maddy for being promiscuous and not good enough for Nate, but has no issues with Caucasian girls such as Natalie (who he took to winter ball) and Cassie going out with him.
• Hypocrite: She tells Nate she is happy he broke up with Maddy and didn't get her pregnant because according to her "she's the type to keep it just to spite you", which is incidentally more or less what happened with her and Cal, with her deciding to keep their child put an end to his romance with Derek and possibly a life outside the closet. Although, in this case it's unclear how aware Marsha is about his relationship with Derek.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Invokes this trope saying she used to be hot in high school. Although downplayed since she is still an attractive middle aged woman.
• Like Father, Like Son: Similar to her son, both are hypocrites.

Laurie

Laurie

Played By: Martha Kelly

A drug dealer to whom Rue comes to owe a lot of money.

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• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Reconstructed. Laurie doesn't seem aggressive, and in fact, she says that she's never gotten angry in her life. However, it should not be mistaken that Laurie is also an extremely dangerous person — it's just that she likes to be calm about it.
• Affably Evil: Laurie is perhaps the most frightening character in the whole series, when it becomes clear that she is prepared to prostitute Rue and get her addicted to other drugs, but she is nothing but polite and even genuinely understanding of Rue's plight. She's still evil, though.
• Creepy Monotone: Hearing her calmly describe how she’ll ”have Rue sold to some sick people” is especially unsettling.
• For the Evulz: It's clear that Laurie wants to make others suffer the same thing she did with her addiction and watch the world burn as a result of the chaos she causes.
• Shadow Archetype: Like Rue, she was at one time a Functional Addict as a young woman. Like Rue in Season 2, she talks about how her obsession with getting high led her to losing her family and friends, and raises the possibility that Rue is permanently brain damaged from drugs (which it's possible to interpret as one reason for Laurie's monotonous voice and her apparent lack of emotion).
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Laurie says that she was a teacher, and she still dresses like a middle-aged tourist with a fondness for bright, "fun" T-shirts. She's also a drug dealer, a pimp, and a murderer.

Faye

Played By: Chloe Cherry

Custer’s girlfriend who begins living with Fezco and Ashtray in season 2.

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• Dumb Blonde: Basically her entire personality; probably even denser than Cassie.
• Heel–Face Turn: Faye betrays Custer to warn Fezco shortly before the raid.
• Hidden Depths: It’s implied that her ditziness stems from her drug addiction as she proves to be useful and competent when she’s sober and when she’s around Fez and Ash.
• Hypocritical Humor: In "Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door", Faye calls Rue a "fucking junkie ass bitch" while lighting up a heroin spoon.
• Grew a Spine: Finally summons the courage to warn Fezco about Custer’s involvement with the police.
• Ms. Fanservice: Faye is often shown in various states of undress, and wearing short shorts and miniskirts.
• Shipper on Deck: Implied to ship Fezco and Lexi, especially when she's helping the former get ready for the latter's performance.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: Faye more or less moves in with Fezco and Ashtray in Season 2, and her boyfriend Custer is working with the police to screw over Fezco, and she knows about it. Then she subverts this in the finale when she "accidentally" drops a glass and gestures to Fezco to be quiet - implying that Custer is recording them.
• Stoners Are Funny: Even if it's not weed, Faye is usually on something, and her cluelessness and bluntness as a result of her getting high are played for laughs.

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