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Kristen
Dr. Kristen Bouchard
Portrayed By: Katja Herbers
"Well, I heard a doctor today talking about prescribing chlorpromazine and aripiprazole and trauma exercises, and I realized it sounded just as much like leeches."
A forensic psychologist who has worked with the District Attorney's office and now serves as a psychiatric consultant for David's team. Kristen stays in New York to raise her four daughters while husband Andy works as a mountain guide. She's an accomplished mountain climber herself but gave up on it after having her daughters.
- Action Mom: Takes on the supernatural/psychopathic while raising her four daughters.
- Being Good Sucks: By the end of the first season, it is safe to say she has not exactly been rewarded by the universe for her good deeds.
- Beware the Nice Ones: She's a kind person but she will also stab or even supposedly kill you if you endanger the people she loves.
- Beware the Honest Ones: She holds herself to a high moral standard and often says her allegiance is always to the truth. By the end of the season however, she has used a deepfake in court, slashed a man's throat and even potentially murdered someone.
- Big "SHUT UP!": Gives Townsend one of these before she she slices his neck
- Broken Bird: Shows signs of this even before the events of the show. She has weekly therapy sessions and has admitted to being 'too soft'. Her husband has left her to her own devices and her mother isn't much help either. Her overall demeanor also fits as she can be quite cynical and sarcastic, but she is very loving, nonetheless.
- Cat Scare: The orange cat her and her husband find in their house really does not like Kristen. This is most likely due to the cat sensing her inner corruption/evil.
- Cerebus Retcon: The burn mark of the holy cross recontextualises the series as us being witness to the slow process of her possession.
- Corrupt the Cutie: Coupled with She Who Fights Monsters, this seems to be the journey she is set on over the course of the first season, going from cowering at Townsend's threats in the pilot to both verbally and physically assaulting him.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: In '3 stars' she helps the mother of a boy that Townsend wants to retry and send to adult prison even though she's not responsible for his case anymore. This means she has to deal with Leland again, something she could have technically avoided.
- The Dog Bites Back: When Townsend decides to get very brave and starts dating Sheryl in order to infiltrate Kristen's life, she isn't having any of it and slices his neck open with a kitchen knife.
- Eyes Never Lie: Depending on how optimistic/pessimistic you want to be her phone call with Mira can be read as either her hearing about LeRoux for the first time or her knowing full well and feigning surprise.
- Face Your Fears: By the end of the first season she stabs George to death in one of her night terrors.
- Females Are More Innocent: Inverted. She is the one who is in the morally grey most of the time, not her coworkers.
- Good Is Not Soft: She tells LeRoux that he will rot away in prison and die there from old age, amongst other things. He calls her a bitch, and she does not disagree.
- Heroic B So D: At the end of "Rose 390" the team realises that the psychopathic boy they have been trying to assess (Eric) was killed by his parents in order to protect their newborn baby. When Kristen is on the couch with her girls later that day she runs to her kitchen where she breaks down crying.
- Knight in Sour Armor: She's cynical and somewhat world-weary, but she's a good natured, loving person. Although this is slowly changing…
- Mama Bear: In the pilot her daughter Lila tells her a man called to threaten her about her student loans. Kristen doesn't take too kindly to this and tells her former employer that they can go ahead and scare her, but NOT her children. The final catalyst for her in the season 1 finale snapping and possibly killing Orson Leroux also seems to be that he broke into her house and left a gift basket there whilst her children were sleeping at home alone.
- Mona Lisa Smile: Might be giving one of these when Mira tells her LeRoux is dead.
- Not So Above It All: Despite being the one mostly having the moral high ground she obviously enjoyed her "Reason You Suck" Speech and even goes as far as to call Townsend impotent
- Nightmare Sequence: Though all her night terrors with George are already disturbing, she suffers through a particularly awful sequence of nightmares in nightmares where even the audience doesn't know what is real.
- Good Parents: She's trying to provide the best for her four daughters, even when she's basically living as a single mother while her husband is on the other side of the globe.
- More Deadly Than the Male: Where David's size and strength serve him well in rare physical fights, Kristen can be just feral. She slashes Leland's throat to keep him from dating her mother alas, it doesn't work and in the first season finale it's implied that she killed Orson LeRoux after he started hanging around her house.
- My God What Have Idone: In the very last shot of the first season, we see her placing a rosary on her palm and getting burnt by it. The look she gives herself in the mirror is akin to this showing that there is at least hope for her.
- Pragmatic Hero: She allows Ben to create a deepfake of Townsend, ordinarily a profound violation of ethics, although the damning evidence he manufactures is a close paraphrase of what Townsend actually said.
- "Reason You Suck" Speech: She delivers a particularly brutal one to Leland.
- Sanity Slippage: She becomes increasingly unhinged and erratic after killing LeRoux. The Ifrit attaching itself to her exacerbates this.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Perhaps her establishing character moment in the pilot is telling her boss he * Secan: " find someone else to lie for him on the stand " in front of the judge he was talking to.
- She Who Fights Monsters: She gets driven into murkier and murkier territory, mostly by Dr. Townsend. By the first season finale it is clear that through her actions, she opened herself to evil.
- Self-Harm: In season two, as part of her Sanity Slippage, after she accidentally burns herself with a cross, she starts heating it up deliberately and burning herself, and is shown to have done this several times.
- Struggling Single Mother: She's not actually single but faces many of the same situations because her husband is absent for much of the time, and his income from guiding climbers in the Himalayas is unpredictable.
- Stupid Sexy Friend: On top of everything else she has to deal with, there is her attraction to David despite having a husband. George taunting her about this in her dreams suggests that she feels guilty about it. In '2 Fathers' her and David get high on sangria spiked with psilocybin leading them to almost kiss.
- Team Mom: Gives Ben and David Christmas presents and checks up on Ben and his new lady.
- Tears of Fear: During her night terrors she can't do much else but this.
- Trademark Favorite Drink: She really loves her canned margaritas. Everyone else...not so much.
- What You Are in the Dark: She has a revenge fantasy dream in which she attacks Orson LeRoux instead of him attacking her. This foreshadowed the fact that she is the one who killed him.
- Wham Shot: The holy cross shaped incineration on her palm.
David
David Acosta
Portrayed By: Mike Colter
"See, the problem with my job is that possession looks a lot like insanity, and...insanity looks a lot like possession. I need someone to help me distinguish between the two."
- Bald of Authority: While the trio has what the Thirteenth Doctor would call "a flat team structure", clean-headed David is the one the Church vests authority in.
- Celibate Hero: Due to his being in training for the Catholic priesthood. He still faces temptation, and in one Season 1 episode, succumbs to it. It only gets worse after he becomes a priest.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The death of his girlfriend Julia hit him very hard, and he descended into drug and alcohol addiction.
- Heroic B So D: Just like Kristen he suffers a lot after the events in "Rose390". David blames himself for Eric's death as he feels he accidentally encouraged him to hurt his baby sister when he told the boy about praying.
- Genius Bruiser: His quick thinking and encyclopedic knowledge are his chief weapons, but he's the likely winner of any one-on-one fight if it comes to it. Not for nothing did his actor play Luke Cage.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: He at least attempts to divine cosmic secrets as well as getting in touch with a fallen friend by taking hallucinogens.
- Junkie Prophet: When he cannot access his visions, he resorts to inducing them through drugs. He is later called out for resorting to this instead of relying on faith.
- Nice Guy: Soft-spoken, respectful of differing opinions, and loyal to both friends and colleagues.
- Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: "7 Swans a'Singin" reveals that he is a former sex and drug addict, and he is shown to frequently struggle with deep feelings of shame towards his own sexuality, mostly from the celibacy requirements of his chosen profession.
- Psychic Powers: Sister Andrea claims that he shares her ability to see demons in the real world, but this ability is nowhere near as reliable as hers, and he has trouble believing her.
- Self-Harm: He resorts to this when his hallucinogens stop working and he wants to continue his visions. Sister Andrea derides him for this, calling it a trick for tourists, and teaches him a meditation technique that is more successful.
- Token Christian Teammate: Of the trio out in the field he's the only one who actually follows Christianity. Kristen is an apostate, whereas Ben is a non-observant Muslim.
Ben
Ben Shakir
Portrayed By: Aasif Mandvi
"We live in a world that is made up of bits and pixels. And it is so easy to manipulate them and create whatever we want. And I hate that because it encourages superstition and conspiracy theories."
A carpenter and contractor who helps David by assessing whether seemingly uncanny events have mundane environmental causes.
- Agent Scully: He's even more of a skeptic than Kristen, usually being the first one to advocate for a more mundane, reasonable explanation.
- The Atoner: Season 2 reveals he suffers quite a lot of guilt associated with his previous profession.
- Beneath Notice: A laborer who's around during investigations into demonic possession strikes most people as a non-factor, which cuts both ways. Ben overheard a killer calling the cops on his wife without being noticed but was dismissed out of hand at David's deposition.
- Bollywood Nerd: His primary occupation is contractor, but he's very good at figuring out computer systems, surveillance, etc.
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Dawson Casting: Ben's implied to be in his mid-forties (his twin sister is played by a much younger actress), but Aasif Mandvi is in his late 50s. - Friend to All Children: Ben is a little grumpy, but in his own awkward way he cares for Kristen's daughters, helping to protect them from a potential online predator and later keeping a framed picture they drew of him. Kristen's daughters adore him, (to the point where his height is also marked on their wall measure above those of the daughters) and happily call him the nickname he gave himself when he met them: "Ben the Magnificent".
- Jack of All Trades: For a man who identifies himself as a contractor/carpenter, he's got quite the eclectic skillset when it comes to debunking the supernatural. He has some knowledge of IT, plumbing, chemistry, and even film production. However, he freely admits when his knowledge reaches its limits, and will consult actual experts when necessary.
- Limited Wardrobe: Nearly always wears the same jeans and denim jacket.
- Mysterious Past: In Season 1, it's openly a mystery why a man with his profession would be such a wiz with technology and chemistry. Season 2 reveals he's actually a scientific genius and former geneticist, who retired from that field after his work inadvertently led to birth defects. The details are still fuzzy, but he seems to still carry the guilt of this with him. It remains to be seen whether his genetic work is connected with the fertility clinic that runs through the plotlines.
- The Power of Friendship: As a Muslim-raised atheist who doesn't really like authority he seems a strange fit for a Catholic Church job. As he tells Kristen, he doesn't work for the Church, he works for David, and he likes David. He also notes that he enjoys working with Kristen now too.
- Secret-Keeper: He figures out that Kristen killed LeRoux almost immediately, but keeps it to herself, as well as the fact that a cross burned her right afterwards.
