Characters / gen:LOCK

The Polity

The Polity is a global alliance of people who fight against the Union, and for freedom of expression and cultural diversity.

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In General

• Capitalism Is Bad: The Polity runs on this due to massive wealth disparity which caused many to join the Union, especially thanks to Marc Holcroft. He sold a false story about idyllic colonies on Mars where only the rich would be able to prosper in and the poor would be used as servants to work their way to afford citizenship. Brother Tate mentioned how no one who couldn't afford to live on the colonies would be allowed to live on them even if they were real. Later Holcraft tries to use Gen:Lock and Union Nanomachines to bank on the new Artificial Afterlife by granting only those who can afford it access to it, while leaving the rest to die.
• United Nations Is a Superpower: The Polity was originally the UN, before it "rebranded" and combined with various Mega-Corp companies to reach its current status. It now appears to more or less function as a unified political entity, headed by a President.
• Dark Secret: Despite being the "good guys", the Polity have some awful skeletons in their closet.
  • Season 2 reveals that it was the Polity, not the Union, who made the first strike in the war, attacking their holy city to try and destroy their nanotech because the Polity feared its potential. The Polity covered it up and blamed the Union for starting the war. This act became a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy since it resulted in the war the series revolves around. In retaliation for the Polity's initial attack, the Union tried to take over North America with nanomachines like the Polity feared. Polity forces, despite claiming to be better than the fanatics of the Union, also have no problem slaughtering unarmed civilians getting in their way.
  • The Polity have been promising utopia on Martian colonies away from Earth to their growing poor citizenry. In truth, there are no Martian colonies, it's a ruse to keep people in line with false hope.
  • After creation of the Nemesii from a botched mission which the Polity covered up, the Polity ordered the minds of the gen:LOCK pilots to be copied and uploaded to the blank Holon frames the Polity have stockpiled so they could be used as suicidal Cannon Fodder against the Union.

gen:LOCK Program

A top-secret military program that involves advanced mecha prototypes, piloted by a small group of hand-picked personnel.

gen:LOCK One

In General

• Ace Custom: Every gen:LOCK candidate begins with a "stock" Holon, seen when Cammie, Kazu, and Val/entina are starting out. After getting accustomed to using their Holons however, they are outfitted with color-differentiated armor sets, then are further customized to accommodate the candidates' fighting styles.
  • Chase is a former airforce pilot and functions better in the air, so his Holon is outfitted with wings courtesy of Migas. His wings are later upgraded by the RTASA, his armor is replaced with a more streamlined variant for aerial combat, and he's equipped with a custom machine rifle, wrist-mounted rocket launchers, and missile pods on the wings.
  • Yasamin functions better in close quarters combat, with a propensity for dual-wielding firearms, so her Holon is given wrist mounted lasers. Cammie's redesign for her later outfits her with wings befitting her background as a pilot, streamlined armor for aerial combat, a pair of energy rifles, and eye beams.
  • Cammie has little experience with firearms and has a lower center of gravity compared to the others, so her Holon is given remote-controlled drones with automatic aim assist, her legs are exchanged for more lagomorphic ones, enhanced auditory sensors shaped like Rabbit Ears, and additional self-detonating drones as well as two machine pistols, grenades, and remote-controlled detonators.
  • Kazu functions best in melee combat, with a propensity for using whatever he can find as a weapon, so his Holon is given a pair of katana-esque short swords. Cammie later upgrades this, giving him heavier armor for close combat, a larger collapsible BFS sword designed after their shared interest in the manga RoboShogun, and a shotgun.
  • Val/entina functions best with reconnaissance and sniping, so her Holon is given increased optical sensors for long-distance scouting and sniping. Cammie later redesigns it to give Val/entina lighter armor for increased speed and maneuverability, as well as a cowl that functions as a cloaking device, an enhanced energy rifle, wrist-mounted grappling hooks, and a long dagger.
• Brain Uploading: The basis of gen:LOCK. By uploading the pilots' minds into "cyberbrains" on the humanoid Holons, they have incredible combat capabilities & reaction times that can't be achieved by conventional mechs and piloting. It's also comparatively safer for the pilots as they don't have to risk being exposed to the Union's nanobot swarms.
• Color-Coded Characters: Much like Red vs. Blue and RWBY, each character in the main group of heroes prefers to wear a color - in the case of the pilots, this extends to the robots they pilot so that they're identifiable in the field, along with the suits of armor they wear when piloting the things. Julian's color is cyan, Yaz's is gold, Cammie's is teal, Kazu's is red-orange, Val/entina's is purple, and Sinclair's was intended to be blue. Dr. Weller chiefly wears brown, while Col. Marin's uniform is dark grey.
• Dark and Troubled Past: All members of the team have had horrible pasts filled with tragedy on a personal and societal level. Cammie in particular grew up poor and lost her entire family to disease and death, Yaz was raised under the oppressive Union with zealot parents who later committed suicide after she was outed as a renegade, and Val/entina grew up under an abusive alcohol father before growing into the horrors of war. Chase lost his father and grew up emotionally reserved, while Kazu grew obsessed with strength because of regularly seeing his father abused by his peers.
• Dwindling Party: Kaz dies in episode 4 of season 2 and the immediate episode after Cammie commits suicide.
• Dysfunction Junction: Averted. In spite of their Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits status, they bond as a team and become a cohesive fighting force capable of effectively working alongside Vanguard forces very quickly. Justified, as Dr. Weller explains that in order to be LOCK compatible in the early stages, one requires an exceptionally high degree of psychological resilience and adaptability.
• Flawed Prototype: The Holon technology is revolutionary, but it has been pressed into service long before it was ready to be used. As a result, there are several issues that the program has to contend with:
  • Due to how new the technology is, gen:LOCK requires very strict criteria to be used safely, which severely restricts who is even able to use it. Compounding this issue is that candidates who may be compatible can age out of the program. Using gen:LOCK technology while being incompatible results in serious injury at best and is fatal at worst.
  • Only a single model exists of the Holon, designed to idealized, but generic, ratios. If a person's physical body varies too much from these ratios (such as with Cammie) it can throw off their piloting to the point of being a liability. Cammie ends up having to redesign the entire structure of her Holon to be able to maximize her effectiveness.
  • Since the Holons provide sensory feedback to the pilots, even if they don't take physical damage, they can still suffer psychological harm. When Cammie is attacked by Nemesis, she can feel it decapitate her Holon and claw open its chest as if her own head and chest are being ripped apart. This causes her to suffer from a bout of PTSD which, combined with her attempt to mod herself to cope, creates a near-psychotic feedback loop that causes her to go out of control.
  • The Holons have a limited amount of time in which the users can safely operate them. This limits the length of time they can spend in the field, as well as necessitating the pilots to be on-site before uploading for a mission. Exceeding that uptime will cause the pilot's minds to become incompatible with their bodies, trapping them inside their Holons. Nemesis is an example of a pilot who has been forced to keep running for years beyond his uptime. He is unstable, erratic and malevolent, obsessed with finding a way out of the existence he's trapped in.
  • While the pilots are uploaded to their Holons, their human bodies are left vulnerable. While there is typically someone monitoring their bodies and maintaining the gen:LOCK systems, if their bodies are threatened it can force the pilots to retreat & download back or risk being trapped in their Holons forever. This comes up during the Union attack on the Anvil. When Union troops breach the base, the gen:LOCK team save Chase is forced to fall back in order to defend themselves.
• Ghost Memory: A side effect of using mindshare, the gen:LOCK crew pick up hazy memories and traits of those they mindshare with. While fighting the Nemesis and mindsharing with Val/entina, Cammie momentarily spoke Russian. After performing one with Kazu during their fight with the Union at the Anvil, Val/entina obtained some of Kazu's childhood memories of learning how to play the guitar in Shinjuku. While Cammie and Val/entina don't have much issue with the idea, Kazu is a bit apprehensive of the others knowing everything about him.
• Hive Mind: As the pilots become more familiar with gen:LOCK, they are able to create links between their Holons that let them share memories and sensory data. Yaz first uses it to let Cammie see after her Holon is decapitated, and then Cammie does it to give Val/entina a line of sight to fire on Nemesis.
• Hour of Power: The pilots can only maintain gen:LOCK for a certain amount of time before it becomes too dangerous for them and they have to be downloaded back into their bodies. Overclocking the Holons or extreme emotional stress can eat into their time even faster. Once this limit is reached, the Holons will forcibly download the pilots back into their bodies, leaving the mechs useless.
• Humongous Mecha: Holons aren't quite as humongous as most examples, standing 12 meters tall or slightly under 40 feet, but they're certainly big.
• Informed Attribute: In the Season 2 premiere, Cammie claims that one bonus of their use of Mindshare is that the entire team is now fluent in Japanese. This is never displayed; even in the most intimate of moments between Kazu and other team members, they don't drop a single Japanese phrase, while Kazu's use of English never goes beyond the sprinkling of Gratuitous English you'd expect from an anime. Presumably, it would be overtaxing to the voice actors, particularly those who are already putting on accents, to speak any lines in convincing Japanese (or English in Yamadera's case). Introducing this ability allows Val/entina to have a Dead Person Conversation with Kazu in the penultimate episode, accurately hallucinating the way he speaks.
• Meaningful Name: Holon, the mechs they pilot, means "something that is simultaneously a whole and a part". Fitting, since the minds of the gen:LOCK pilots are separated from their human body and placed into the mech.
• Mind Manipulation: Dr. Weller and the pilots are able to alter their memories and personalities while uploaded to their Holons since their minds are effectively software. Cammie contemplates erasing the memory of her encounter with Nemesis and instead opts to make herself more aggressive. When she goes out of control, Weller is forced to 'reset' her.
• Multinational Team: Two Americans (One African-American from New York, the other a Caucasian from Kentucky), an Iranian, a Ukrainian, a Japanese and a Scot - under the command of a Puerto Rican and Englishman.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Since the technology is still being developed, gen:LOCK pilots have to meet very strict physical and mental criteria in order to successfully use it, and even then pilots can become incompatible due to factors such as age. Dr. Weller quips that a person who isn't gen:LOCK compatible trying to use the technology would be comparable to sticking their head in a microwave.
• Power Armor: Besides the obvious mecha, they're given a more subdued version in state of the art Vanguard bodysuits for the Holon pilots that also strengthens them and gives them a boost of energy. Sinclair (The Spy) uses it to ignore bullets and fling people around with ease. The main characters also use these for close combat when they aren't piloting their Holons.
• Power Limiter: The Holons typically restrict how much power they use in order to protect the pilots and maximize their upload time. The restrictions can be overridden in a pinch to give the Holons a power boost, but at the cost of burning through their time even faster.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Justified. Due to the military rushing the project, gen:LOCK is still in the developmental stages. As a result, gen:LOCK compatibility requires a very particular kind of nervous system, so the project has to take what they can get before the tech advances to include more people. Even so, Weller had a hard time convincing Marin to take most of the candidates in and effectively held himself hostage to get her to agree.
• Rollerblade Good: The Holons have holes in their feet that balls pop out of. These give the Holons the ability to move at great speed as if rollerblading.
• The Singularity: Thanks to Cammie, the surviving pilots achieve this state upon realizing that their gen:LOCK compatible minds are capable of maintaining their individuality within the Union's self-sustaining nanotech and can manipulate the swarm into creating brand new bodies among other things.
• Suddenly Bilingual: Justified. As noted above in Ghost Memory, the mind sharing technology the gen:LOCK program uses has resulted in the pilots sporadically inheriting traits from each other, including languages. By Season 2, everybody on the team is now fully fluent in Japanese due to their connection with Kazu.

Julian Chase - Chaser

NAME: CHASE, JULIAN

Let the good times roll.

^{Click here to see him in his Holon body suit} 

RANK: O-2 1LT

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

PREVIOUS ASSIGNMENT: DUTY VB110 AEIRE VAP

CALL SIGN: CHASER

Voiced by: Michael B. Jordan

1st Lieutenant Julian Chase is the main character of gen:LOCK. A rising star in the Polity's aerial combat "Silver Falcon's" division, he was presumed dead for four years after a Heroic Sacrifice during the Battle of New York. He was however found and rescued by the Experimental Science Unit and revealed to be gen:LOCK compatible, and was recruited by Dr. Weller as the very first gen:LOCK candidate.

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• Ace Pilot: A highly skilled pilot, Chase was second to none as shown by being the very last pilot shot down in the New York battle. Migas takes notice of how Chase is uncomfortable on the ground and upgrades his Holon with wings to rectify this.
• An Arm and a Leg: During the Battle for New York 2068, Julian crashes and is declared dead. However, he is actually rescued by the ESU, who find him being eaten alive by Union nanotech. Although they stabilized him and can keep him alive, he is missing his entire lower body and right arm. The Polity doesn't currently have the technology to regenerate his body due to the nanotech, so he is forced to interact with the world through either hologram technology or his Holon. As a result, it's not only the top-secret nature of his work that restricts his ability to interact with his former friends, it's his physical condition as well.
• Big Applesauce: He's born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.
• Body Horror: What happened to him after he crashed in the Battle of New York in 2068. Basically, he's missing every limb save his left arm, he has bionic eyes and life support devices hooked into him, and he's forced to stay inside the Holon tank to survive. As it turns out, it wasn't the crash that caused this damage, but the Union's nanotech eating away at him before he was recovered.
• Boring, but Practical: Dr. Weller has apparently described his performance as "simple, yet effective". Case in point, Chase's approach to a problem is usually the most straightforward. His Holon's kit reflects this; Jet Pack aside, its only notable weapon is an assault rifle, but his skill and aerial maneuverability more than make up for a lack of versatility. His upgraded mech, however, gains missile pods.

• Conflicting Loyalty: After discovering that it was the Polity that started the war with the Union when Colonel Marin ordered an air strike on their capital city to take out their nanotech, killing numerous civilians in the process, Chase begins to genuinely question his cause and whether or not he's really fighting for the right side.
• The Corruptible: As both Nemesis and the incident with Sycorax showed, Chase's existence as a digital mind means that it's possible for others to alter his personality via literally editing and manipulating the data that makes up his existence, and once he's stuck permanently in his Holon, Chase gets exposed to the vast possibilities he can achieve as part of a digital Hive Mind like Sycorax, briefly aiding them in their rampage using the Shogunate, though he draws the line at causing civilians casualties despite the apparent Power High state he's in— an attitude that Sycorax believes would fade in time the longer he spends disconnected from his body and humanity. In fact, they make it quite clear to the rest of gen:LOCK that they and their regular interaction with Chase is the only thing helping him hold onto his humanity— something they see as limiting his true potential as a digital existence.
• Decoy Protagonist: Played with. Julian Chase has always been the Main Protagonist of the season, but the one the series follows from the second half of Episode 1 on is not the same iteration of Chase. Rather, he is a copy of the original Chase's cyberbrain after the original was captured by the Union. The Chase followed during the first half of Episode 1 is the original, and currently in Union custody, serving as the basis for the Nemesis.
• Disappeared Dad: In the pilot episode, Chase and Miranda meet with Chase's mother and sister via hologram, but his father isn't present. A display on one wall reveals a US flag folded into a triangle and family photographs that indicate both of Chase's parents were police officers; it's arranged to look like a memorial. Chase's mother is playing Let the Good Times Roll which Chase explains to Miranda "was" his father's favorite song. Holcroft confirms in Episode 7 that Chase's father was a New York cop who died in the line of duty.
• Duality Motif: Since his natural eye color is brown and his holographic eye color is blue, a flaw in his projection makes his left eye brown and his right eye blue. It's symbolic of him doing a Split-Personality Merge with the original Chase's memories, and later with every Nemesis copy.
• Exhausted Eyebags: In season 2, he's unable to sleep without nightmares, so he tries to go without it. The result starts weighing on him, with his eyes gaining dark circles and the whites reddening the longer he avoids it.
• Eye Color Change: His natural eye color is brown, but when he's a hologram his eyes are blue.
• Faking the Dead: He was publicly declared KIA after his Heroic Sacrifice at the Battle of New York. But, what was left of his body was saved by Dr. Weller and the ESU so he could be the first gen:LOCK test subject. His survival wasn't revealed to his friends and loved ones for almost 4 years due to the top-secret nature of the project. His condition also limits how he can interact with them now, as he usually has to be mixing, in his Holon or in the Ether to do it.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: After the Battle for New York, Union nanotech consumed the lower half of his body and his right arm. He is now forced to survive inside a Holon tank and the status of Polity science means it's uncertain whether or not he'll ever be made whole again.
• Handicapped Badass: Due to having lost half his body to Union nanotech, he is forced to live in a Holo tank that sustains his life. He's conscious, so he can communicate with anyone who visits his tank, or by mixing into other rooms. As a result, he can use the Holon technology by uploading his brain to the Cyberbrain. Because his brain is completely healthy, he is, therefore, fighting to protect the Polity with the power of his mind alone.
• Heroic Resolve: When Miranda questions why he rejected to Colonel Marin transferring him back to the Vanguard, Chase replies that piloting a Holon is all he can do. Nobody would listen to him in a leadership role since he's confined to his Holon tank, and he can't go back to being a regular pilot anymore. Civilian life is out of the question, too, since repairing his body is years off if it's even possible, and that's if the Union doesn't wipe them all out before that. The gen:LOCK Program gave him back a life he was supposed to have lost, so he's willing to stick with it to have a future.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • His plane is shot down not because he was out-maneuvered, but because he used his fighter jet to block enemy fire on the EMP bomb that would take out the Union's most deadly weapon.
  • Makes a second one in the Season 1 finale. In order to buy his teammates time to reset, Chase exceeds his uptime to hold off Nemesis. While the plan is successful and Nemesis is defeated, Chase is now permanently stuck uploaded in his Holon.
• Jet Pack: Migas upgrades Chase's Holon with a flight system, complete with boosters, wings, and VTOL fans. Bonus points: Since the Holons are four stories tall, said pack is roughly the size of an actual jet. The flight system pack is further upgraded once the gen:LOCK team reaches the RTASA base, giving his flight system pack a more improved and sleeker design for aerodynamic movement.
• Last-Name Basis: He is addressed by his last name far more often than his first, even by those closest to him; his first name is reserved for particularly intimate moments, such as when Dr. Weller is breaking bad news to him, or when Miranda addresses Nemesis as Julian to plead with it. Even his sister calls him Chase on occasion.
• The Leader: Julian's the first to be recruited into gen:LOCK, and is the lone commissioned officer out of the six heroes. He is therefore in charge of the gen:LOCK team that Weller puts together for him.
• Loss of Identity: Chase refuses to mindshare with Yas and the others on more than one occasion because he fears what may become of him if he merges with other personalities. As he puts it, his mind is the only thing he has left, and if he starts allowing it to merge with other minds he might even lose that too. Learning that he's actually a copy of the original Chase's mind certainly doesn't help matters.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Along with the more streamlined armor, Chase's upgraded Holon has a pair of launchers on its wrists that can fire a barrage of missiles, as well as two larger payloads attached to its wings.
• Morally Superior Copy: Played with at first. The original Julian Chase was captured and corrupted by the Union, transforming the once noble Lieutenant into the vicious, violent Nemesis. The Polity, however, made a clone of Chase, who, due to not ever being captured by the Union, retains his heroism and battles Nemesis, effectively taking his original's place as the true hero of the Polity. It's worth noting that the Nemesis version of Chase actually had parts of his memories deleted or altered to make him susceptible to the Union's intentions, taking advantage of the fact that he was literally a digital brain, leaving it ambiguous whether or not Chase could maintain his heroic nature if his mind had remained whole. The comic and Nemesis' example does indicate that Chase is The Corruptible, so it's unclear how much difference there is between Chase and the Nemesis versions of him. The ambiguity however is thankfully resolved when Chase finally decides to merge his consciousness with the Nemesii in the Season 2 finale so they can all become a singular entity again, fully restoring Chase as a person while also being free from the influence of both of their respective factions.
• The One Guy: Played with. He ends up becoming this for gen:Lock One after the death of Kazu, the only other member of the team who is always a man, though Val/entina is a man during Season 2.
• One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce: Once he's trapped in his Holon, Chase realizes that since he doesn't have to worry about uptime anymore, and is able to push himself in ways that the other pilots can't, such as modding everything to the maximum capacity.
• People Jars: His biological body is alive inside a life support pod. His interactions with the real world are done via Holon or a holographic projection of himself. Even Dr. Weller doesn't know if he'll ever be able to leave the pod for real. Becomes a moot point after the final battle with the Nemesis. As he is forced to exceed his uptime so he can hold the Nemesis off while the others recharge, he is effectively trapped in his Holon permanently, and unable to return to his body.
• Projected Man: Due to his condition after the Battle for New York in 2068, he mostly presents himself as a holographic projection while his real body is in the Holon tank.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: For four years Chase continued to mix in wearing his "Silver Falcons" uniform rather than the standard gen:LOCK pilot suit. After the group heads to the RTASA however, Chase decides its time for a change and begins mixing in wearing the gen:LOCK pilot suit, his being cyan.
• Split-Personality Merge: In season 2, Chase merges with Nemesii to become a singular person again who poessess the memories of both his Polity and Union counterparts. This also grants him the ability to pilot all of the Nemesis frames at once to combat Twilight monstrosity.
• Token Flier: His original Holon was the only one among the main five that could fly. After the Holons underwent an upgrade, Yasmine's Holon was also given the power of flight.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Discussed. After having spent four years thinking he's dead, the Vanguard pilots are shocked when first introduced to his holographic image in the conference room. Even though he, Colonel Marin and Dr. Weller all insist he's the real deal, some of his former colleagues still wonder if he's really just an AI designed to behave like the original Chase. What Chase doesn't initially know is that he was captured during an early Holon mission and Weller, who was in the habit of making back-ups of Chase's mind whenever he uploaded to the Cyberbrain, downloaded the copy into Chase's body. The gen:LOCK project continued without Chase being any the wiser until Nemesis shows up, speaking and thinking just like Chase. Nemesis is piloted by Chase's original mind and considers the Polity Chase to be just a copy that needs to be killed. Miranda first voices the obvious question: which one is the real Chase?
• Took a Level in Jerkass, After losing his family, his sense of identity, and fighting an unending wave of Nemesis robots, Julian becomes more stoic, loses his optimism, and swears a lot more.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Just as he and Miranda are starting to rekindle their bond, the Nemesis reveals it has Chase's voice and is a Holon. So not only does Chase begin to have an identity crisis, Miranda pushes him away thinking he's not even the real Chase.

Yasamin "Yaz" Madrani - Huma

NAME: MADRANI, YASAMIN

You're the new lab rats. Come on!

RANK: UNK

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

CALL SIGN: HUMA

Voiced by: Golshifteh Farahani

Yasamin "Yaz" Madrani is a former pilot for the Union. After an incident forced her to seek asylum from the Union in the Polity, she was found to be gen:LOCK compatible and released to the custody of Dr. Weller per his request. She would train with Chase during the Time Skip as his partner and the second gen:LOCK candidate.

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• The Ace: She was top of her class in infantry training, and served as a combat pilot prior to her incarceration.
• Affectionate Nickname: Weller has an incredibly subtle one for her, which is a play on her name. While it seems like he just has an unusual way of pronouncing "Yasamin", he is actually calling her "Yaz-e man", which is Farsi for "my Yaz".
• Animal Motifs: Birds; her Holon's final form has large wings, and her call-sign is "Huma", after a legendary bird from her homeland of Iran. And like the Huma bird, which shares some characteristics with the mythological Phoenix, it's heavily implied that Yaz was resurrected shortly after being gunned down by Union soldiers.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: When Yasamin gets in close range to her opponents, she uses military martial arts to fight, whether fighting soldiers on foot or when she's piloting her Holon.
• Brick Joke: When Dr. Weller upgrades her Holon with wrist blasters, Cammie quips that it would have been cooler if she had been given heat vision instead. Cammie rectifies this during her upgrades, as Yaz unveils new Eye Beams in Chicago.
• Broken Pedestal: She used to be with the Union but now fights against them, as whatever they are now, they are no longer the organization that she was once loyal to. Bringing up her past is a sore spot for her, and she still occasionally refers to the Union as "us".
  IT WAS NOT MY UNION!
• Brutal Honesty: One of her key traits.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She doesn't look back fondly on her time with the Union. While she was a citizen in Union territory, she ultimately sought asylum at the Polity after learning she was responsible for outing her parents as intellectuals, after which the Union arrested them. Turns out it's even worse than that: she tried to resist the Union control by destroying their holy site, but it failed, and her parents were so ashamed they willingly "ascended".
• Eye Beams: One of her upgrades is this.
• Foreign Cuss Word: For the most part, she speaks exclusively in English, in contrast to the way most of the Latino and non-American characters in the series pepper their speech with Bilingual Bonuses. Her native Farsi slips out twice in the first-season finale in moments of stress, first a furious "Go to hell!" to Nemesis, then a frustrated "Are you out of your mind?" to Chase, both of which are subtitled.
• Freudian Slip: When the team is deployed to stop the Union attack on an Ether hub, Yaz starts to say that this kind of attack is "not usually our style" before quickly catching and correcting herself to say "the Union's style".
• Hand Blast: Yasamin's Holon in its final form uses energy blasts from the hand for long-range combat.
• Heel–Face Turn: She used to be a Union operative, before realizing that their ideals and practices didn't match.
• In-Series Nickname: Dr. Weller and Chase frequently call her "Yaz" for short.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Yaz may be brutally honest and a bit caustic, but she willingly defected from the Union, and befriended Julian once she joined him at gen:LOCK. She is kind with Miranda when they first meet even though Miranda doesn't know about Julian, and she has her team's best interests at heart — even if she doesn't have any patience with their misbehavior.
• Levitating Lotus Position: Often engages in this in her off-hours to steady her mind and somtimes prior to battle for a Meditation Powerup.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: When the pilots are discussing the dreams they've been having, Yaz drops that in hers she was as tall as a Holon and naked. She only seems embarrassed when none of the others own up to also being naked in their dreams, though.
• Recruiting the Criminal: How she got into the gen:LOCK program, being interrogated by military police at the Mesa Detainment Center when Dr. Weller asks Colonel Marin to transfer her.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: A minor case with her Ether avatar, which is noticeably more feminine from her real-life appearance and even wears a hijab.
• Wham Shot: Literally. Episode 2 of season 2 expounds on Yaz's backstory, revealing that she and her rebellious friends were misblamed for aiding the Polity's surprise attack on the Union, resulting in her being branded a criminal and chased by their forces and Nanotech to an Inevitable Waterfall made from Union nanotech. Whereas her last surviving friend willingly jumped into the sea of nanotech to escape, Yaz, distraught over the revelation that her parents had recently ascended and her friends were all dead, hesitated long enough to get blasted over the edge by machine-gun fire with what should have been fatal wounds, leaving it unclear exactly how she survived.

Cameron "Cammie" MacCloud - Trixx

NAME: MACCLOUD, CAMERON

That's a hell of a way to say hello!

RANK: N/A

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

FORMER ASSIGNMENT: SYSTEMS SECURITY ANALYST

CALL SIGN: TRIXX

Voiced by: Maisie Williams

Cameron "Cammie" MacCloud is a mischievous Scottish hacktivist in the employ of the Polity as a "White Hat" hacker. She was transferred to the gen:LOCK program per the request of Dr. Weller, making her the third recruited candidate.

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• Ace Custom: She's the first of the team to discover that she might be able to modify her Holon. Migas gives her access to the Holon specs even though he's not supposed to, and she begins designing lagomorphic legs to replace her current set and readjust her center of gravity. After relocating to the RTASA base, it's revealed that Cammie had been working on custom designs for all the Holons, not just her own, and is responsible for all their upgraded designs.
• Affectionate Nickname: The first time the team trains in their Holons, Cammie tags Val/entina and runs off; Val/entina pursues her calling her "Little Bunny". When trying to get Cammie to wake up in the morning, Val/entina calls her Moya Zaika, which means "my bunny" in Russian.
• Animal-Eared Headband: She wears antennae on her head that resemble rabbit ears.
• Animal Motifs: Rabbits; her little robot companion, Nugget, has a pair of rabbit ears, she wears antennae on her head that resemble them, which are also seen on her Holon, and her Ether avatar is a rabbit. Her Holon's final form also has rabbit-themed digitigrade legs. Her call sign, Trixx, is likely a reference to the Trix Rabbit.
• Attack Drone: Cammie's Holon is eventually outfitted with small scouting drones that also assist her with aiming, helping to make up for her lack of combat experience. After her upgrades, the drones are also equipped with small weapons as well as improved sensory equipment.
• The Baby of the Bunch: She's the lone teenager in a team of elite soldiers, and has no ostensible combat experience. Everyone also treats her like a little sister, including rushing to her aid when she's being attacked by Nemesis.
• Big Damn Heroes:Cammie returns after her Ascension with new Nanomachine powers thanks to Gen:Lock and saves the rest of her friends during their Darkest Hour.
• Bilingual Bonus: She slips into Gaelic when piloting a Holon for the first time, singing the first two lines of happy birthday and later letting out a "son of a bitch" when startled. She slips into Russian when confronted by Nemesis for the second time in "The Best Defense" with "мудак блядь" after her mindshare with Val, which of course means "fucking asshole".
• Break the Cutie: Throughout Season 2, the mental problems the other gen:Lock members are going through leads Cammie to try and make them better, which leads to them lashing out at her attempts from their own stress. Cammie grows increasingly isolated from her team as a result.
• Butt-Monkey: Cammie's short stature and youth make her a target for slapstick. The others are pretty quick to pick her up against her will, she's prone to falling over in her Holon, she gets hit the most during training, and in general the others treat her like a little sister— they're not above using her as a human shield or harshly shoving her out of bed in the morning. Generally, if anyone's going to get hurt at any moment for comedic effect, it tends to be Cammie. This ultimately emphasizes the traumatic nature of the attack from Nemesis, which doesn't play her fumbling for laughs. As the vulnerable team-member, Nemesis takes her out very quickly, leaving her burning through her Uptime from panic. Without any military background, she's not psychologically equipped to handle the experience and struggles afterwards to come to terms with it. The rest of the team rally around her in the aftermath to help her understand that she's not alone in what she's going through.
• Chicken Walker: To an extent; her customized Holon design includes digitigrade legs, fitting Cammie's rabbit motif. The rabbit-themed legs also allow Cammie's Holon to jump pretty high in the air.
• Driven to Suicide: After Kazu died along with growing distant from her team, Cammie was consumed by grief, this lead her to go the Union and doing an unauthorized Ascension just be with her biological family again. However, she survived thanks to her connection to get:LOCK
• Expressive Accessory: The antennae in her hair tie resemble rabbit ears and tend to flit about based on her mood.
• Flipping the Bird:
  • She routinely did this during her first training exercise in her Holon, flipping off the Vanguard every time they eliminated her. In one case it left her distracted enough for Kazu to use her as a Holon Shield.
  • In the United Kingdom, sticking up the first two fingers with the back of the hand facing a person is a similar (but distinct) gesture. Cammie, being Scottish, does this first to Leon and the others during their first Holon training session and later to Kazu when he wakes her up with his electric guitar.
• Gadgeteer Genius: She was recruited by Weller because he recognized her hacking skills as highly valuable. She was ultimately responsible for designing the final form armor and upgrades that the Holons are equipped within Episode 8, with a little help from Migus who gave her a copy of the required CAD software.
• Gender-Blender Name: Her first name is Cameron, one typically reserved for boys, but she shortens it down to Cammie when around others.
• Genki Girl: Put Cammie near new and/or advanced technology, and she will take off like a firework.
• Guns Akimbo: Cammie's Holon wields a machine pistol in each hand.
• Hates Being Alone: One of the primary reasons why Cammie is so insistent on keeping her teammates together is because she's desperately trying to starve off the feeling of isolation as the Polity's war with the Union grows exponentially more dire. By Season 2, Team gen:LOCK's near-constant feuding has taken a clear toll on her as she feels alienated by the very people she considers her Family of Choice. Becomes even more alarming after she reveals she lost her entire family to disease and death, rendering her emotionally tethered to having a group to be with to keep herself afloat.
  Cammie: I hate being alone in a storm.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Minor example: Cammie has some trouble walking as a Holon initially because its legs are much longer proportionately than hers. This continues long enough for Cammie to propose modifying the legs of her Holon to match her proportions, with Migas's help.
• The Klutz: Between being the only gen:LOCK member without a combat background and the Holons being proportionally taller than her, Cammie has the hardest time piloting at first. This prompts her to start looking into customizing her Holon.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: Cammie's the most foul-mouthed of the team. Given that she's Scottish, it's somewhat unsurprising. She makes it all of four words into her first spoken line before swearing. Dr. Weller, in particular, is not fond of her swearing and wants her to work on holding back.
  Cammie: Now that's a big fucking cairn.
• Little Miss Snarker: She tends to get very snippy when stressed, and she's the youngest member of the team at seventeen years old.
  Cammie: (after recapping the gory details of the previous episode) Do I have any of that wrong, Longshanks?
  Weller: You've got the gist of it, but I'd employ a less sarcastic tone.
  Cammie: I think sarcasm helps us see things more clearly.
• Not a Morning Person: She tends to have to be physically pushed/shoved out of her bunk in the mornings, and at one point apparently faceplants into her breakfast out of sheer tiredness. In "The Best Defense," her team-mates accuse her of being so tired because she's gaming into the night; in actuality, she's customizing her Holon with help from Migas' Holon specs, and after almost being killed by Nemesis, she's been having recurring nightmares.
• Occidental Otaku: She offers Kazu her manga collection in case the gen:LOCK technology kills her - and isn't pleased to learn that he stopped reading them as a kid. She also helped upgrade Kazu's Holon to look like his favorite manga RoboShogun and jokes about him needing to catch up on the manga.
• Off with His Head!: A non-fatal example. Cammie ends up getting the head of her Holon ripped off by Nemesis in her first mission. The Holon's cyberbrain is in the chest so it isn't lethal, but since the pilots effectively are the Holons while uploaded, Cammie still understandably freaks out - not least because she actually felt it.
• Playful Hacker: Cammie's an intelligent programmer, and her playful side comes out when she sees new technology - such as her reaction to the Holon mechs. Later weaponized when her Holon is upgraded, allowing her to quickly hack electronics that she has a line of sight to.
• Recruiting the Criminal: Before joining the Polity, she was a teenage "hacktivist", and had to join as a white-hat hacker to escape jail time after one of her exploits went a bit too far. This is also what put her on the radar for recruitment in gen:LOCK, as the required health screenings as part of joining the Polity are what flagged her as gen:LOCK compatible.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Attempts this after seeing what happened to "Sinclair". Later, seeing Kazu die makes her climb out of her pod and run away.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Cammie is the most flippant member of the group and provides a fair amount of comedy in the show. her decision to ascend into the Ether marks the point where the story takes a truly dark turn.
• Short Teens, Tall Adults: 17 years old but a full foot shorter than her adult colleagues. Gets discussed in regards to how she controls her Holon; since the frame for her mech is based on a statistically average human build, her legs feel grossly out of proportion to the rest of her body when she's uploaded since she's used to having much shorter legs in her normal body. This often leads to her falling flat on her ass when she gets too wild with her Holon's movements, and as the intro shows is probably the impetus for the rabbit-like legs her Holon will eventually get.
• The Smart Girl: Cammie's a prodigiously-gifted programmer, and she's familiar enough with engineering to keep up with Migas. She even learns enough about gen:LOCK tech in the team's short time together to lead repairs & upgrading of the Holons after they escape to the RTASA base.
• Teen Genius: Despite her youth, Dr. Weller's heard nothing but praise about her coding skills.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Cammie's Holon throws grenades as a secondary weapon and also has remote-controlled detonators.
• Troubled Fetal Position: Adopts this when she is frightened or stressed out, first when she's caught in the middle of the gunfight between the Union spy and the Anvil military police, and again later on when she's inside the virtual reality within her Holon and dealing with the aftermath of being decapitated by Nemesis.
• Unstoppable Rage: Following the first fight against Nemesis, Cammie tries modifying her personality to be tougher. She ends up going on a rampage during training that requires all four of the other Holons to restrain her. Weller tells her that the modding, along with her state of mind, created a near-psychotic feed-back loop, and warns her that it's not a healthy way to deal with her trauma.

Kazu Iida - Shogun

NAME: IIDA, KAZU

RANK: SGT

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

CALL SIGN: SHOGUN

I'm not going to fight for someone just because they tell me to.

Voiced by: Kōichi Yamadera (adult) / Jenny Yokobori (child)

Sergeant Kazu Iida was a soldier in the JSDF as a tank driver but was demoted to KP duty due to insubordination. He was transferred to the gen:LOCK program per the request of Dr. Weller, making him the fourth recruited candidate.

---

• Accidental Misnaming: Unfortunately for Kazu, Cammie pronounces his name as "Kazoo" instead of "Ka-zuh."
• Battle Couple: With Val. He dies in the same episode in which they have sex.
• The Big Guy: Kazu is the tallest and most muscular gen:LOCK pilot, with an intimidating appearance to match. He also shows a preference for melee combat whenever he's in his Holon and its final form is bulkier thanks to its large armor.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: Succumbs to this, being the first of the team to die.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Kazu only speaks in Japanese, but has no difficulty taking part in conversations which are otherwise held in English, as everyone in this universe has an augmented reality HUD that includes a universal translator.
• Blood Knight: Kazu really enjoys a good scrap. His training is physically violent, resulting in him and Chase throwing each other all over the training field and him elbow-dropping firing range dummies. In the field, he will use cars and light posts as weapons and will grapple with Union walkers as opposed to shooting them. The first time she trains after almost being killed by Nemesis, Cammie goes berserk and viciously pummels him. When asked if he's all right, he is thrilled by what just happened.
  Kazu: (That was great!... What?)
• Butt-Monkey: Outside of Cammie, Kazu tends to have the most comedy focused mishaps out of the gen:LOCK group, starting with him accidentally crashing into a wall trying to chase down "Sinclair".
• Chef of Iron: Prior to his transfer, he was an ex-tank-driver-turned-cook, having been demoted due to insubordination. He's shown to be pretty good at cooking as well, to the point that he starts cooking for everyone during breakfast.
• Close-Range Combatant: Kazu frequently foregoes guns in favor of getting up close with Union mechs. Best summarized in the Training Montage in episode 4, where he elbow drops one of the shooting targets. His Roboshogun upgrades include a heavy curved sword with a Holon-scale shotgun built into the sheath, like Jetstream Sam or Adam Taurus.
• Does Not Speak Common: He speaks entirely in Japanese in this otherwise English-language series, with Mixed Reality rendering this not a problem in the slightest nor even worth mentioning. His only line in English to date was spoken while mindsharing with his four teammates.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: He's killed by a Nemesis with little fanfare four episodes into Season 2.
• Dual Wielding: Kazu's Holon first started out with using two short katana-esque swords for his first upgrade. This becomes especially efficient when he Mindshares with Val when the Union is attacking the Vanguard's base. Val becomes an extension of Kazu, by helping him turn, twist, somersault, and fight in multiple directions at once. It makes the pair look like they're dancing.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: Kazu's Holon in its final form is designed to look like a Samurai, complete with Samurai designed armor, Kabuto helmet with horns attached, and wielding essentially a large, thick bladed Katana. It also helps that it was Cammie who helped redesign Kazu's holon into its final form and to make it look like his favorite manga RoboShogun.
• Freudian Excuse: When he and Val have a talk about gender, it's revealed that Kazu's father was demeaned and abused by his peers and didn't fight back, which lead Kazu to believe he was weak and to overcompensate his own manliness rather than become like him. Val advises him to look back on it with adult eyes, and he realizes that his father sacrificing his pride to protect him was its own form of strength.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Scaled-up mechanical version: Kazu's favored battlefield tactic is to simply grab the nearest car, enemy drone or enemy Spider Tank and use it to bludgeon and/or hurl at the rest of his opponents.
• Hand Cannon: After receiving his upgraded Holon, Kazu's ranged weapons are traded out for a powerful but short-ranged pistol/shotgun.
• Hot-Blooded: Kazu got demoted from tank pilot to kitchen prep duty because he can't hold his tongue and was considered too insubordinate.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Kazu's Holon is impaled by a Nemesis clone's blade, which kills him.
• Improvised Weapon: In their first mission, Kazu uses several cars, light posts, a building's drain pipe, and even Union mechs to fight instead of his actual weapon. Before this during training, he even used Cammie as a shield.
• In-Series Nickname: Cammie initially interpreted his name as "Kazoo". He doesn't bother correcting her anymore, so that's what she keeps calling him.
• Internalized Categorism: Downplayed. He has some very specific ideas of what it means to be a man, thanks in part to his Freudian Excuse, and sees things like vulnerability and emotional honesty as feminine. When he starts to become more vulnerable, his avatar starts presenting as female as a result of this subconscious association. He and Val have a chat about it and later sleep together, with the two of them switching genders several times during the act, after which his avatar changes back to male.
• Leeroy Jenkins: He has a rather unfortunate habit of charging in and tossing caution to the wind. Miranda notes this tendency in her assessment as one of the reasons why the recruits don't work as a team and it's implied to be one of the reasons why his previous unit was so eager to let him go when Weller recruited him.
  Leon: Ohhhh Kazu, we have got to talk about collateral damage...
• Loss of Identity: Gets nervous about this when he learns Val/entina's picked up enough memories to play his guitar after a lengthy mind-share.
• Military Maverick: One of the reasons for his demotion was because he was selective about what orders he would follow. He is demoted and implied to be disliked within his own former unit for this.
  Kazu: (Like I told my superiors when I was busted down... I'm not going to fight for someone just because they tell me to.)
• Not So Above It All: When Cammie offers him her manga collection in the event her first attempt at gen:LOCK fails, he dismisses her saying he hasn't read manga since he was a kid. Once Cammie redesigns his Holon's armor in the vein of his favorite manga RoboShogun however, he starts geeking out and can barely contain his excitement.
• Power Fist: In Episode 6, Dr. Weller equips Kazu with a gauntlet that integrates with his pilot suit. It's durable enough to withstand rifle fire and significantly increases his left arm's striking power.
• Punk Rock: A major influence of his design, and part of what gives him such an intimidating appearance. He even has an electric guitar decked out with a dragon paint job among his personal effects. His Ether avatar has a full punk hairstyle, black leathers and studs, and spikes all over his clothing. Even his fingerless gloves have knuckle spikes.
  Cammie: Ugh. Kazoo, do you really need to look tougher?
• Red Hot Masculinity:
  • Kazu wears red armor and pilots a red Holon. He is known for being outspoken, rebellious, and insubordinate, which cost him the respect of his unit, who were all too happy to have him transferred to the Anvil just to get rid of him. In battle, Kazu is Hot-Blooded and fearless to the point of recklessness, and his fighting style focuses mainly on brute force.
  • Kazu is also a fan of an an anime series called "RoboShogun", whose titular character is a superhero in red armor. RoboShogun also espouses stereotypical masculine beliefs such as Men Don't Cry.
• Reverse Grip: Kazu's Holon briefly holds its sword in this way during the opening and in the final battle against Nemesis after getting the new upgrades.
• Sex Signals Death: He has sex with Val and is dead less than 20 minutes later.
• Switch to English: Averted; after he says his first line, we see from Val/entina's perspective as her eye implants translate his words from Japanese to English. From then on, however, rather than Translation Convention kicking in, his dialogue remains audibly in Japanese, just with English subtitles which, in a sense, everyone in-universe can also see. He speaks English for the first time when mindsharing with his four fellow pilots, in unison with them.
• Sword and Fist: Kazu's fighting style switches between using his swords and his fists to fight. He also uses Sword and Gun when Mindsharing with his teammates in defeating Nemesis in the final battle of the first season, wielding his large sword and shotgun in both hands.
• Tank Goodness: This was his role within the Vanguard, prior to his demotion and subsequent recruitment to gen:LOCK. His Holon in its final form is also heavily armored, just like a tank.
• Team Chef: Kazu becomes this as the unit continues to work together, cooking everyone breakfast.
• The Watson:
  • Is apparently rather unfamiliar with LGBTQ+ terminology, which allows Val/entina's gender fluidity to be explained to him and the audience at the same time. Considering both his culture and the fact that his translator might have had some trouble conveying things properly, it makes sense.
  • Kazu also only bothers to listen when he wants to, forcing his teammates and Weller to occasionally repeat important information to him. This allows for the explanation of concepts like uploading en-route to minimize uptime while averting As You Know.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Performs an elbow drop on a training dummy that he was supposed to be shooting in episode 4, and suplexes a Union Soldier during the invasion of the Anvil in Episode 6.

Val/entina Romanyszyn - Wraith

NAME: ROMANYSZYN, VALENTINA P.

RANK: SR SGT (RET)

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

CALL SIGN: WRAITH

I like fights I can win.

^{Click here to see them as Val} 

Voiced by: Asia Kate Dillon

Senior Sergeant Val/entina Romanyszyn is a former Russian Advanced Recon and Stealth Ops agent before defecting to the Ukrainian Resistance Movement. Soon after, Val/entina attempted to retire from fighting the Union, only to be transferred to the gen:LOCK program per the request of Dr. Weller, making them the fifth recruited candidate.

---

• Ambiguous Gender: Played with. While very clearly female-presenting at the start of the series, Val/entina is genderfluid, has transitioned several times in the past, and mentions that the idea of becoming Val again is being contemplated. When a confused Kazu asks Val/entina's birth sex, Val's response, while playful, makes it clear that it's none of his business. The mindshares with Cammie and Kazu depict them as the male Val, supporting evidence of the 'urge' Val feels to shift soon.
• Army Scout: Was this prior to recruitment for gen:LOCK.
• Battle Couple: With Kazu, who dies in the same episode in which they have sex.
• Combat Stilettos: On Val/entina's mech. Really.
• Cross Player: Does this within the Ether, and for good reason.
• The Cynic: Fighting as a resistance operative, then experiencing the horrors of war as a spy for the Polity has soured Val/entina's view of the world to the point of being The Eeyore at worst.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Heavily implied. While in a shouting match with Yasamin, she mentions that she's seen first hand what the Union does to "people like me". After arriving at RTASA it's further elaborated. Val/entina used to be a part of the Russian Advanced Recon, but joined the Ukrainian Resistance after societal stigma against Val/entina's gender fluidity, before eventually retiring from the resistance.
  • In season 2, Val and Kazu share memories of their parents. In Val's, a young Val/entina is cowering in the corner while his father beats and screams at his mother.
• Death Seeker:Val's this by the end of Season 2, growing despondent at the idea of fighting anymore and resigned to die if not for last minute encouragement from a memory of Kazu.
• Determined Defeatist: She doesn't have much faith the world can be improved or that humanity will ever stop warfare, and was even content to spend her last days partying and drinking until the world dies. Regardless, she still wishes to fight for a better world.
• Devious Daggers: Fittingly for a former secret agent, Val/entina has been seen with knives since Rooster Teeth revealed the character on Twitter. Val/entina's ability to throw knives with great precision comes in handy when fighting the fake Sinclair. Val/entina's Holon in its final form also wields a long dagger for close combat, fitting for their fighting style.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": In early episodes, corrects everyone who calls her "Val". This turns out to be because Val/entina is gender-fluid, going by "Val" when male and "Valentina" when female. A few episodes in, the urge to transition sets in and Val/entina allows others to call them Val.
• Friendly Sniper: So far, Val/entina is sociable and flippant (if rather cynical), and is an experienced sniper after working undercover within the Union for years. Accordingly, Val/entina uses a giant sniper rifle when piloting her Holon.
• Functional Addict: Has admitted going into battle completely drunk multiple times, with little to no visible effect on her skills. Come Season 2, she has stopped doing so and hates the fact she now faces murderous machines completely sober.
• Gender Bender: Apparently at the time the show is set in, gender reassignment procedures have advanced enough that Val/entina has switched between male and female several times already, and hints that another switch is being seriously considered.
• G.I.R.L.: Inverted version. Val/entina currently identifies as female in real-life but uses a male avatar in the Ether.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Val/entina has a love for clubbing and drinking. Prior to getting picked for gen:LOCK Val/entina intended to live and die like this, having given up hope of winning against the Union and retiring from the Vanguard's recon division as a result.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Val/entina bears a strong passing resemblance to Asia Kate Dillon, her VA, albeit with crazy purple hair and hazel eyes. She's also gender-fluid, while Dillon is non-binary.
• Invisibility Cloak: Used one when working as a covert agent within the Union. Val/entina's Holon also wears a hooded cloak to turn invisible in its final form.
• Knight in Sour Armour: Val/entina has had enough of fighting the Union, but decides to stick with gen:LOCK in the hopes of being able to protect civilians.
• La Résistance: Before the fall of New York, Val/entina was undercover as part of a resistance movement against the Union.
• Really Gets Around: Implied to have had their share of romantic conquests and have a number of kinks. Season 2 reveals Val/entina passionately kissing a female ally, revealing herself as pansexual when derided as a lesbian, and knocking out a colleague for calling them a "whore".
• 10-Minute Retirement: Gets picked for gen:LOCK shortly after retiring from the Vanguard's recon division. Val/entina is not happy about it, erroneously thinking it was just research instead of a blend of research and fighting, and would rather go back to retirement. However, after some convincing from Chase and Weller, Val/entina easily slides back into the role of stealth specialist and sniper.
• The Unpronounceable: Played for Laughs. When they first meet in episode 2, Dr. Weller cannot pronounce Val/entina's last name, eventually giving up and simply saying Valentina. He continues having trouble in later episodes, too. For reference, the name Romanyszyn is pronounced "rom-an-ish-in", however the one time it's been spoken in-series, by Holcroft, he pronounces it "ro-man-is-zin".

Robert Sinclair

NAME: SINCLAIR, ROBERT

RANK: SPC

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

^{Click here to see the real Rob Sinclair} 

Come on Sinclair, get it together.

Voiced by: Blaine Gibson

Specialist Robert Sinclair was a Ranger in the Vanguards Recon Corp before Dr. Weller requested he be transferred to the gen:LOCK program as its sixth recruited candidate. Before this could occur, however, he was attacked by two agents of the Union and replaced with a Union spy, with only an unidentified corpse found in his place of residence afterwards.

---

• Advertised Extra: He appears prominently in the opening, but he (or rather the spy impersonating him) is dead by the end of his debut episode. The real Sinclair, however, appears in The Stinger as a Sequel Hook.
• Badass in Distress: Robert gets captured by Vanguard troops in order to be a host (not willingly though) of the Odin-type Holon.
• Dead All Along: According to the report Marin receives, the real Rob Sinclair went missing (and is heavily implied to have been killed). The man with his name who arrives at the Anvil is a Union spy sent to steal a Holon. A post-credits scene in episode 8 shows that he's actually alive, disguising himself as a Union soldier, and in a hell of a lot of trouble.
• Decoy Protagonist: Despite being advertised as one of the main characters, he is either captured or killed before his debut, and replaced by an impostor. It's not until the climax of Season 1 that he's revealed to be alive.
• Deep South: Hails from Kentucky, apparently.
• Defector from Decadence: Season 2 reveals that the real Sinclair eventually turned his back on the Polity after witnessing their forces commit war crimes against non-combatants.
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: The character we presume to be Robert Sinclair in the second episode quickly turns out to be an impostor, whose true identity remains unknown and whose character sheet can be seen below in the Union section, with the real Sinclair presumed to have been murdered by his impersonator. The real Sinclair debuts in The Stinger of the first season.
• Last-Name Basis: Everyone refers to him as "Sinclair". Including himself.
• Manly Gay: An all-American military guy who, in his time as a rebellion leader, has grown into a rugged, bearded outdoorsman. In his second appearance in Season 2, he plants a kiss on Chris, an equally-manly member of his alliance.
• Ranger: This was allegedly his role within the Vanguard's reconnaissance division, prior to getting picked for gen:LOCK.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After being freed from his Polity brainwashing by Team gen:LOCK, Sinclair goes on to completely massacre every soldier stationed at the Anvil standing between him and Marin all before slitting her throat and liberating the copied minds being forced to pilot her Holon Frames.
• Rogue Soldier: Sinclair formally deserts from the Vanguard after seeing Polity troops execute disarmed Union troops in the 2nd season.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: His main justification for deserting from the Polity. After witnessing Polity soldiers executing defenseless War Refugees from the Union, Sinclair decided that both sides of the conflict have crossed the line and would rather focus on protecting those who end up caught in their crossfire.
• Straight Gay: A very straitlaced soldier character, revealed in Season 2 to be in a relationship with Chris, one of his fellow defectors from the war, sharing a tender kiss with him and calling him "babe".
• Uncertain Doom: Sinclair's replacement leaves it ambiguous if the real Sinclair is dead or captured by the Union. The real Sinclair is alive and currently in hiding disguised as a Union soldier.
• Walking Spoiler: He's replaced by a spy before he can join gen:LOCK and thought to be dead, but managed to survive his assault and is disguised as a Union soldier.

Leadership/RTASA Agents

Caliban

NAME: CALIBAN

RANK: N/A

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: UNK

Voiced by: David Tennant (Weller's data; exterior until S2E7) / Judah Mackey (Chibi Caliban; exterior from S2E7 onward)

gen:LOCK unit "Caliban" is Dr. Weller's robotic assistant. Tasked with manual labor and maintaining connections between the pilots and their Holons, Caliban has a few more tricks hidden in his chassis.

---

• Beware the Quiet Ones: Despite its considerable height, Caliban is mostly a quiet, unassuming assistant to Weller. It is, however, entirely capable of pummeling a Union battle drone into scrap, bare-fisted.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Caliban normally functions in complete silence, no matter what orders he is given. However, it turns out that Dr. Weller muted him because he couldn't cope with Caliban's terrible sense of humor. He is Weller's first successful cyberbrain experiment, and contains a sliver of Weller's uploaded brain. While it ensures Caliban knows everything Weller knows about the gen:LOCK project, it also gives the robot Weller's instinct for jokes. It isn't enough, however, to make Caliban any good at wit and humor.
• Robot Maid: A robot who performs a range of tasks for Weller, from carrying luggage to performing computer tasks on Weller's behalf. It's not his true purpose, however, which is to act as a repository for everything that Weller knows or has ever created for the gen:LOCK research. Weller's advice to the GL team is to keep this fact secret.
• Robot Me: Weller created Caliban to serve as his assistant. Caliban can act as a maid to carry luggage, or as a protector that can fight threats. However, he usually helps Weller monitor the gen:LOCK program. Caliban was one of Weller's first successful gen:LOCK experiments and functions as the repository for everything Weller ever learned, knew or planned for the project. Weller also uploaded a sliver of his mind to Caliban's cyberbrain. As a result, it possesses Weller's intellect, memories, and voice. It also possesses his instinct for jokes but a recorded message from Weller makes it clear that he muted Caliban because the robot's inability to use wit and humor properly annoyed him. Weller also makes it clear that the GL team should keep Caliban's true status as the gen:LOCK repository secret.
• Soul Fragment: Caliban's cyberbrain is an early Gen:LOCK experiment and as such contains a sliver of Weller's mind. Along with a complete archive of the Gen:LOCK project this also grants it a personality of sorts that attempts to emulate Weller's wit and sense of humor. It also speaks with Weller's voice
• Suddenly Voiced: Caliban is introduced as Weller's silent robotic assistant. It never speaks until the seventh episode, where it's revealed that Dr. Weller put it on an extended mute because he couldn't deal with the robot's sense of humor. As an early gen:LOCK cyberbrain, Caliban contains a sliver of Weller's mind and therefore speaks in Weller's voice.
• Used Future: Weller used Caliban as a testbed for designing the holon endoskeleton and as such looks like he was cobbled together from spare parts because that's almost certainly exactly what happened. His body also shows signs of extreme wear and tear, with several plates missing, damaged or worn. Turns out its because he was one of the first successful gen:LOCK cyberbrain experiments, and the wear is from how old he is.

Miguel "Migas" Garza

NAME: GARZA, MIGUEL

RANK: UNK

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

Have I ever let you down?

Voiced by: Miles Luna

Miguel "Migas" Garza is an engineer and head of Strider upkeep at the Anvil. An old friend of Julian Chase's, he is tasked with Holon maintenance soon after the gen:LOCK team transfers to the Anvil, before later being promoted to a position at RTASA as full-time head of Holon maintenance and engineering liaison to the Vanguard.

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• Bilingual Bonus: He mixes a good amount of Spanish into his speech.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Zig-zagged. Miguel doesn't consider his nickname (which means "Crumbs") embarrassing per se, but he is embarrassed enough by how he got the nickname that he doesn't want Chase revealing the story to girls he's only just met.
• The Engineer: Miguel worked on Strider mechs for most of the war, and gets tasked with maintaining the Holon mechs within gen:LOCK. He's given almost no time to come up to speed on hundreds of technical pages about the Holons, but it's quickly made clear he's more than capable of doing so.
• Non-Action Guy: While he is a member of the gen:LOCK program, it's only as a technician, and is incompatible with the technology itself. As such, he remains on the sidelines keeping track of systems while the pilots fight.
• Noodle Incident: How he got his nickname isn't elaborated on, but he considers it embarrassing, telling Chase off for trying to tell it Yaz when they first meet.
• Rank Up: He's promoted to full-time Holon technician when he decides to transfer to RTASA with the gen:LOCK group.

Marc Holcroft

NAME: HOLCROFT, MARC

RANK: UNK

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

Voiced by: Matt Hullum (S1) / Kiff Vanden Heuvel (S2)

Marc Holcroft is an American industrialist who is the chief investor in both the gen:LOCK project and RTASA. He considers Dr. Weller a close friend.

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• Brutal Honesty: Has no qualms about bringing up the gen:LOCK pilots' personal history, even things that they hadn't yet shared with each other. In his own words, he likes to do his research on his "investments".
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Reveals himself as this by the end of Season 2, banking on using Gen:Lock to create a new afterlife where only the rich will be afforded immortality and new awareness from nanomachines, while the rest of humanity are left to die on a dying Earth.
• Early-Bird Cameo: During a montage in Episode 6 of how the gen:LOCK program got up and running, there is a brief scene of Dr. Weller reporting Chase's first successful gen:LOCK to three people: Colonel Marin, and a man and a woman who are only seen from behind. The man seen from behind is introduced in Episode 7 as Marc Holcroft. Holcroft's name is mentioned in passing during Episode 3 when Marin contemplates removing Weller from the base after he is attacked by a Union infiltrator; she tells Weller to prepare to transfer to wherever Holcroft intends to send him next.
• Evil Mentor: At the end of Season 2, the gen:Lock team set off to reunite with him as their sponsor, unaware of just how corrupt he's become.
• Minor Major Character: He is the key investor behind the funding of both the ESU and RTASA, as well as present for gen:LOCK's conception alongside Dr's Weller and Jha. Despite this, he only appears in the ante-penultimate episode of the first season, and for a single scene.
• Mr. Exposition: His introduction has him give some key details about the backgrounds of the gen:LOCK team members, along with some introspection onto how the Union operates by simply stealing technology rather than being innovative.
• Mysterious Backer: He personally funded nearly all of the gen:LOCK Program, as well as a good portion of the RTASA at large, though what he wants out of it isn't as clear.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Mildly; the gen:LOCK team aren't terribly enthused about having him as their Mysterious Backer, with his deeply invasive knowledge of their personal lives and flippant attitude about the war as a whole. Cammie puts the task of repairing and upgrading the Holons entirely on her own shoulders by lying that Dr. Weller had been teaching her how to do it. Holcroft's response to the bluff clearly indicates he sees through it, but he allows the team to do things their way, leaving gen:LOCK's relationship with this new benefactor in an uncertain state going forward.

Dr. Fatima Jha

NAME: JHA, FATIMA

RANK: UNK

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

Voiced by: Anisha Nagarajan

Dr. Fatima Jha is an Indian engineer who currently works for RTASA. In the past, she was involved in the developmental stages of gen:LOCK technology. She is also Dr. Weller's ex-wife.

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• Badass Bookworm: She's a skilled engineer and crafty enough to escape Union forces through trickery and decoys. When finally cornered, she picks up a pipe and is ready to fight back.
• Early-Bird Cameo: During a montage in Episode 6 of how the gen:LOCK program got up and running, there is a brief scene of Dr. Weller reporting Chase's first successful gen:LOCK to three people: Colonel Marin, and a man and a woman who are only seen from behind. The woman seen from behind is introduced in Episode 7 as Dr. Jha.
• Face–Heel Turn: As of "The Third Way", she’s assisting the Union with their Twilight smoke project. But she has some thoughts on this even after it was used.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Right before the gen:LOCK team lands at RTASA, Caliban quips that he's received warmer welcomes, specifically mentioning Dr. Weller's ex-wife. Once Henry leads them inside the RTASA facility, the team suddenly meet her.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In Episode 5, the raid on a Union facility turns into an unexpected rescue when the Vanguard realize there are captured Polity scientists. One scientist is zoomed on and the Anvil's facial recognition database throws up the scientist's name as Heng Li "Henry" Wu. However, that is all that's visible before the scene moves on to Weller and Marin's alarmed recognition. Freezing the frame allows further information to be gleaned about Henry: He works as a Lead Engineer for somewhere that begins with an 'R' and his supervisor is a woman called Dr. Fatima Jha. This is the show's first reference to Dr. Jha, two episodes before she's introduced.

Former Members

Dr. Rufus Weller

NAME: WELLER, RUFUS

RANK: UNK

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

You don't have to save the world; you just have to make a difference where you can, with the opportunities you are given.

Voiced by: David Tennant

Dr. Rufus Weller is the English scientist who spearheads the gen:LOCK project, and recruits the six heroes to the fledgling force.

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• Awesomeness by Analysis: He's able to reason out that "Sinclair" couldn't have faked his gen:LOCK compatibility test results, and that his captor was either turned by the Union or replaced. He does this while Sinclair is holding a gun to his temple. Sinclair isn't communicative, but it gives Weller an idea on how to deal with him.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He's an eccentric scientist who likes messing around with the recruits, Marin, and ABLE. He doesn't turn a hair when Sinclair kidnaps him and holds a gun to his temple, choosing instead to spend that time interrogating Sinclair about his gen:LOCK compatibility. It allows him to set up Sinclair's death by encouraging him to get into the Holon Sinclair is trying to steal, and convincing everyone else to let it happen. While everyone else, including Colonel Marin, are unsettled by the way Sinclair dies, Weller watches it unfold without any expression — something Marin does notice. He then uses the moment as a lesson to everyone on what happens should anyone who isn't gen:LOCK compatible try to use the technology. In his own words, attempting to pilot a Holon while incompatible is like "putting your brain in a microwave".
• Casting Gag: Spoilers!
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Has shades of this, particularly with his mannerisms.
• Cruel to Be Kind: After Cammie begins suffering PTSD from her confrontation with the Nemesis, she attempts to modify her personality to make herself more aggressive, something he takes notice of when she first does it. While he's capable of overriding it and restoring her to her default personality, he allows her to proceed until the others need to restrain her, to serve as a lesson on what happens when the candidates modify their personalities, and how doing so is not an acceptable way for Cammie to deal with her trauma.
• Dissonant Serenity: He's quite calm when "Sinclair" takes him hostage, affably commenting on the excitement of the situation and quizzing the spy on the fate of the real Sinclair, then goes into it again when "Sinclair" dies violently from a lack of compatibility with the gen:LOCK tech he tried to plug into, calmly using it as an example of what happens when one isn't gen:LOCK compatible.

• Exact Words: Dr. Weller told the gen:LOCK team that they would hear from him when they escaped the Union invasion on the Anvil. He never said it would be in person.
• Fatherly Scientist: He has shown to care deeply for the gen:LOCK pilots, starting with being a father-figure to Chase for four years of warfare, as well as to Yaz. The first time the last three recruits gen:LOCK, he lets them have some fun in their Holons instead of putting them to training right away. After Cammie's Holon gets torn apart in the fourth episode he makes it clear she needs to return to her body, showing he cares more for her than his own creation. He also refers to the team as 'his kids'.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When the Union comes for him, Weller evacuates the Cyberbrain room and gets Caliban and the pilots out of the way before the soldiers corner him. Once the pilots escape, he blows himself up and takes the soldiers and room with him.
• Papa Wolf: Weller is very protective of his gen:LOCK team. He defends them when Colonel Marin doubts their abilities, and he's concerned about sending them into the field too soon after their traumatic first encounter with Nemesis. When the Union attacks the Anvil, he buys the team time to escape by distracting the Union soldiers from going after them, telling them "you can't have my kids".
• Parental Substitute: He serves as one to the whole GL team, but especially to Chase and especially to Yaz.
• Reluctant Mad Scientist: He's called a Mad Scientist by Cammie but he intended gen:LOCK to be used for purely scientific reasons to help humanity unlock its potential. He wanted it to be a new way of communicating and understanding other human beings, so he's not happy that its first use is to militarize it before it's even ready for use. As a result, the technological inventions he's creating for the Polity military, including the technology he's using to keep Julian alive despite Julian's extensive injuries, and his encouragement of Sinclair's use of the Holon despite knowing what would happen to an incompatible subject isn't entirely by choice.
  Cammie: Okay, everyone who kinda cannae keep up with the mad scientist here, say aye.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: The Romanticism to Marin's Enlightenment. In one of the character trailers, he notes with audible disappointment that the designs for Chase and Yasmin's Holons are quite "Utilitarian". He later comments to the recruits that they've been forced to use a single model design because he hasn't had time to develop customized ones.
• Rule of Empathy: In "Second Birthday", Weller observes to the recruits that the endless discouraging new reports of the war having a very dehumanizing effect, making the Union seem insurmountable and numbing people to their situation. However, the recruits are watching beleaguered refugees coming off an evacuation plane right in front of their eyes. Marin later observes that he did this deliberately, having heard the medivacs would be coming into Hanger 2 and accordingly sending the recruits there to train so that they'd see first hand what the Union is doing.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • He's not fond of the Vanguard's armor for his mechs, calling them utilitarian.
  • Refuses to evacuate to the Anvil until Cammie, Kasu, Rob and Val get transferred to the program, which Marin begrudgingly agrees to. This happens while his comms network is getting hacked, forcing Marin to observe that he's holding himself hostage just to make his point.
• The Smart Guy: As the creator of the gen:LOCK technology, along with designing the mech suits, he's one of the most brilliant scientists the Polity has access to. It also makes him valuable to the Union, which has been making a concerted effort to get hold of him. Marin believes it's extremely risky putting such a wanted scientist, the gen:LOCK project and the Anvil all in the same location, but the Polity is desperate and has no choice.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Posthumously admits in a recorded message that he's not good with 'the personal touch' and how it's cost him over the years, including robbing him of a chance to tell the gL team how much they mean to him.
• Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: When his location is being revealed to the Union by their hacking into the Ether comms network, Dr. Weller does this to force an exasperated Col. Marin into transferring Cammie, Rob, Val, and Kasu into gen:LOCK.
• Thanatos Gambit: Since he was such a massive target for the Union, Dr. Weller used Caliban, who is actually an early Holon equipped with a prototype cyberbrain, to make a simple copy of his mind & memories should he ever be captured or killed.
• Training from Hell: What he subjects each gen:LOCK candidate to once they arrive at the Anvil base, at the hands of the Strider Pilots.

Heng Li "Henry" Wu

NAME: WU, HENG LI

RANK: UNK

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

Voiced by: SungWon Cho

Heng Li "Henry" Wu is the Lead Engineer at the RTASA facility. He was presumed dead after the loss of the Polity's base in Cape Canaveral, but had instead been captured and held prisoner alongside other Polity scientists by the Union. He was rescued by the Vanguard Strider Team and the gen:LOCK team, and returned to RTASA.

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• Butt-Monkey: His attempts at jokes are often looked down upon by his fellow RTASA members and when he's given the task of looking after Nugget by Cammie, Nugget ends up jumping and latching onto his face.
• Commonality Connection: He and Cammie quickly form a friendship due to their shared love of tech and social awkwardness.
• The Engineer: He's the Lead Engineer for RTASA, something that made him valuable to the Union and led to his initial capture. After being rescued he aids Cammie and Dr. Jha in upgrading the Holons for their rematch with the Nemesis.
• In-Series Nickname: Everyone refers to him as "Henry" rather than his given name.

The Vanguard

The front-line, mainstream military force stationed at the Anvil that defends the Polity's American front against the Union.

In General

The Vanguard fights for those who can't.

• Uncertain Doom: After the Union's attack on the Anvil, it's unknown what became of any of them once the Union flooded the base with nanotech. Chase's attempts to contact Miranda and Colonel Marin ultimately bore no results. They managed to survive thanks to Dr. Weller spoofing the Union's IFF signals.

Colonel Raquel Marin

NAME: MARIN, RAQUEL

RANK: COL

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

We did not seek this conflict, but we will rise to meet it.

Voiced by: Monica Rial

Colonel Raquel Marin is a grizzled Puerto Rican officer who commands the Anvil base and collaborates with Dr. Weller on the gen:LOCK project. She provides engineering teams to the project and has the pull Dr. Weller needs to recruit the candidates as they crop up.

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• At Least I Admit It: Season 2 shows her giving the order to commit actions that border on being evil, much like the Union. In sharp contrast to Tate, who has shown next to no regret for any of the horrors he's perpetrated, she knows full well that she's no hero in this. Best shown in the battle to reclaim the Anvil. While both sides are willing to kill their own people to claim victory, Tate is almost rabid in unleashing smoke to kill everyone on the battlefield out of spite. Marin, on the other hand, solemnly notes that it's a difficult choice to make in order to win.
• Dark Secret: She made the first strike in the war, not the Union, attacking their holy city to try and destroy their nanotech because the Polity feared its potential. The Polity covered it up and blamed the Union for starting the war.
  • Marin also took a page from the creation of the Nemesis and ordered the minds of the gen:LOCK pilots to be copied and uploaded to the blank Holon frames the Polity have stockpiled so they could be used as Cannon Fodder against the Union. She kept this order classified from the team due to the ethical backlash that would likely ensue from each pilot.
• Freudian Excuse: As revealed in "The Grand Guignol", she watched her grandmother, the governor of Puerto Rico, dragged from her home and torn apart by an angry mob after she enforced a brutal martial law which prevented social collapse in the wake of mass death and famine from the first Great Flood. Seeing this and hearing her grandmother's final words ("This is my burden, I alone know the weight") permanently stuck with Marin to the point she came to believe any atrocity she commits would be justified as long as it maintained the greater good and kept civilization stable while expressing lip service to feeling guilty.
• Iron Lady: As a high-ranking military officer, she's straight-laced, forthright and uptight; this contrasts quite starkly with the more kooky and creative Dr. Weller.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When Chase calls her out on her increasing Greying Morality she fires back at him that the Black-and-White Morality he wants to believe in is not how the world works and that despite what he wants to think the Vanguard are not heroes but soldiers, which means doing the necessary thing instead of the morally right one. While there is an immense amount of refusal to own up to how horrid what she's doing is, she also has a valid point. They are at war and struggling against the Union, who have employed utterly horrific tactics well in excess to anything the Polity had done in their initial strike, so she is fighting as hard as she can to make sure the Polity is still standing; no matter how terrible the actions that requires may be.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's no-nonsense and stern, impatient with Weller's antics and scathing of the recruits he's chosen for the project. However, she also cares about the lives under her command and does soften towards the people she's communicating with when they need it. It's also implied that she's turning a blind eye to Chase and Miranda's relationship prior to the Battle Of New York.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Marin's actions throughout the series will ultimately come to backfire on her. Not only does she loses Miranda's trust, gen:Lock Team goes rogue, and leads to her death by Sinclair.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: The Enlightenment to Weller's Romanticism. When he calls her designs for the Holons piloted by Chase and Yasmin "utilitarian" with audible contempt, she replies that they were designed by the same team of engineers that designed the Vanguard's Strider mechs.
• Slashed Throat: Her throat gets slashed by a vengeful Sinclair who kills her for kidnapping and using him as the pilot for Odin.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The default dynamic between herself and Dr. Weller during the recruitment process consists of her criticizing his decision-making and him dismissing her concerns with a mischievous sense of humor. Once they're working side-by-side in the Anvil, their interactions range from him airily deflecting her impatience to her bringing runaway creativity back to earth with a dose of practicality. When they're not arguing or winding each other up, it's shown that they agree on almost everything; it's their different approaches to handling situations that bring them into each other's crosshairs.
• Underestimating Badassery: Initially she wasn't impressed by any of the recruits, as a result of their individual circumstances and records. She's also not convinced they have what it takes to adapt as fast as the Polity needs them to. Weller points out that the very nature of being gen:LOCK compatible means such people are going to be the most resilient people she'll ever meet — she just needs to give them a chance.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: A firm example of the trope, willing to do whatever evil needed for the greater good of the Polity. This trope gets turned on its head when it turns out that the greater good she sacrificed for was a massively corrupt lie, and the war was her own fault.

ABLE

NAME: ABLE

RANK: N/A

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: UNK

Colonel, you have a message from a modern major general.

Voiced by: Lawrence Sonntag

A robotic adjutant to Colonel Marin.

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• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Dr. Weller reprograms him to only speak in Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics after he mixes into Dr. Weller's lab without permission one too many times.
• Red Alert: He serves as the base's alert system and flight dispatcher.
• Robot Soldier: He's a robot who serves Colonel Marin, and is capable of mixing into various parts of the base to announce messages.

Strider Team

Miranda Worth - Tempest

NAME: WORTH, MIRANDA

RANK: LT, MAJ

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: UNK

CALL SIGN: TEMPEST

How'd the song go? "You only live once"?

Voiced by: Dakota Fanning

Lieutenant Miranda Worth, age 21 at the start of the war, currently 25, is a member of the Vanguard ground team and pilots a Strider. She and Julian are lovers at the start of the series.

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• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: After the Battle of New York, Julian is declared dead. It takes her years to get over his death, but she eventually moves forward with Jodie. Four years after the battle, she learns that Julian is still alive. Although they do mention the possibility of rekindling their relationship in the future, their interactions remain relatively tense, since Julian walking back into her life after supposedly being dead for four years is difficult for her to process.
• Action Girl: She has some good combat skills, enough to disarm a man in a strength augmenting super suit. Since his suit is invulnerable, she's shown deliberately targeting his unprotected head in an effort to disorient him.
• Cynicism Catalyst: She is introduced as a strong and capable woman who is the girlfriend of Julian Chase; while she's firm and no-nonsense with Julian's friends, she's also shown to be friendly, outgoing and has a teasing sense-of-humor. After the Battle of New York, there is a four-year Time Skip. She's reintroduced as a scarred, battle-hardened warrior, who has become much more grim and terse than she was prior to Julian's apparent death. She appears to have lost her sense of humor and has become impatient with her friends and co-workers.
• Dead Sparks: By Season 2, it's clear that whatever spark Miranda once had with Jodie has long since been fizzled out. She now finds sex with him to be unfulfilling and constantly rebukes his attempts to be intimate. Miranda even reiterates to Jodie in frustration that they're just fuck buddies at best, not an actual couple.
• Et Tu, Brute?: After Julian confesses to her that he's been questioning the Polity's cause after discovering that they were the ones who started the war with the Union by ordering an unprovoked attack that killed numerous civilians, Miranda accuses Julian of being a Union sympathizer then sells him out to Marin shortly afterwards in exchange for a promotion.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: After the Time Skip, in addition to the scars, her hair is more disheveled, complete with a lock that hangs down between her eyes.
• In-Series Nickname: Kazu calls her Sensei-chan which puzzles both her and Julian.
• Love Interest: The show introduces her at the house of Julian's mother, meeting his family for the first time. His sister's questioning of her makes it clear that she is interested enough in Julian to consider the possibility of there being marriage in their future. Instead, the Union attacks New York and Julian is presumed killed in action. The bulk of the story takes place four years after the battle.
• Rugged Scar: The four years of war after Julian's disappearance gave her a scar running from on her neck up to her right cheek, and a smaller one on the same side coming upward from her chin. Her nude scene in Season 2 reveals that they're much bigger than we previously knew, on the upper right side of her chest and back, and down her left leg.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Miranda has the show's first nude scene in Season 2, Episode 3. When Chase mixes in on her having sex with Jodie, she is quick to kick Jodie out and stands naked before Chase for quite some time before getting dressed. She reacts with impatience to Chase's discomfort at her nudity, apparently considering that boundary now nonexistent since he had seen her body before when they were dating.
• Walking Tank: Pilots one of these (referred to in-show as a Strider) for the Vanguard's ground forces, as do Leon and Jodie.

Former Members

Leon August - Drifter

NAME: AUGUST, LEON

RANK: LT

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: UNK

CALL SIGN: DRIFTER

Shut up, both of you. It's game on.

Voiced by: Gray Haddock

A Vanguard Strider pilot, who leads the team that features Miranda and Jodie and doubles as head Drill Instructor for the gen:LOCK recruits.

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• Bus Crash: Comatose at the end of the first season with his future uncertain, he promptly passes away mid-way through the second season's first episode, an unfortunate side effect of his voice actor being the show's disgraced creator.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: He abruptly dies while still in a coma early on in Season 2. This was unfortunately necessary, as his voice actor and the show's creator Gray Haddock had been fired from Rooster Teeth for embezzling money and overworking the staff to produce the first season.
• Feeling Their Age: Dr. Weller drops the bombshell on Leon that he's actually gen:LOCK compatible. However, the human aging process means that candidates only have a finite window in which they can safely upload to the Cyberbrain. Leon is older than the safety threshold, so Weller never recruited him. Leon is shocked when he learns about this. This doesn't stop him from uploading into a Holon in the finale, though he doesn't come out of the experience unscathed.
• Heroic RRoD: While uploading into the sixth Holon was difficult, uploading back to his body was even worse. The process ultimately forced him into a comatose state due to his mind not possessing the necessary neurons to partake in the gen:LOCK program, and it's unknown if he'll ever wake up. To this end, Dr. Jha arranges with Colonel Marin to have him transferred to the RTASA facility in the hopes they can find a way to wake him up.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Leon uploads into the spare Holon meant for Sinclair in the Season 1 finale in order to buy the gen:LOCK team time to reset while fighting Nemesis, but the strain it puts on his brain leaves him comatose after he downloads back. His comatose body is transferred to the RTASA facility in hopes their technology can help him awaken, though he ultimately dies when his life support system fails.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Gray Haddock's controversial exit from Rooster Teeth necessitated killing Leon off.

• The Leader: The Strider pilots function in teams. Leon is in charge of the alpha team, which comprises himself, Miranda and Jodie. He is also in charge of training the gen:LOCK candidates as their head drill instructor. Furthermore, Leon serves as an overall field commander during both the Dallas mission and the raid on the Georgia Union base, commanding infantry and giving orders to the gen:LOCK team as well as his Strider unit.

Simone Rasmussen - Razzle

NAME: RASMUSSEN, SIMONE

RANK: CPT

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: DUTY VB110 AEIRE VAP

CALL SIGN: RAZZLE

Damn it Chase, form up!

^{Click here to see her Memorial Plaque Picture} 

Voiced by: Lindsay Jones

Simone "Razzle" Rasmussen was the captain of the Vanguard's "Silver Falcons" ready alert squadron, and Julian Chase's commanding officer. She was killed in action during the Battle of New York.

---

• Advertised Extra: Razzle was advertised alongside Sinclair and Migas as being voiced by RT regulars Lindsay, Blaine, and Miles respectively. Of the three, however, Razzle is killed in the pilot episode. Made more egregious by the fact that she's actually featured in the group shot with the rest of the cast at the end of the intro sequence.
• All There in the Script: She's only referred to by her code name, Razzle. In a Freeze-Frame Bonus, her real name and rank are detailed on the Anvil's Memorial wall just above Julian's plaque.
• Sacrificial Lamb: She's introduced as an ace pilot who is partnered with the main character, Julian Chase. However, her role in the story is to confirm that the Polity isn't able to handle the Union's attack by dying in the attempt to detonate the only weapon the Polity has against Union tech, as the Union can now sense an EDS while it's still powering up.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Her plane explodes in the battle for New York in 2068, killing her instantly.

Jodie Brennan - Gale

NAME: BRENNAN, JODIE

RANK: UNK

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: UNK

CALL SIGN: GALE

With the border getting closer every day, at least it's a shorter commute!

Voiced by: Chad James

Another pilot of the Vanguard.

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• Artificial Limbs: His nude scene in Season 2 reveals that he has a prosthetic leg. As the show has had two Time Skips by the time this is revealed, it's ambiguous how long he's had it.
• The Cynic: Tends to have this attitude when on missions, much to Leon's ire.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Kinda fits the bill in episode 6 when he used his Strider to headbutt Nemesis, AND surviving said rogue Holon tossing his 'mech across the field, which also, by the way, happened because he fired point-blank into its face. Comic relief or not, the guy's got guts.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Played with. While Jodie does have a sexual relationship with Miranda, his attempts to force a Relationship Upgrade have consistently been shut down by her at every turn. Miranda forbids Jodie from even speaking during sex as it spoils the mood for her.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Despite perishing in the same battle as Kazu, nobody even bothers mourning or mentioning him after the fact, making his death by friendly fire even worse.
• Gender-Blender Name: Jodie is a unisex name, so it's not always easy to tell the gender of someone with this name. Typically, the 'Jody' spelling is female and the 'Jodie' spelling is male, but that's not always guaranteed to be the case.
• Meaningful Name: There is an old saying in the military that "Your girl is back home with Jodie" which refers to someone hitting on your Love Interest while you're not around, fitting for a guy who hits on every woman he meets. Becomes more meaningful in "Second Birthday", when it's implied that he started a relationship with Miranda during the four years Chase was thought dead.
• Second Love: After Julian's presumed death, it took Miranda a long time to move on. However, she did so and is now in an ambiguous relationship with Jodie. This later subverted in Season 2, where Miranda makes it clear that she and Jodie are only Friends with Benefits and harshly rejects any of his attempts claim that they're a genuine couple.
• Sex Signals Death: He's killed an episode after he has sex with Miranda when the HAMMER system is fired.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Feels this way when he sees Miranda and Leon exchanging a look during the Union Base raid in Georgia, commenting that whenever they get like this, they all end up doing something stupid.

Civilians

Roberta Chase

NAME: CHASE, ROBERTA

Voiced by: Shari Belafonte

Chase's mother, a resident of New York City.

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• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Tells Miranda a story about how four-year-old Julian rubbing a cookie on his skinned knee due to misinterpreting her statement that the cookie would make him feel better.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Both her daughter and the digital remnant of her son call her out on her blind adherence to the Omnifaith and clearly dangerous Union, which she only responded with by face-slapping the former and saying the latter didn't just understand.
• Despair Event Horizon: Implied to have hit this hard after the death of her husband, seeking solace in the comforting stories of the Union's Omnifaith and converting in the hopes it would keep her children safe and reuinite with them in a peaceful afterlife despite all evidence to the contrary.
• Face–Heel Turn: Aligned with the Union some time before the events of the series, and used this connection to protect herself and Driana during the attack on New York. That said, she doesn't force her views upon Driana and Julian prior to that point and afterwards, though she's reluctant to let her go, does eventually allow Driana to leave when she refuses to accept the Union's beliefs. She admits to the Julian-variant that would get turned into Nemesis that she did once believe in the Polity, but that was mainly because of her husband's own steadfast belief in it, and after he died, she found she couldn't continue believing in them anymore, and instead found solace with the Union. Rather than being villainous, she genuinely wanted the best for both her children and thought that the Union was the best way of achieving that, and is willing to convince them to accept the Union voluntarily, rather than forcefully.
• Supreme Chef: In the first scene of the series, she cooks some delicious-looking dishes that make Julian and Miranda wish they were there in person.
• Uncertain Doom: She is presumed dead after the attack on New York in 2068. She is confirmed to have survived the attack in season 2, but the same episode that reveals this reveals her to be part of the Union, and towards the middle of it, she is revealed to have 'ascended' through the Union nanotech sometime during the 4-year timeskip, with it being an In-Universe question whether or not those who do so actually have their minds assimilated by the nanotech or die for good.
• Unflinching Walk: Her reaction to the Union attack on New York. Because she was prepared for the Union invasion ahead of time, though she's clearly upset by the deaths that occur regardless.

Driana Chase

NAME: CHASE, DRIANA

Voiced by: G.K. Bowes

Chase's little sister.

---

• Ambiguous Situation: She is seen in the Ether in Episode 4; so she's clearly alive and somewhere with Internet access, and yet her brother and Holcroft both believe her to be dead. Where she is and why her fate is unknown in-universe has not yet been explained.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: To Julian, and manages to be such to Miranda despite she and Chase not even being engaged yet.
• Broken Pedestal: Is not happy with the revelation that her mother is a part of the Union.
• I "Uh" You, Too: Familial example; when Julian and Roberta share "I love you"s, it is followed by this:
  Julian: [glaring] Yeah.
  Driana: [glaring back] Uh-huh.
  Julian [smiles and winks]
• In-Series Nickname: Dri.
• Uncertain Doom: Julian assumes she is dead. Shortly afterward, however, she can be seen in the Ether, spotting and recognizing Julian just before the Vanguard's connection goes out. She is confirmed to have survived in season 2.

The Union

We can LEAD the world WITHOUT compromise.

The Great Union of the Fourth Turning Republics, colloquially referred to as the Union, is an antagonistic autocracy that seeks to unite Earth under a regime of suppression. They are the main antagonist group of the series.

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In General

• Apocalypse Cult: Season 2 highlights the Omnifaith as one, operating as a Church of Happyology using comforting tales to appeal to the hopeless and dispossessed millions created by the past Resource Wars that plans to spread its teachings of "ascension" (mass suicide through nanomachines) in the hopes of leaving the awful earthly plane for a paradisiacal digital afterlife. Any who aren't into the faith call it suicidal bunk with some such as Chase decrying the Omnifaith and by extension the Union as "zealots marching to their deaths for fairy tales".
• Artificial Afterlife: Season 2 shows that they're a theocratic society with a belief system built up around their nanotechnology allowing a physical ascension into an afterlife that exists within it. How true this is ambiguous, given that they acknowledge gen:LOCK technology as unique in its capacity to upload minds.
• Attack Drone: The Union favors combat drones, both in the form of their spider tanks and airborne combat drones. They are also adept at hacking purely robotic systems, forcing the Polity to use human-operated vehicles and remotely controlling their own robots with hardline cables.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Yaz comments that the Union has a tendency to do this to prisoners, particularly in the case of Nemesis.
  Yaz: Knowing them, they probably brainwashed you, damaged or wiped portions of you, and then aimed what was left back at us.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: They seem very aware of optics; deadly nanotech mists are purple smoke, while season 2 shows that this "flow" used for benevolent purposes such as their ascension ritual is an iridescent glowing mist. There's also their Nemesis-specific variant of Nanotech coloured Red and Black, allowing Nemesis to create solid objects and barriers whilst looking demonic as hell.
• Creative Sterility: According to Holcroft, the Union is very bad at innovating new technology on their own, hence their preference to subvert the technology of their enemies and force enemy scientists to work on technology for them.
• The Empire: The Union is an autocracy with the goal of world domination.
• Failsafe Failure: The Union troops and sympathizers use a signal to tell the nanomachines not to attack them. Weller managed to duplicate this during the Anvil attack before his Heroic Sacrifice, but the red nanotech used by Nemesis is patched to resist it.
• Freudian Excuse: The Polity struck first, and even before then critics of the Omnifaith went as far as terrorism against them. Their response was beyond disproportionate but it didn't come from the void either.
• Hollywood Hacking: The Union uses remote hacking technology to great effect. One weapon type they make use of is a "hacking gun" which subverts remotely-controlled robots, though this proves ineffective against Holons since they are directly controlled by their pilot's digitized brain.
• Interfaith Smoothie: Their aptly named "Omnifaith" is one massive syncretism of all existing religions as they believe that they are all true. Just their sacred city of Babylon has icons to Zeus, Amaterasu and Christian iconography. Since they're based in the Middle East, there's also definite Muslim influences in their architecture, women wear head coverings, and their holy data repository resembles and is referred as the Kaaba. When converting Chase into Nemesis, Brother Tate refers to both the messiahs of various religions and the golem of Jewish folklore, saying that he must suffer so all may live.
• Nanomachines: The Union relies on nanotechnology to quickly destroy organic matter in their path - neither humans, animals, or plants are exempt from this. Their nanotech can also be disguised as common items, such as a coin. The nanotech tends to come in two types: purple clouds that spread and move like smoke and consume organic matter and hack electronics, and a red variant that can be shaped into weapons and solid machinery, used exclusively by Nemesis. There's also a third, pure white version used among their own people, used for Mundane Utility and for "ascension" to their Artificial Afterlife.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: The Union is ill-defined in the first season; they appear to be half-way through an attempt to Take Over the World, but why is unknown. They appear to target intellectuals, yet seem able to utilize science in a way the Polity doesn't, likely because they conscript enemy scientists. They appear to oppose the diversity that the Polity celebrates, but the reason for that isn't explored. Season 1 explores the threat the existence of the Union poses to the Polity but doesn't explore what the Union is or what it wants. This is changed in season 2 as the Union is substantially fleshed out.
• People's Republic of Tyranny: With a name like “The Great Union of the Fourth Turning Republics”, you’d think they were the good guys. They aren’t. And they destroy the Statue of Liberty to prove it.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Dr. Weller describes the Union's modus operandi as a preference for minimizing collateral damage when they seize cities, especially the infrastructure. While they do shoot down people who attempt to escape, the Union doesn't shoot down civilians who surrender. However, all bets are off if they unleash nanotech clouds on a population center, as according to Migas, the only people left after a nanotech swarm is released are Union troops and their sympathizers.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Union generally favors a red and black color scheme, and are exceptionally ruthless and brutal in combat. There's also a little bit of yellow and gold in their color scheme, most notably on their lighter troops and spider tanks.
• Revealing Cover-Up: Their attempt to mask a facility from the Polity's satellites not only draws the Polity's attention to the site but makes them determined to find out what's going on there.
• Silent Antagonist: Their foot-soldiers never speak, even when spoken to.
• Sink The Life Boats: A favored tactic is to kill everyone not aligned with them. During the attack on New York, several transports with civilians are destroyed as they take off, and they would have destroyed more if the Vanguard had not shown up. The Vanguard also has to regularly lead sorties to rescue civilians trying to cross the no-man's-land between Polity and Union territory, with the evacuation ships and refugees coming under constant fire.
• Spider Tank: The heavy infantry of the Union. Six-legged machines mounted with two machine guns and a powerful positional cannon.
• The Theocracy: Season 2 reveals them to be some sort of religious organization. Their officials wear Catholic-esque ecclesiastical clothes, claim to have created a virtual afterlife which followers willingly “ascend” into, and call their enemies "sinful".
• Thoughtcrime: Yaz unintentionally outing her parents as 'intellectuals' had them taken away, and then accepting the "ascension".

Brother Tate

NAME: “BROTHER” TATE

RANK: UNKNOWN

Through Ascension, you join our Ancestors. You become One in the True Community.

Voiced by: Angus Sampson

The mysterious leader of the Union.

---

• Affably Evil: He is actually quite polite and well-spoken, and is even friendly and a seemingly good boss. However, he is also the figurehead behind a massive death cult that is trying to conquer the world.
• Anti-Villain: He genuinely believes in the Union's purpose. When he has to break his promise to Chase to ascend him he is genuinely heartbroken and only did so in response to the Polity's own copying of him.
• Badass Bookworm: He's the General of Union's forces and the only one in Union command with military experience, and he's also an experienced scientist and religious demagogue that holds sway over millions.
• Cassandra Truth: He bemoans this in his first appearance, having been given video evidence that Holcroft was lying about the Mars terraforming project to help placate the Polity's citizens whilst they unlocked the extent of gen:LOCK's technology to better fight against the Union, noting that if the Union were to release said evidence, it would be seen as a digitally created lie concocted by them to weaken morale, so he can't simply pass it on even when he knows the truth.
• The Corrupter: He was seemingly the one responsible for turning the original Chase into Nemesis, and for converting his mother to the Union.
• Death by Irony: Ironically the Twilight program lead to his death when the fused version of it consumes Tate. Ultimately, his belief lead to his downfall.
• Dark Messiah: Presents himself as one in the vein of a ruthless Jesus-Buddha figure, having sworn to have survived an intense metaphysical experience that brought him a vision of paradise, and now wishes to share that paradise with the rest of humanity like a Bodhisattva through the Omnifaith, no matter the cost. To that end he will exterminate any heretic who gets in his way, likening it to "thorns in his crown" that he must endure for the sake of bringing mankind his idea of salvation.
• Freudian Excuse: His homeland of Australia was consumed by fire in the climate collapse, taking his entire family along with them. This drove him to the Omnifaith and its promises of immortality.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: He apparently wears a mantle that seems to contain a white Nanite cloud named "Flow" that he can give orders to, having it perform delicate tasks like picking up leaves off a Eucalyptus tree to give to Mr. Cook.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Watched his children die during the Australian wildfires.
• Puppet King: He's described as a figurehead, which raises the question of who is really controlling the Union. We finally see his superiors in Season 2. It appears that he is the only one of a twelve-person council who hasn't ascended, and is their arm on Earth. They also show little respect for him, referring to him as a brutish "Spartan" among civilized "Athenians" due to his military background.
• Right-Hand Cat: He has an old pet Koala named "Mr. Cook" that bears several scars.

Brother Sugiyama

NAME: “BROTHER” Sugiyama

RANK: UNKNOWN

Voiced by: Paul Nakauchi

Brother's Tate second-in-command in the Union.

---

• Even Evil Has Standards: He concedes to Brother Tate that Dr. Jha's sceintific perspective from the Polity may not be a bad idea when she was able to rework the Twilight project.
• Number Two: The next person to command the Union after Brother Tate.

The Spy

NAME: UNKNOWN/“SINCLAIR, ROBERT”

RANK: UNKNOWN

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: TOP SECRET//GL

We should be fighting them together. But no, you were weak. You don't know how good you had it.

Voiced by: Blaine Gibson

A Union spy who assumed Sinclair's identity.

---

• Affably Evil: He's quite chatty on the transport over to the Anvil whilst discussing cairns and the like with Cammie and the others, and he seems pleasant enough until the truth is revealed.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: After his attempt to steal a Holon fails, "Sinclair" begins bleeding from his nose and ears as the corners of his eyes and the upper half of his head redden. Everyone is unsettled as he dies screaming in agony, except for Weller, who watches expressionlessly and later likens the whole thing to "putting your brain in a microwave".
• Didn't Think This Through: Weller lets "Sinclair" try to upload to a Holon because, even in the one-in-a-million chance he was gen:LOCK compatible and didn't instantly fry his brain, he still would have had to get past Chase, safely retrieve his body, and somehow get the Holon into Union hands before his uptime ran out. Needless to say, his plan really didn't stand a chance in hell.
• Foreshadowing: Lots of this for several reveals:
  • Several hints were dropped about the impostor reveal:
    • Character Teaser #4 is framed as a conversation between Col. Marin and Dr. Weller. During the conversation, Sinclair's picture is darker than the other recruits and the camera zooms in on him. At the end, one of the Union's spider tanks appears instead of the Holons that are associated with the other recruits. The teaser ends with a slow zoom on Sinclair's profile before the message "CALL INTERCEPTED" flashes over it, implying that's how the Union finds him.
    • The official poster for season 1 shows all the Holons the gen:LOCK recruits will have. However, despite there being six recruits, there are only five Holons depicted.
    • The opening only has one brief shot of Sinclair, in isolation from the other recruits, indicating he's not being treated the way the marketing implies. His coin is also shown before he is, foreshadowing the fact it's a weapon rather than a real coin. The song lyrics also reach the line "just a lesser evil, born unequal" when he is shown in the opening credits.
    • During the show itself, "Sinclair" appears to be the most excited to pilot a Holon and the one who has the least trouble understanding Weller. When Cammie demands to know if the other recruits are having as much trouble as she is in keeping up with Weller, he only raises his hand when he spots everyone else has raised theirs.
  • Several hints were dropped about events that lead up to the season's climax:
    • "Sinclair" telling Chase's tank that he knows someone who'd very much like to say hello, is also foreshadowing. The scene initially looks like he's mocking Chase with the implication that Chase's family has been captured by the Union. A few episodes later, Chase's sister Dri is seen in the Ether, calling out Chase's name. However, the season later makes it clear that "Sinclair" wasn't talking to Chase, but to Chase's body. He knows the truth about Nemesis, and that Nemesis wants his body back.
    • None of the new recruits know what they're signing on for, and the existence and appearance of the mechs are a revelation for them. Despite this, "Sinclair" knows that the correct name for these things is Holons. This implies the Union has detailed knowledge of the project, which is how they can send a spy in. The obvious culprit is the real Sinclair. The true culprit is Chase. Nemesis is a prototype Holon that was captured by the Union before the show begins, containing Chase's mind and everything Chase knew about the project up to the moment of his capture.
    • "Sinclair" states after locking himself in the lab that he intends to leave with a Holon, one that's running his mind on its cyberbrain. Before Weller shushes her, Colonel Marin begins to point out that uploading to the Holon would leave his lifeless body at their mercy. The theft and mass-production of Chase's mind and its corruption into Nemesis — coupled with Nemesis trying to take Cammie's cyberbrain when it ambushes her — all but states that the Union isn't concerned if their gen:LOCK pilots have a body to go back to at all.
    • During The Stinger, it's revealed the Union has engaged in other activities that have been foreshadowed: When captured by the imposter, Weller speculates the real Sinclair must be dead by now. Earlier in the episode, the report that tips off the Vanguard to the imposter's presence states that an unidentified body has been found in Sinclair's residence. The Stinger reveals that Sinclair is still alive and is trying to escape from Union-controlled New York.
• Gory Discretion Shot: He starts screaming his head off and bleeding from those nose & ears after his attempt to steal a Holon fries his brain. The camera cuts away from "Sinclair" until it shows his convulsing legs gradually coming to a halt.
• Kill and Replace: "Sinclair" never answers Weller's question about the fate of the real Sinclair. The report Colonel Marin gets reveals that the real Rob Sinclair went missing 72 hours prior to the fake's arrival at the Anvil and that the military police sent to apprehend him for going AWOL found signs of a struggle and an unidentifiable corpse in his quarters. A post-credits scene in the season finale reveals that whoever the corpse was, it wasn't the real Sinclair, as he's alive and currently on the run disguised as a Union trooper.
• The Mole: Is one for the Union, having killed or captured the real Sinclair and impersonated him somehow.
• No Name Given: We never find out his real identity.
• Phlebotinum Overdose: The spy could not handle the strain of bonding with a Holon because he was incompatible. Unlike the chosen pilots, he was outside the narrow parameters that allow a person to make the link. Instead, his mind overflowed from too much data going in than he could handle and had a very nasty death.
• Sacrificial Lion: Inverted for the spy posing as Sinclair, since he is a villainous character that got offed by one of the protagonists as both a show that said the protagonists aren't messing around and to demonstrate just how deadly gen:LOCK technology can be.
• Starter Villain: The fake Sinclair is the first antagonist introduced in the show, introducing the lengths the Union are willing to go to in order to get their hands on Dr. Weller's research.

Nemesis (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

NAME: CHASE, JULIAN

RANK: N/A

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: UNK

CALL SIGN: NEMESIS

C-C-Copy... K-Kill the copy...

^{Click here to see the upgraded Nemesis} 

Voiced by: Michael B. Jordan

A dangerous mech used by the Union that is capable of controlling nanotech and going toe-to-toe with the Holons.

In truth, it is a copy of the original Julian Chase in a heavily modified Holon, driven mad from exceeding its uptime and being tortured by the Union. It now seeks to kill the current Chase so it can claim the original Chase's body as its own.

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• And I Must Scream: The Nemesis pilot has been trapped in its Holon, in Union control, for years. Despite that, the Union has somehow convinced it to join their cause. Nemesis is such a heavily-modified Holon that it's barely recognizable as one, and its pilot is Chase, who was captured during one of his early Holon missions. His brain is used to pilot Nemesis and seems to be suffering from feedback from the other Holon pilots when uploaded, which seems to be highly disorienting and unpleasant. Significant parts of his memories seem to be missing, and in the end, he doesn't resist when the nanite control is overwritten by Cammie, and asks for Chase to kill the other copies of the copies of his copies.
• Animal Motif: Could have an association with spiders, with its black color scheme and multiple spindly arms. Its upgraded form is even more spider-like with its limbs becoming thinner, it's legs becoming like stilts and gaining a bunch of Combat Tentacles for both combat and movement.
• Ax-Crazy: The pilot controlling Nemesis is a ruthless, bloodthirsty fighter that seems to delight in the damage it causes. It appears to enjoy ripping Cammie's Holon apart, starting with her head. Furthermore, its dialogue in the next episode does not paint a picture of rational thought. It's not natural, as the first thing Brother Tate does when he's uploaded back into his Holon is rewrite him to have maximum aggression.
• Barrier Warrior: It tends to use nanotech to form walls and domes to cut off sightlines and prevent others from interjecting in its fights. This is more for concealment rather than actual cover, but it graduates to full-barriers when it gets an upgrade for the final fight of season 1, using nanotech to form barriers and intercept ranged attacks.
• The Berserker: Before its upgrades, the Nemesis has little strategy behind its attacks outside of deploying its Barrier Warrior abilities. It mainly just charges around like a wild animal, ripping into whatever is in its way, relying on its multiple limbs and ability to move them in ways atypical to a standard human body to keep the advantage over gen:LOCK in a fight, since its armour is tough enough to shrug off attacks from everything short of Val/entina's mech-sized BFG shots to the head— and those are implied to disorient it more than damage it. It gets downplayed after getting upgraded though. It's strategy is largely still Attack! Attack! Attack!, but it now utilizes nanotech for ranged combat and implements a bit more strategy into its fighting.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Weller warns his Holon pilots that if they are uploaded for too long, their neurology will change too much to ever be able to return to their bodies. The Union is willing to keep using their Holon pilot long after its Uptime has been exceeded, resulting in a pilot that's lost its sanity. Said pilot is revealed to be Chase (or at the very least, an instance of his real mind), who was captured by the Union during one of his early Holon missions. Unable to return to his body, Chase was put to work by the Union; as a result, he has been stuck in his Holon for so long and subjected to the Union's experiments, that he's turned into the psychotic berserker known as Nemesis, wanting to destroy gen:LOCK for revenge and take his body back.
• Chromatic Superiority: The Nanotech it uses in the season 1 finale is much more powerful and versatile than standard Union Nanotech, and appropriately appears a red-tinted black rather than the standard purple.
• Clone Angst: He's the original mind of Chase that's been trapped in the Holon for years, and is irate that a mental copy has been living his life in his body.
• Close-Range Combatant: Its nanotech is only used for forming obstructions when fighting the Holons and it's not equipped with any long-ranged weapons, so it relies on fighting in melee where its four arms give it an advantage. This stops being strictly the case in the season 1 finale where its nanotech Morph Weapon capabilities allow it to form laser cannons, but even then it prefers to fight in close-quarters combat.
• Combat Clairvoyance: By virtue of being part of the gen:LOCK mindshare and thus being able to sense their moves before they make them, it has this against the Holons. However, when the Gen:LOCK team mindshare together, Nemesis can't make out their individual thoughts anymore, allowing him to be blindsided by them fighting in concert together in ways he can no longer predict. When the entire team initiate a 5-way mindshare, Nemesis is powerless to resist their simultaneous physical and mental attack on him.
  Nemesis: (after Nonchalant Dodging a sniper shot) Y-y-you think too l-l-loud.
• Combat Stilettos: Its feet are rather small and almost like high heels in comparison to the rest of its body.
• Combat Tentacles: One of the many new features it comes equipped within the finale is a set of tentacles sprouting from its back.
• Cyber Cyclops: It has a single eye-like visual sensor with a rather unique design, as it has three smaller sensors set into the orb.
• Death Seeker: Per the commentary, Gray says that by the time of its final battle with the gen:LOCK team, it's "ready to check out."
• Disc-One Final Boss: After hounding the gen:LOCK team all season and putting them through the wringer several times, Nemesis is finally brought down for good through a combination of their upgraded Holons and a full team Mindshare.
• Dropping the Bombshell: Its Last Words, in combination with the image it shows Julian in the mindscape, reveal not only that it's really a copy of a copy of a copy of Julian's original mind, but that there are other copies still out there.
• Electronic Speech Impediment: Most likely due to how much torture the Union put Chase's mind through, Nemesis is prone to electronically stuttering whenever it speaks. Given the state of the original Chase's avatar in the mindshare scene during the finale, it isn't entirely surprising. This stuttering is one thing that is rather reflective of how broken his mind is. The distortion is severe enough in Nemesis's first speaking scene that watching without subtitles can result in not even realizing that it's talking, much less understanding it, making the beginning of Episode 6, in which the characters ponder the fact that it sounds like Chase, somewhat confusing. In all subsequent scenes, its words and the sound of its voice are more distinct, but still prone to severe stammering.
• Expendable Clone: In its final moments, the copy of Chase on Nemesis reveals to Chase that it is only one of dozens of copies of his mind that the Union has created.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The Nemesis pilot wants to use the Holon technology to escape its mech even though the download will probably kill it. Chase's original mind, captured by the Union, desperately wants his body back. Having long exceeded his Uptime, Weller warns him that there's no way to put him back in his body even if the copy of his mind currently occupying that body wasn't around.
• Fallen Hero: The Union has kept the pilot trapped in their Holon-technology for years, which hasn't done anything good for its humanity or its sanity. The pilot is Chase; when first learning to use his Holon, Chase was captured during a mission. The Union used the captured brain to pilot Nemesis. Weller, who kept a back-up of Chase's brain, downloaded the copy to Chase's body and hid the truth from Chase for years. Nemesis wants out of his body and regards the Polity Chase as a copy that needs to be killed.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In its first appearance, it only flees after it notices Miranda arrive. In its second appearance, it calls out to her in Chase's voice, calls Chase a copy and seems to have intimate knowledge of the entire gen:LOCK team. This hints to the eventual reveal that Nemesis is Chase, specifically his original mind, stuck in his old prototype Holon after being captured by the Union several years ago.
  • In Episode 2, the Spy takes notice of Chase's body and mentions someone interested in seeing him. Turns out he was referring to the Nemesis, the original Chase and original owner of said body looking to reclaim it.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: When the prototype holon was captured, it received a bad "wound" across its left eye, running vertically across its face. Nemesis' human form has a blazing red scar matching the damage.
• Handicapped Badass: In its third fight with Julian, which occurs less than a day after the team fought it off for the second time, it's still carrying the damage gen:LOCK inflicted on it, missing two of it's four limbs and this time not using any Nanomachine smoke as cover. Julian's upgraded holon with flight capability is better able to utilise the wide-open terrain around them to fight to the best of it's ability, allowing him to take on the Close-Range Combatant Nemeises alone by attacking faster than it can react to with it's damaged body, though he's still unable to seriously damage Nemesis becuase it's just that tough.
• The Heavy: The primary Union enforcer throughout the first season.
• Humanoid Abomination: It looks like a demon-possessed Holon with abnormal proportions and a savage fighting style. Exaggerated in the Season 1 finale, as it's been upgraded with tentacles, more armor, extra legs, and blood-red nanite smoke that can shapeshift into weapons.
• It Can Think: This thing immediately sets itself apart from the mindless Spider Tanks the Union typically uses by the way it fights. It targets Cammie, the weakest of the gen:LOCK pilots, isolating her with a swarm of nanobots, disabling her Holon by ripping off its head, and then going straight for the cyberbrain in its chest. When they next encounter it, it starts talking to them: it recognizes Miranda, complains that Cammie hasn't shut up since her 'birthday' and refers to Chase as a copy. He also comments of more voices in his head, indicating that he is connected through the same network as the other Holon pilots.
• Jet Pack: It takes a page out of Chase's book and shows up for the battle in Chicago with a powerful set of boosters on its back.
• The Juggernaut: Nemesis is even bigger than the four story-tall Holons and is powerful enough to throw one around like a ragdoll with one hand. It shrugs off all of their weapons save for a headshot from Valentina's sniper rifle, and even that just momentarily dazes it with no visible damage. It takes the entire gen:LOCK team working together just to drive it off. In their second round, the holons have several upgrades that allow them to at least hold Nemesis off and cause it to retreat when they almost take an arm off. When in a one on one fight with Chaser, it's clearly more powerful but Chaser's flight mobility allows him to hold his own. Unfortunately, it's almost immune to injury and simply comes back for more.
• Know When to Fold Them: It will leave a battle when it decides the outlook doesn't look too good for its continued participation. It abandons its first fight as soon as Valentina lands a hit on it from afar, and abandons its second fight after Chase and Kazu manage to tear off its secondary arms.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The possibility of the process itself was first implied when Cammie began meddling with her own mind, but episode 8 confirms that the Union outright deleted some of its memories to make it easier to control.
• Limp and Livid: Tends to slip into this during its Ominous Walks, which sometimes graduates into falling to all fours/sixes to move around like an animal.
• Madness Mantra: Nemesis can communicate, but not very well. It's also prone to repeating the same phrase over and over, which emphasizes how unstable it is. When facing Chase, it often repeats one phrase: Kill the copy. It enables Weller to confirm Nemesis's identity because he knows that Chase's mind was once captured by the Union and the Polity's Chase is using a back-up copy of his mind. Nemesis wants to kill the copy of Chase so that he can get back inside his body. Weller tries to tell him the technology doesn't work that way, but Nemesis doesn't pay attention. Once he makes his identity known however, he picks up another one: WANT OUT!
• Meaningful Name: It's called Nemesis, and it doesn't seem to like the Holon pilots very much, particularly Chase. It's Chase's arch-enemy because it's piloted by the original Chase, who was captured on a mission while in his Holon. The Polity's Chase is a back-up copy of the original Chase's mind. The original Chase is extremely angry with his situation.
• Mercy Kill: What Chase does to him. After the team finally manages to cripple him, Chase flies him into the Atmosphere before letting him fall to the ground. This is mentally depicted as Chase stabbing him and Cradling Your Kill, the Nemesis warning him that there are more copies of himself still out there.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Gains flight capabilities and a nanotech-based Spontaneous Weapon Creation power in time for the final fight in season 1.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: It has four arms, and it makes good use of them to battle multiple Holons at once. In the season 1 finale, it also gets several additional spider-like limbs protruding from its back.
• Morph Weapon: It can use nanomachines to form a series of barriers to isolate opponents. When it upgrades, it can shape the nanomachines into cannons, swords, spikes, and bladed tentacles in addition to physical barriers, as well as create copies of his armor and limbs in order substitute for any damage taken.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He constantly taunts Chase with the fact that he's 'just a copy' and that he is the original, however his dying words in the season 1 finale imply that he himself is just one of many copies that the Union has made of the original Chase's mind.
• Obviously Evil: It has a demonic and skeletal appearance and is cloaked in nanotech.
• Ominous Walk: How it approaches Cammie in their first encounter, aided by the fact that it emerges from a nanotech cloud and shrugs off every shot she puts into it.
• Pre-Mortem Catchphrase: Combined with Subverted Catchphrase.
  Nemesis (As it shows Julian dozens of itself): Kill these copies.
• Primal Stance: It has a tendency to get down and run on all of its limbs like an animal. Exaggerated in the season 1 finale, where its additional spidery limbs and nanotech tentacles let it scuttle about in an utterly inhuman way.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Nemesis is armored in red and black, and looks positively demonic.
• Shadow Archetype: To Chase, naturally, with some Evil Counterpart mixed in. The copy of Chase used to create Nemesis represents everything Chase fears could happen to himself: Getting stuck inside his Holon, losing himself & becoming a monster. Unlike Nemesis, though, Chase has his friends to rely on, choosing to remain on his Holon willingly as a part of his own growth & to protect them, while Nemesis was forced to become a monster after years of solitude and torture.
• Shoulders of Doom: It has very large angular pauldrons. Justified, as its two arms on each side are attached to the same shoulder.
• Spikes of Villainy: It has several spike-like protrusions running down its back.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Gains the ability to create weapons out of nanotech in time for the season finale.
• Super Prototype: Despite its appearance, the Nemesis is, in fact, a Holon like the ones the gen:LOCK team possesses, but is capable of battling three of them simultaneously without losing the advantage. It's a heavily modified version of Chase's original, prototype Holon, modded to such an extent that it doesn't look like a Holon at first glance.
• Taking You with Me. Subverted. As he lays dying, he warns Chase that there are other Nemeses out there, and tells him to kill them all.
• Uniqueness Decay: In the gen:LOCK Season 2 First Look trailer, the Union has managed to mass-produce the Nemesis, shedding a lot more light about his last request to Chase to "kill these copies".
  Chase: The first time they unleashed a pack of Nemesi on us, it was eight against five, and they had smoke. Next fight, it was seventeen copies.
• Walking Spoiler: Everything about it spoils a lot of twists for the first season, including the true identity of Chase.

Comics Characters

General Genji Anno

NAME: ANNO, GENJI

RANK: GEN

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: UNK

The military general of the Japanese Polity branch, and Kazu Iida's former superior officer.

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• Authority Equals Asskicking: He's the general of the Japanese military, and is able to defeat Kazu.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He easily incapacitate Kazu Iida with a swift neck chop.
• Jerkass: Arguably the nicest thing one can say about him is that he's opposed to the Union, but he's arguably a more antagonistic force to gen:LOCK than they are throughout the comic
• The Reason You Suck: Kazu lets him have it when the Shogunate robot he built to defend Japan gets hijacked by Sycorax and starts attacking both Union and Japanese defenders alike, pointing out that Osaka is burning and he's refusing help from the team out of sheer Pride when their Holons are the only thing that can save lives and stop the rampaging monster he accidentally created.
• The Stoic: Shows no outwardly emotions in his first appearance, not even when Kazu brought a gun up to his head.

Sycorax

NAME: UNKNOWN

CALL SIGN: SYCORAX

The first-ever gen:LOCK candidates, a trio of sisters who now reside trapped in the Ether, one of them taking the form of a gigantic dragon.

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• Achilles' Heel: Cammie realises that they exist inside the MORPG 'Siege' becuase they need the game's massive servers to sustain their minds and increased processing capacity after they lost their bodies, allowing them to process massive amounts of data instantaneously, and keep the team on the back foot when fighting the Shogunate, but without said servers, they're nowhere near as fast or capable of reacting to their teamwork. Cammie severely weakens them by deleting the entire Siege system, removing their digital avatars and leaving them trapped inside the Shogunate robot, now limited and unable to react as fast to gen:LOCK's attacks.
• Big Bad: Of the first gen:LOCK comic book story.
• The Corrupter: They approach Julian with the intent of having him join them and end the war with the Union... by using the Shogunate robot to destroy both sides so there's nobody to fight each other. They partially succeed, but Julian refuses to risk civilian casualties in their rampage and ultimately gen:LOCK help him snap out of it.
• The Dividual: Due to extensive use of mindshare, the three sisters act as a single entity.
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Like Caliban, they're named after a character from The Tempest. Lampshaded when Cammie finds a copy of the play among Weller's old effects and realises the Theme Naming, using it to dig up Weller's old test data on the gen:LOCK subjects.

Novel Characters

Aris Webb

NAME: WEBB, ARIS

RANK: UNKNOWN

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: UNK

A Union spy who poses as a refugee.