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Daisy "Jett" Kowalski
Played by: Carla Gugino
- The Ace: Jett is generally considered one of the best thief's around and frequently shows exactly why.
- Afraid of Blood: Strongly averted. At one point she essentially watches a guy bleed out on her and doesn't bat an eyelid.
- Aloof Ally: Seems to be this in most of the jobs she takes.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Jett can go from warm and personable to shockingly ruthless in the blink of an eye.
- The Charmer: Jett can be very charismatic and skilled at talking her way out of trouble when she needs to be.
- Consummate Professional: Jett is a professional who takes her work seriously, avoids unnecessary trouble and keeps things as impersonal as possible.
- Deadpan Snarker: On the rare occasions that Jett ever displays any kind of humor, it will be this kind.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": No one ever dares call her Daisy with Maria being the only person to do so on a regular basis due to their close relationship.
- Fluffy the Terrible: Discussed as she was given the nickname "Jett" due to Daisy being seen as an ill fit for a ruthless criminal.
- Good Is Boring: It wasn't particularly difficult to get her back into a life of crime.
- Lady in Red: When she seduces Charlie Baudelaire.
- A Lighter Shade of Grey: She tries not to kill anybody unless she absolutely has to and sees herself as being just a thief rather than an assassin. She continues to maintain that this is true even after she's shot several people, including Charles Junior.
- Stacy's Mom: Gets this treatment from two younger guys she bumps into in a building.
- Had to Be Sharp
- Heroic BSoD: When she learns about Alice's kidnapping, she's very upset and breaks down. It's essentially the first time she shows any emotion at all.
- Ice Queen: Defrosts when she's around her daughter.
- I Work Alone: Whenever she can.
- Mercy Kill: At his request, she suffocates her paraplegic ex-crime boss Frank Sweeney with a Vorpal Pillow.
- Ms. Fanservice: Being played Carla Gugino makes her one by default and Jett even spends a good portion of one episode completely naked.
- Nerves of Steel: Very rarely shows any sign of fear.
- The One That Got Away: Rufus Quinn. He's killed by Miljan Bestic in the first episode.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Rarely gets called "Daisy Kowalski." Frank Sweeney gave her the nickname after deciding that Daisy was a bad name for a member of an organized crime ring. Maria is just about the only character who still calls her "Daisy" and probably the only person who could get away with doing so either.
- The Stoic: Jett is always calm, reserved and unemotional.
Charlie Baudelaire
Played by: Giancarlo Esposito
- Benevolent Boss: He certainly seems to respect Bennie and Carl, and treats them fairly.
- Berserk Button: He's perfectly pleasant unless you mess with his plans or try to rip him off.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Can be absolutely ruthless when he feels that he needs to.
- Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: Well, Captain Smooth, at least.
- Hands-Off Parenting: Appears to have done this, with elements of When You Coming Home, Dad?, with Charles Junior, which has led to the latter developing a massive inferiority complex. Despite this, he seems to genuinely love Charles Junior and even has quite a strong case of Love Makes You Dumb with regards to his son's often very troubling behavior.
- The Leader: The mastermind variety.
- Neat Freak: He gets bent out of joint when he discovers somebody has messed with the organization of his record collection.
- Schemer
- Villainous BSoD: When Jett shoots Charles Junior, he is utterly speechless, and pretty obviously distraught.
Maria
Played by: Elena Anaya
- Bilingual Dialogue: Her conversations with Jett often feature this. Jett appears to be able to understand Maria's Spanish.
- The Caretaker: Is this for Alice when she's not with Jett.
- The Cassandra: It's rarely touched on but she seems to have visions of future events.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Jett, though for some viewers they seem more Ambiguously Bi.
- Loyalty Mission: At Jett's request, Maria poses as a social worker to ensure that she gains custody of Alice after her birth.
- Mama Bear: She is incredibly protective over anybody she sees as her family.
- Uncertain Doom: Evans tries to smother her with a Vorpal Pillow at the end of the first season. She struggles for a while, before he eventually punches her out. It's unclear whether or not she survived this, but given how ill and weak she was, it seems somewhat unlikely.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Seven years prior to the events of the series she is given one year to live. While she has managed to survive up to the present point in the timeline, she recognizes that she's living on borrowed time and welcomes Phoenix into the household as a possible replacement.
Jack "Jackie" Dillon
Played by: Michael Aronov
- Heroic BSoD: When he finds out about Josie's death.
- Hypocrite: Wants Josie to himself despite the fact that he is cheating on his own wife with her.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: At the end of the first season finale, he's revealed to be Alice's father.
- Old Flame: He and Jett are this for each other.
- Revenge Before Reason: He is determined to get revenge on the men who murdered Josie. This entails killing basically anybody who had anything to do with her death, or is getting in the way of him reaching his ultimate goal (Charles Junior).
- Russian Roulette: Tries to commit suicide using this method at the end of the ninth episode of the first season, after his entire life has come crashing down around him.
- Undercover Cop Reveal: Once worked with Jett on a crime operation before eventually revealing that he is a detective.
Phoenix
Played by: Gaite Jansen
- Ass Shove: Nearly happens in a prison flashback. In the shower, two women pin Phoenix down while a third attempts to shove a toilet plunger up her...you know. Fortunately Jett comes to her rescue.
- Beware the Nice Ones: She's very sweet but she is quite capable of being ruthless when necessary, especially towards her scumbag brother.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: After bandaging her arm up, Phoenix tries in vain to get Jett to call her a Hooker with a Heart of Gold.Phoenix: Well, that's me in a nutshell. Not enough ambition and too good to be true. What does that make me?Jett: A liability.Phoenix: No. It makes me a hooker with a heart of...? A heart of...?Jett: Get out of my face.Phoenix: Oh my—you suck ass at gratitude!
- Friend to All Children: She's arguably more playful than Alice.
- Hidden Depths: While Phoenix has a slightly childlike, Cloudcuckoolander-ish personality, she's shown to be very intelligent and has a great deal of medical knowledge.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: When Maria tells Phoenix to distract some construction workers, her first instinct is to strip for them. In general, she seems to have no problems being naked.
- Nice Girl: Phoenix is a very sweet and charming woman.
- Non-Specifically Foreign: Averted. Though her accent is probably rather ambiguous to most American viewers, it's stated early on that she's Dutch, specifically from Rotterdam.
Evans
Played by: Gil Bellows
- Shoot the Messenger: Charles Junior is very offended when Evans gives him a message from Miljan Bestic and insults him. Evans replies that he's just the messenger and pulls out a letter that shows Bestic's exact message, insult and all.
- No Sense of Humor: He seems to be permanently serious.
- The Reliable One: Evans can always be counted on to be exactly where he says he's going to be at any given point.
- The Reveal: He was married to Miljan Bestic's sister.
- The Stoic
- Would Hurt a Child: Kidnaps Alice. What he intends to do with her is unclear.
Bennie
Played by: Chris Backus
- The Kindnapper: He does not intend to harm Rosalie at all in the initial kidnapping, and even develops feelings for her.
- Loving a Shadow: He's barely ever talked to Rosalie. When he gets into closer contact with her, he finds out that he doesn't like her at all...for various reasons.
- Stalker with a Crush: His official reason for following Rosalie around is to make sure that her husband does not harm her, but he's pretty obviously got a major soft spot for her.
- Thinks Like a Romance Novel: He makes Rosalie breakfast in bed before she pulls a gun on him.
Charles Junior
Played by: Gentry White
- Antagonistic Offspring: He seems to be plotting against his father with another gangster.
- The Bully
- Can't Take Criticism: Finding fault with anything Charles Junior does is bound to end up with him exploding.
- Depraved Homosexual: He's gay and is completely insane. In episode 6, he and his goons kill Josie with a chainsaw after cutting her hand off in a game of "hangman." He also claims to have castrated Bobby in the same way.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: He will fly into explosive fits of anger over pretty much anything.
- Hates Being Nicknamed: Characters who just call him "Junior" are usually angrily reminded that "it's Charles Junior!"
- Hidden Depths: He's shown to be quite perceptive—for instance, he manages to deduce that Josie, who is under cover, is a cop after talking with her for all of thirty seconds.
- The Killer Becomes the Killed
- Mood-Swinger: His moods are all over the place, and when he's in a bad one, watch out.
- Psychopathic Manchild: He's very immature, often acting indistinguishable from a child throwing a temper tantrum. The "psychopathic" part comes from it's usually paired with acts of brutal violence.
Josie
Played by: Jodie Turner-Smith
- Amazonian Beauty: She's quite statuesque.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: She gets decapitated by Charles Junior. With a chainsaw.
- Ms. Fanservice: Has a couple of sex scenes that don't seem to be plot-related.
- The Mistress: Is upset at being this for Jackie Dillon, and wants to be his only partner.
Alice
Played by: Violet McGraw
- Adorably Precocious Child
- Acting Your Intellectual Age: She's smart, and quite independent for her age.
- Afraid of Blood: Like her mother, averted.
- Morality Pet: She's one of the few people capable of bringing out Jett's softer side.
Supporting
Miljan Bestic
Played by: Greg Bryk
- Big Bad: He certainly seems to be this most of the time. When he gets shot, he reveals that he's only the middle man for a much more powerful Big Bad.
- It's Personal: The reason why he hates Charlie Baudelaire so much is that Charlie impregnated the woman he loved and then arranged her death. He gets his revenge by trying to turn the product of that union, Charles Junior, against his father.
Rosalie
Played by: Lucy Walters
- Break the Cutie: All of her ordeals basically turn her into a deranged lunatic, to the point where she ties Bennie up, makes him her personal slave, and even seems to rape him.
- Extreme Doormat: She seems to be this in her marriage to Dwight.
- Happily Married: Averted. In the first episode she's already committing adultery (it's later revealed that the marriage wasn't entirely happy to begin with). And after the ordeal with the kidnapping, it becomes much worse.
- Not So Weak: In episode 5, she buys a gun. She then murders Dwight with it while he's raping her, and uses it to knock Bennie out.
Dwight
Played by: Jonathan Koengsen
- Troubled Abuser: He becomes this after putting his job on the line (and then losing it) to rescue his wife from kidnappers, and then finding out that she was cheating on him.
- Would Hit a Girl: He's physically abusive towards his wife after lapsing into alcoholism.
Bobby
Played by: Gregg Lowe
- Nice Guy: He's pleasant to pretty much everybody, which gets on Charles Junior's nerves.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Gets castrated and then murdered by Charles Junior.
Neal
Played by: Gus Halper
- Abusive Parents: According to Phoenix, he was violently abused by their step father.
- Faux Affably Evil: He tries to come across as charming but his natural sleaziness always creeps out and no one is eve won over by his efforts.
- Hate Sink: He's the only character to have no redeeming or sympathetic traits.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Makes some racist comments towards the Mexican workers who rescue Phoenix from him.
- Slime Ball: He's incredibly sleazy, creepy and generally off-putting.
- Smug Snake: His attempts to be charming and slick are never even remotely convincing.
- Stalker with a Crush: Rather disturbingly, he seems to be this towards Phoenix, his half-sister.
- Knee Capping: How Phoenix gets rid of him once and for all.
