Characters / Midsommar

Below are the character pages for Ari Aster's Midsommar.

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Dani Ardor

The May Queen

Played by: Florence Pugh

• Anti-Hero: Dani is a troubled but caring girl who tries to make things right with Christian and her friends. Too bad it didn't work out.
• Anxiety Dreams: She dreams of the rest of the party abandoning her in the village, only for the dream to segue into the much deeper trauma of her family's death.
• Apologizes a Lot: All the time, to the point of becoming a constant fixture in her conversations with Christian, out of her guilt that he feels responsible to stay with her.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Part of her Ambiguous Situation at the end. Is she brainwashed by the cult or a willing participant in the final ritual, just glad to have somewhere to belong? Did she choose Christian deliberately or was it a result of her trauma and the combination of drugs manipulated by the Hårga?
• Broken Bird: Following her serious Survivor's Guilt over surviving her whole family's murder by her sister.
• Butt-Monkey: Dani loses her whole family, but she really falls into this trope with her treatment by Christian and his friend group, who make it clear she isn't wanted, make no effort to try and reach out to her, and at times seem to exclude her intentionally.
• Desperately Craves Affection: She has no family left and, apart from one woman she talked to over the phone at the beginning of the film, seemingly no close friends, so the emotionally-unavailable Christian is her only support system. As she only stays with him for the meager amounts of affection he provides, Pelle and the rest of the Hårga showering her in affection results in their desired effect of her leaving her old life behind and becoming one of them.
• Dissonant Serenity: The final scene of her smiling into the camera while the temple is burning to the ground.
• Distaff Counterpart: To Peter from Hereditary. She survives the whole family's murder by her sister, who then commits suicide, but she ends up just as broken as Peter does by the end of the story. While arguably Peter's grandmother, rather than his sister, is responsible for the death of his whole family, his sister is the Chosen One and the main accidental instigator of their doom.
• The Dog Bites Back: Christian spends most of the movie being unpleasant to her, mistreating her and all of his friends aren't that much better. None of them want her there and Christian especially isn't shy about showing it. The movie ends with Dani condemning Christian to death.
• Driven to Madness: This either happened in the opening minutes or at the very end.
• The Eeyore: Although Dani has an extremely good reason for being one, as the loss of her entire family thanks to her sister's murder/suicide has naturally destroyed her. While Dani tries to put on a brave face for Christian and his friends, she seems unable to win because her passive sadness is all-consuming.
• Extreme Doormat: Though kind and empathetic, Dani is easily manipulated and guilt-tripped by people who claim to have her best interests in mind, namely Christian and Pelle.
• Family of Choice: Her whole family being dead provides a perfect opportunity for her to Starting a New Life with the Hårga.
• Final Girl: Ultimately she is one, though it might be considered a Downer Ending or a Bittersweet Ending depending on your interpretation of her response. Unusually for the Final Girl, Dani has not been brutalized or attacked outwardly by the movie's end (though throughout the film she is mentally manipulated) but is instead in a position of power, albeit one that she didn't choose herself.
• Fish out of Water: She's had a very traumatic and incomprehensible event, then she goes to Sweden and is "welcomed" into the Hårga.
• From Bad to Worse: Her arc through the movie.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Yikes. The fragile, good-intentioned Dani ends up holding Christian's life in her hands.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: None of Christian's friends (sans Pelle) seem to enjoy her company, approve of the relationship, or appreciate her tagging along on the Sweden trip.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: She's the Responsible to Terri's Foolish.
• Gender-Blender Name: Maybe. It's never made clear if her full name is Danielle or something else, or just Dani.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's blonde, and a cautious but caring, kindhearted girl who just wants to make things work with Christian and his friends.
• Howl of Sorrow: A few fully justified examples.
• Hysterical Woman: Although understandably given the circumstances, the prominence of Dani's hysteria and screaming as part of the climax invokes this.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The main reason Dani clings to Christian and why she turns towards the Hårga at the end.
• Laughing Mad: Her state at the very end; while she's merely smiling rather than laughing out loud, the script describes her as surrendering to "a joy known only by the insane".
• Living Emotional Crutch: Was apparently this for her sister, which results in her taking it out on Christian.
• Meaningful Name: Her last name is Ardor, a synonym for "intense"—and indeed, Dani is shown to be intensely emotional throughout the movie. The word is borrowed from French, where its original connotation was literally "burning", and given that Dani decides that Christian should be burned alive at the end, it may also have another connotation.
• Nervous Wreck: Constantly on the brink and acts like one after her Freak Out in the opening minutes, which is justified by her trauma but then taken up a notch by the trip.
• Nice Girl: Dani is kind, patient and very understanding from the outset.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: An unusually self-aware version; Dani is aware that Christian wants to leave her, but also repeatedly begs him not to because that would leave her completely alone in the world.
• Properly Paranoid: Christian is annoyed by her worries over her sister, and it's implied she frequently calls him for help and reassurance over what have so far been false threats by her sister. Dani is never put at ease and her paranoia is justified when her sister's threats become real and her family dies because of it.
  • She is also the only one who notices something wrong with the cult and wants to leave, but again Christian doesn't give a damn. Thus dooming himself, his friends and Dani to either death or something worse.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Her entire character arc has her come to consider the cult her true family, culminating in her becoming the May Queen and sentencing her boyfriend to death for a transgression he was essentially forced into committing.
• Sanity Slippage: Ironically, despite being a psychology student, the trauma of her sister's suicide and murder of their parents eats at her throughout the film, and in the end she smiles after sentencing Christian to death. The script describes her as having "surrendered to a joy known only by the insane".
• Security Cling: Dani is always trying to hold onto Christian, who is constantly trying to squirm away.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: For most of the film, she dresses in drab, shapeless clothing and wears her hair in a messy bun, till near the end, when she switches to an embroidered, form-fitting (but still modest) white dress and has her hair in an elaborate updo braid, topped with a flower crown, to signify how she's being drawn into the Hårga.
• Sole Survivor: Of her family and her friend group.
• Stepford Smiler: Acts like this early in film, repressing her anxiety and depression and avoiding conflict in the group.
  • She becomes a type III Stepford Smiler in the final shot as she comes to accept the Hårga as her new family.
• Understanding Boyfriend: Gender Flip. She tries to be this to Christian and largely succeeds for huge portions of the film.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Dani's trauma starts off with the discovery that her sister killed herself and their parents, and then only goes downhill from there. She is highly prone to panic attacks after this tragedy, including one she has during a bad shroom trip. Between witnessing a gruesome ritual suicide of two elderly members of the cult and apparently discovering that her emotionally distant and obliviously abusive boyfriend is cheating on her (unaware he was drugged into it), it's no wonder she's finally pushed over the edge and becomes the cult's May Queen.

Christian Hughes

Played by: Jack Reynor

The Lover

• And I Must Scream: During the film's climax he is completely paralyzed by one of the cult's elders. When he is chosen as the final sacrifice in the cult's ritual, all he can do is sit and stare as he is burned alive.
• Asshole Victim: Deconstructed. Christian is a callous Jerkass and a terrible boyfriend, but the film makes it clear he still doesn't deserve any of the things he's subject to, and his effective murder at Dani's hands is the point she has been fully indoctrinated into the cult's beliefs.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Travels to Sweden mostly so he can have sex with beautiful Nordic women. He eventually ends up being drugged and essentially raped by the cult, who use him as a Glorified Sperm Donor for Maja before brutally disposing of him at the May Queen's command.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He is a spiteful manipulator, especially in his relationship with Dani, but just in case you wondered if it was relationship-specific, he instantly betrayed Josh - who was passionate about studying folk rituals - to compete with him over the Hårga.
• Callousness Towards Emergency: Christian's Fatal Flaw in many ways. While he probably couldn't have prevented either Mark, Josh, or Connie's deaths, his total indifference towards their disappearances (and selfish concern for himself) is really the ultimate sign that Christian only cares about himself and what he wants.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Is paralyzed by the cult and chosen as the final sacrifice in their ritual by Dani, stuffed into the dead body of a bear and placed in a temple surrounded by the corpses of the other sacrifices, two of which are his closest friends, and burned alive, all while all he can do is sit and stare, being completely trapped in his own body.
• Dirty Coward: When Josh goes missing, his first reaction is to throw him under the bus and insist that he doesn't have any association with him.
• Domestic Abuser: While he's never physically abusive towards Dani, Christian acts emotionally distant and is passive-aggressive towards her. He wants to believe he's the Understanding Boyfriend, and does show some shallow attempts at caring for Dani, but she's aware of how much he seems to resent the job, and he actually comes across as a massive Jerkass for his total lack of sympathy.
• Evil Redhead: Although evil might be stretching it, Christian is an antagonistic, self-centered manipulator who makes a point to exclude Dani and make her feel unhappy, and shows no concern when his friends go missing.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite being in a failing relationship, even he knows that breaking up with Dani after her entire family's death is too cruel.
• Glorified Sperm Donor: Literally. His only purpose in the ritual is to impregnate Maja, after which they leave his fate for the May Queen to decide.
• Fair-Weather Friend: Dani displays more concern over his friends' absences then him, and he's quick to throw Josh under the bus to gain points with the elders in the village.
• Irony: His main character flaw is that he refuses to accept responsibility for anything he does and pushes the blame onto other people, usually Dani. In the movie's climax, Dani is given the ultimate responsibility as May Queen over Christian and she chooses to use it by selecting him as the final sacrifice.
• It's All About Me: He's mostly just concerned about getting his jollies in Sweden and is unsympathetic to Dani's concerns or need to take things slow, gaslighting her and threatening to leave her when she tries to talk things over with him. He mostly ignores Dani's anxiety at seeing an upsetting ritual, steals Josh's graduate topic (which Josh is actually passionate about, unlike Christian who spends a couple of days in the village and then decides to stay), and then is completely unconcerned about Josh and Mark's disappearances, even going so far as to completely disavow Josh to stay in good favor with the elders. And even though he's drugged into having sex with Maja, even before then he's flattered by the attention from women despite traveling with his girlfriend.
• Jerkass Has a Point: As insensitive he is towards Dani's Heroic BSoD, he isn't wrong when he says that the cultists' ceremonies are all part of their culture, and might view Americans as weird for putting their elders in nursing homes instead of going out with dignity.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Christian has tons of opportunities to show he's secretly a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but all show up what a selfish, unlikeable bastard he is. No matter how much Dani tries to reach out to him, he neglects Dani, steals from his friends, and seems completely unconcerned with anyone but himself. Also, while he does ostensibly show concern for Dani's anxiety issues, he also uses them against her to make her feel guilty and like she's the bad guy, forcing her to apologize to him even if she didn't do anything wrong. He even appears to enjoy making Dani grovel so she'll be more docile to him.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Apparently his issue with Dani is that she makes him into this. An Informed Attribute because it isn't clear if she actually does; she doesn't seem to.
• Male Frontal Nudity: Hangs dong during the fertility ritual. Jack Reynor revealed that this detail wasn't specified by the director, but that he insisted on it himself to sell Christian's vulnerability during the scene.
• Manipulative Bastard: Although a very transparent example.
  • When Dani quite calmly confronts Christian about his agreeing to the Sweden trip without telling her, he insists that he had told her until she's apologizing to him for bringing it up. The two physically switch places to emphasize the reversal.
  • Christian tries this again with Josh after stealing his topic, initiating a conversation about it in order to make it seem like it's Josh's fault and that he's in the right. Josh isn't having it.
• The Masochism Tango: As bad a boyfriend as Christian is, he's trapped in a relationship he doesn't want to be in, with a person who would fall apart the moment he broke up with her. It's not shown how much of Christian's emotional distance is just who he is, or the result of his and Dani's relationship being on its last legs.
• Meaningful Name: Christian becomes infatuated with a Swedish pagan cult.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After having sex with Maja while being heavily drugged, Christian comes to his senses and is quite clearly horrified.
• Naked People Trapped Outside: After the fertility ritual, he frantically tries to flee while still in the nude.
• Never My Fault: He constantly gaslights Dani when she tries to confront him for lying to her and throws Josh instantly under the bus when he goes missing.
• Not So Stoic: He's genuinely horrified upon finding Simon's corpse.
• Opportunistic Bastard: Steals Josh's Ph.D. topic and goes behind his back to get approval from Pelle. Josh is not pleased by this. He's also quick to agree to the fertility ritual after Siv suggests Dani won't find out.
• Questionable Consent: Given that he was given some unknown drugs to drink without even knowing, him having sex with Maja, was not consensual sending the whole affair into rape territory, which add even more tragedy to his death. He's horrified when he comes back to his senses.
• The Quisling: Christian forgets about his friends after their disappearances, and goes as far to throw Josh under the bus over the missing book.
• The Stoic: Christian barely has any strong emotions and never opens up to Dani, which is a small part of their relationship's struggles. It also adds a dark layer to his Cruel and Unusual Death
• Supernatural-Proof Father: Downplayed into a boyfriend example. He ignores all of Dani's suspicions and well-founded worries, regarding the cult as merely an anthropological study.

Josh

Played by: William Jackson Harper

The Scholar

• Ambition Is Evil: His passion for his studies, and desire to get published leads to his demise.
• Black and Nerdy: His only defining trait is his passion for anthropology and academic ambitions, which result in him getting killed.
• Celibate Hero: Though "Hero" is pushing it, he's the only male member of the American cast to not get Distracted by the Sexy.
• Deadpan Snarker: It's subtle, but many of his retorts to Mark fall into this category.
• Jerkass: Is unsympathetic to Dani's very clear grief and anxiety, cheekily refusing to tell her and the others what the ättestupa (suicide of the elderly) ritual is. Later he ignores the priest's command not to take pictures of the commune's holy text. And while Christian piggybacking on his thesis is undoubtedly a dick move, Josh has no ownership of the Hårga's customs, and he may not have even asked Pelle for permission to write about them if Christian hadn't done so first.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Can dish out decent advice despite his jerkishness. Early on he mentions that Christian is too caught up in his relationship drama to really devote himself to his studies, and is in fact focusing on it as a way to avoid thinking about his thesis. His analysis that Christian lacks direction in general is also spot on.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Josh's interest in the ättestupa ritual and the cult as a whole seems to go beyond the merely academic. Though he reacts to the elder cultists' suicides with marked horror, the moment he returns to the commune he starts writing up his observations on his laptop. Immediately after Christian finds a pube in his food, Josh's reaction is to pull out his notebook, too.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers one to Christian after the latter announces his plan to write a thesis on the Harga, which practically doubles as the kind of speech Dani might give him if she had the nerve.
  Josh: What you're doing is lazy, leechy, and unethical, and frankly a little sad.
• The Rival: To Christian.
• The Smart Guy: The most intelligent member of the American travellers and also the most studious as well.
• Troll: The extent to which he is Innocently Insensitive is debatable, but his reaction to Christian and Dani's ignorance of the ättestupa, and decision not to fill them in indicates he is this.

Mark

Played by: Will Poulter

The Fool

• All Men Are Perverts: The cult themselves are hardly pure in this regard, but Mark is so completely unable to think about anything other than sex.
• Desecrating the Dead: In a final act of indignity, Mark has a jester's hat put on the puppet representing him before his body is burned.
  • He also desecrated the dead by pissing on a tree. The cult probably thinks they are handing out Laser-Guided Karma, though it remains in the audience's perspective to decide if they are.
• Everyone Has Standards: He's very vocal about his dislike of Dani and wanting Christain to break up with her in the opening scene, but never brings it up after her parents and sister die and more-or-less ignores her.
• Frat Bro: He epitomizes this trope, making him the odd one out of his academic group.
• Hidden Depths: Depending on how seriously one takes his babbling while tripping, he describes his friends as his "true family", and expresses anxiety about them leaving him.
  • In interviews, Will Poulter explains that he portrayed Mark as profoundly insecure, with his abrasive persona serving as a defense mechanism.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Can barely think straight as a result and misses so many red flags about the cult.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He's introduced insistently making the case that Christian should break up with Dani. He's harsh and unfair in his judgments of her, but entirely right about the toxicity of the relationship.
• Killed Offscreen: The last we see of Mark when he's alive, he's being lured away from the commune by a beautiful female cultist. The next time we see "Mark," a cultist is wearing his face and scalp like a mask. We never learn what happened in between.
• Lack of Empathy: He is perhaps the biggest example in the film, as he accuses Dani of "abusing" Chris by calling him all the time, he complains about missing "the good stuff" when his friends tell him what happened during the ättestupa, acts offended and dismissive when he greatly insults the villagers by pissing on their sacred tree (albeit unintentionally) and gets impatient when Dani hesitates to take drugs and Chris offers to wait until she's ready.
• Must Have Nicotine: Perpetually Juuling throughout the film.
• Not Helping Your Case: While he did urinate on the Harga's sacred tree by accident, he made no attempts to apologize, and in fact acted as if he was the one being insulted.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Or secondary villain in this case, depending on your perspective on the Hårga, but Mark is sexist, racist, and just about everything else.
• Skewed Priorities: Spends the entire film paranoid about ticks, but apathetic about everything else horrific going on.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Subverted. Mark cracks most of the jokes in the early part of the film and his disappearance denotes a massive turn for the main characters' fates, but Midsommar maintains a darkly comic tone for the remainder of its run-time.
• Too Dumb to Live: Mark pisses on a tree. Now, he might not know that that specific tree was sacred, but he knows the cult greatly values trees and nature...and there's a bathroom literally a short walk away.
• You Need to Get Laid: His advice for Christian.

Pelle

Played by: Vilhelm Blomgren

The Piper

• Affably Evil: For all his manipulation, there is no indication that Pelle's upbeat disposition and sympathy for Dani are in any way an act, which arguably makes him scarier.
• Ambiguous Situation: Did he know what the cult really had planned for the group? Was Dani becoming the May Queen a setup?
• Anti-Villain: He is in complete lockstep with the cult the entire time, but he seems to actually like Dani and comes across as completely genuine in his desire to make her a part of the family.
• Bait the Dog: Another possible interpretation of his "kindness" towards Dani. Was he actually just manipulating her because it was good for him?
• Big Bad Friend: He's not the leader of the Hårga, but he's the most well-developed member by far and has the most direct connection to the protagonist. It's heavily implied that the only reason he joined Christian's friend group to begin with is so he could bring them home as sacrifices.
• Big Damn Kiss: Gives one to Dani after she becomes May Queen.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Appears to be supportive of Josh's PhD thesis and Dani and Christian repairing their relationship. However, he undermines Josh's thesis work by supporting Christian when the latter decides he's going to study the cult, too, and is clearly trying to pursue Dani throughout the film.
• The Corruptor: To both Dani and Christian in different ways as part of his goal to indoctrinate Dani into the cult's ranks. He deliberately cultivates in Dani the association between the Hårga and salvation from her emotional woes, while he simultaneously pushes Christian towards becoming antagonistic towards Josh and indirectly encourages him to becoming even more emotionally distant from Dani all to ensure that Dani will have no problems cutting him away from her life to the extent that she'd be willing to sacrifice him.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Though they look like Innocent Blue Eyes, symbolizing his character.
• Intimate Artistry: Gives Dani, whom he has feelings for, a portrait he drew of her for her birthday, which he admits "maybe isn't appropriate," but she's quick to assure him that she loves it and is "very touched," and is later seen sketching a picture of her as the May Queen after she's crowned.
• Karma Houdini: He brings the group to his extremely dangerous cult, everyone bar Dani dies and Dani is most likely groomed by the cult, but Pelle never suffers for his actions.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Crossing over with some Draco in Leather Pants appeal.
• Longing Look: Has a habit of directing these at Dani, which she never notices.
• Manipulative Bastard: He and the cult wind up doing this to Dani, insisting that they are providing the emotional support and understanding that she needs to coerce her into joining their ranks.
• New Transfer Student: His place at the college.
• Parental Substitute: The Hårga are this to him, after his parents passed away. It's implied they were sacrificed by the cult.
• Pet the Dog: His interactions with Dani could either be seen as this, or another example of his manipulations, depending on how sincere you interpret his kindness to her as being.
• Raised by the Community: He tells Dani that after his parents died the entire community cared for him in their place.
• Sexy Scandinavian: Part of why he gets so much Draco in Leather Pants.
• Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Which may or may not cross over with Bitch in Sheep's Clothing. He seems to be genuinely happy about Dani's victory, becoming May Queen but there's a strong implication that, for all his soft spokenness, he knew all along that almost everyone would die.
• Villainous Crush: On Dani, even planting a kiss on her after she is crowned May Queen, to her bewilderment.

Simon and Connie

Played by: Archie Madekwe and Ellora Torchia

• Audience Surrogate: While all of the Americans are visibly disturbed at the ättestupa ritual, Simon and Connie most vocally portray the pure horror and disgust of what an outsider's reaction to it likely would be.
• Black Dude Dies First: Simon is the first character to be attacked and killed by the cult, Connie is the second. (Although Connie isn't black, she's not white either.)
  • Subverted in that Simon is still alive, in the most horrific way possible, at the film's climax. Not that he lasts much longer.
• Body Horror: Christian finds Simon, brutally vivisected with his lungs pulled through his back and his eyes removed with flowers placed in the sockets. Connie too as her corpse is seen later, being pushed in a wheelbarrow, its flesh completely pale and distended from being drowned and left underwater. Her arm also appears twisted and broken, possibly indicating she was beaten before being drowned.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Simon is given a blood eagle treatment off-screen sometime after his initial disappearance, and has flowers jammed into his eyes. While this would already qualify for this trope alone, it gets even worse when Christian finds that he's still breathing.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Granted they were going to be killed regardless, but the only thing Simon and Connie do to incur the wrath of the Hårga is react pretty much as any sane outsider would to the suicide of the two elderly cult members. Connie is drowned and appears to have been beaten savagely before she died, and Simon gets likely the worst death in the film due to its savagery and how freaking long it takes him to die.
• Foil: To Dani and Christian, as they are also two college students in a long-term relationship, but they are engaged, madly in love, and sane.
• Killed Offscreen: Connie is. Simon is actually a subversion - it appears he's killed offscreen, but then Christian comes across his still breathing body in the climax.
• Male Frontal Nudity: When Simon reappears later in the film, he's fully nude. And Body Horror doesn't begin to describe it.
• Only Sane Man: Simon is the only one who responds in a fairly culturally appropriate (although very inappropriate for the Hårga) way to seeing the suicides, and Connie is clearly deeply shaken. Not that it gets them very far.
• Sickening Sweethearts: The main way in which they're the Foil to Dani and Christian.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Their responses to the ritual. Only the cult's machinations get in the way.
• Twofer Token Minority: They're both English students of color.

The Hårga

• Affably Evil: As far as horror movie villains go, the Hårga are fairly remarkable in how lacking in active malice they are. There's no indication at all that their cheerful, friendly demeanor is either an act or the result of brainwashing, nor for that matter that they're a threat to anyone at any time other than their once-every-90-years ritual. And much like Aztec human sacrifice and similar customs, they appear to sincerely believe their rituals are necessary for the proper functioning of the cosmos. As brutal as their practices are, they're surprisingly egalitarian and non-hypocritical as well, as the members are always prepared to offer up their own lives as well as those of outsiders should the ritual require it. It is probably very debatable, depending of the viewer, whether all this makes them less creepy, or more.
• Bad Liar: Their attempts to explain Simon's disappearance to Connie after they kill him are almost comically implausible. They try to make her believe that he abruptly left for the train station without telling her, and when she protests that he would never do that, they try to justify it by saying "The truck only seats two people!" It actually makes them more disturbing, as the village is so isolated they don't actually have to be very convincing to her; there's almost nothing she can do about the situation anyway.
• Big Bad: They collectively serve as this for the film.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The Hårga as a whole, but especially Pelle. He's a friendly and thoughtful guy and the only one of Christian's friends who shows empathy towards Dani. The extent to which his kindness to her can be read as genuine is up to the audience, but his friendship with the rest of the party was all an effort to lure them to their deaths.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: A lot of their beliefs are so bizarre and out of touch with modern views that they can only fall into this.
• Cult: Although their exact beliefs are somewhat ambiguous, it's possible that they are a Religion of Evil. However, they sometimes refer to the sun as their "Father" and there is mention of the Norse giant Ymir earlier in the movie, though it's never made clear if he's a deity they worship.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Possibly. In revenge for Mark pissing on their tree, they skin him; in revenge for Josh taking pictures of their sacred book, they bludgeon him to death. Simon and Connie's understandable reaction to ättestupa (as well as the implication that Ingemar had a crush on Connie and was bitter that she chose Simon over him) is what leads to Simon being given the blood eagle treatment and Connie being drowned in a river by the villagers.
• Do You Want to Copulate?: This is the essence of Siv's dialogue with Christian and seems to encapsulate the Hårga's attitudes towards sex.
• Horror Hippies: They're Swedish pagans rather than hippies, but they still hit a lot of points for this trope. They live in a remote village where they live in harmony with nature, have no reservations about sex, commit ritual suicide at the age of 72, and have a tradition where they make Human Sacrifices every 90 years. Not to mention all the drugs they use and lace their food and drinks with.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The Hårga's insistence that it's actually kinder for their elderly to commit suicide and be reborn into the land may be seen as Villain Has a Point, but it mostly evaporates by the time they've viciously and sadistically murdered every single member of the party except Dani.
• Light Is Not Good: Despite all the horrific things they do for the sake of their traditions, the cult exclusively dons white clothes and is often associated with bright colors such as white and yellow. The village is also bright and sunny, even past 9:00 PM due to the high latitude, which the American characters find strange and off-putting.
• Meaningful Name: The name "Hårga" comes from a Swedish folk song called Hårgalåten. In the song, a mysterious man plays on a fiddle and the people of Hårga Village "forgot about God and the world". The villagers are bewitched by the fiddler to dance on the peak of Hårga Mountain until they die. Name aside and isolated community aside, the ättestupa and the May Queen dance. The former takes place on a cliff where an elderly man and woman sacrifice themselves, while the latter recites a story eerily similar to that of the folk song; the woman running the show says that a "Black One" once seduced the youth of their village into dancing until their deaths. The woman then concludes that the May Queen dance is their means of defying that being by dancing and falling by their own terms.
• Monochrome Casting: They are all white. Word of God reveals they're racists who only select white outsiders to breed with, only bringing in non-white people for purposes of sacrifice.
• Pet the Dog: Part of why Dani ultimately sides with them is that they show genuine concern and empathy with Dani's situation, guiding her through a bad episode as a group.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The undercurrent of racism or xenophobia among the Hårga are explicitly meant to be intentional, according to Ari Aster. They are white supremacists as a whole.
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: Maja is sixteen and thus has been allowed to have sex for a year, which she does during Midsommar with Christian.
• Stepford Smiler: Every single member of the cult smiles eerily almost all the time.
• Villainous Incest: They practice ritual inbreeding to produce new oracles. The horribly deformed Ruben is a product of this. However, they do show a desire to bring in outsiders to breed with in order to keep the gene pool from getting too small.
• Would Hurt a Child: Subverted. It seems like they're going to sacrifice a child by throwing him into a lake with weights chained to him, but stop at the last moment since he's ritually proven his bravery and willingness to die.

Maja

Played by: Isabelle Grill

• Color Motif: After Maja loses her virginity to Christian, she gets a red vest and cap and bright red lipstick, to symbolize she's now a sexual being.
• Evil Redhead: Maja has long, distinctive red hair, and her job was to ensnare Christian.
• Lady in Red: After she has sex with a drugged Christian, she gets a red vest, a red cap and bright red lipstick, to symbolize she's now a sexual being.
• Satellite Love Interest: Invoked. She can seduce Christian without a single word, and we don't learn anything about her character.
• Sex as a Rite-of-Passage: After she has sex with Christian, she wears a different color, implying this trait is in action.
• Virgin in a White Dress: Downplayed. All the women wear white, and so do most of the men, but she gets an overhaul in red once she has sex.
• The Voiceless: She never speaks a single line until she seduces Christian.

Ruben

Played by: Levente Puczkó-Smith

• Advertised Extra: He features prominently in the trailers for the film, but he only has about a minute of screentime and doesn't really factor into the plot.
• Creepy Child: Due to his physical anomalies from the inbreeding.
• Mad Oracle: Acts as the cult's oracle. He is both physically and mentally handicapped by design; in the eyes of the cult, his mind is "unclouded by cognition" and thus more susceptible to visions.
• Madwoman in the Attic: Is kept in an attic above the room where the sacred texts are held, where he spends all his time smearing paint into the holy book. This ends up being something of a subversion; Ruben, despite his deformities, is cherished by the Hårga rather than shunned, and he only lives above the sacred texts so he can add to them. Of course, he was purposefully inbred, so it's not quite as rosy as that makes it sound.

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