WARNING: Spoilers will not be tagged due to the show's nature.
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People Stuck in Time
Both
Alan: I die all the time.
Nadia: Me too.
Two people who were stuck in time by a strange cosmical event, repeating the same period of time over and over.
- The Chew Toy: Both Nadia and Alan suffer multiple amusing deaths, particularly Nadia frequently falling down the stairs as well as tripping into sidewalk cellar doors. As the series goes on though, their deaths become much heavier and darker.
- Cosmic Plaything: What with Nadia and Alan forced to relive the same day on loop that always ends in their death. Lampshaded by Nadia when she says, "The universe is trying to fuck with me. And I refuse to engage." If both are in the same place for too long, expect something considerably unlikely to happen that kills them both at the same time.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The loop started because both could have saved each other's lives. If Alan wasn't drunk, he could have stopped Nadia from getting hit by a car and if Nadia wasn't pestering drunks, she could have stopped Alan from killing himself.
Nadia
Nadia Vulvokov
Played by: Natasha Lyonne, Brooke Timber (young)
"I'm sorry for yelling, but I'm having a very difficult, never ending night!"
A female software engineer who just turned 36. She is a snarker with a dark and hedonistic personality. Her sudden death traps her in a time loop at the time of her birthday.- Bookworm: She became an avid reader as a child to escape her troubled home life. She gives John's daughter a copy of Emily of New Moon, her favorite book when she was that age.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Grew up with a mother with an unspecified mental illness who died sometime after she was taken into CPS care. She also mentions that her mother gave her an eating disorder.
- Death Seeker: She isn't consciously trying to get killed, but she takes a lot of drugs, has no problems with unprotected sex, doesn't particularly look where she's going and notes that she'll be impressed if she makes it to her low 70s. Turns out she will not make it a day past 36 unless she changes a few things about herself.
- Deadpan Snarker: In both seasons but in the 2nd one it comes out more and she makes a lot of snarky remarks about the situations she is in.
- Died on Their Birthday: The majority of Season One is set on Nadia's birthday, and depicts her dying in a myriad of different ways and constantly being reincarnated to the same point at her birthday party (Although sometimes she does manage to live past midnight, dying instead in the early hours of the following morning).
- Epic Fail: After her first few loops she dies over and over again just trying to walk down the stairs to Maxine's apartment. She eventually gives up and starts exiting through the fire escape.
- Hypocrite: Steals Alan’s shoes to give them to Horse but immediately freaks out when he goes through her stuff, namely her old photos of her mother. This was only a few hours apart. She does apologize in the next loop, however.
- Immune to Drugs: Only Keith Richards has taken more drugs than she has. At one point, she freaks out that a joint laced with ketamine rather than cocaine might be causing the loop, but she's reminded that she has taken that drug before.
- It's All My Fault: After being taken by the CPS Nadia was sent to live with Ruth instead of her mother. One year later, her mother died and ever since Nadia blamed hersef for it. Even when Ruth tells her that she first told the CPS that she wanted to be with her mother but they wouldn't let it happen due to the latter's deteriorating mental state, Nadia still feels guilty because she actually wanted to live with Ruth to escape the instability that came with living with her mother.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Searching for her missing cat kicks off the death loop.
- Passed In Her Sleep: In the timeline where she gets drunk and befriends Horse, they sleep on the street and end up freezing to death. When she wakes up, she is in front of the mirror and realizes that this happens.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold : A very small one but it is there, she ends up befriending Alan and she cares in her way of her friends.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Masculine Girl to Alan's Feminine Boy.
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside
- Took a Level in Kindness: While she still has her own share of issues dealing with Generational Trauma and she is still pretty snarky and a bit selfish she is more approachable in the second season. Also, she gradually gets better over the course of the first season.
Alan
Alan Zaveri
Played by: Charlie Barnett
A man with a compulsory need to control everything in his life. Recently dumped by his girlfriend, he has also died and was trapped into a continual loop together with Nadia.- Ambiguously Bi: His attraction to women is legit but in the second season where he is his grandmother (and dates Lenny) Alan himself doesn't seem to oppose it, though it's not made clear if he only does it because he doesn't want to interfere with the past or if he is really into guys.
- Control Freak: For the first ten loops, he's actually happy with things as he feels like he can actually control his world, which he appreciates.
- Driven to Suicide: Alan's first death was suicide. After getting extremely drunk and dumped by his girlfriend, he threw himself out of the top of his building.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Feminine Boy to Nadia's Masculine Girl.
- Walking Spoiler: The fact that there is a second person stuck in the time loop together with Nadia is a major spoiler and completely changes the series and Nadia's goal.
Nadia's Circle
Maxine
Maxine
Played by: Greta Lee
"I like that you're a cunt, makes me feel morally superior."
Nadia's flighty friend who hosted the part for her. Despite their friendship, she and Nadia fight sometimes, but often make up as well.- Brutal Honesty: She appears to genuinely care for Nadia, but that doesn't mean she won't insult Nadia to her face. There's no ill-intent behind her words, and they're not wrong per se, but they can sting.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: At the start of the party she's cooking one chicken for dozens of people for no apparent reason, and she's surprised that her apartment has a fire escape. Gets a disturbing upgrade later in the time loops once she is the only person left dancing at Nadia's completely empty birthday party. When asked by Nadia to leave, she replies "I can't" in a tone somewhere between horror and terror.
- It's All About Me: Throws Nadia a birthday party but is more concerned with the fact that no one is eating her chicken than the fact that something is clearly going on with Nadia.
- Running Gag: She introduces herself in each loop with "Sweet Birthday Baby"
Lizzie
Lizzie
Played by: Rebecca Henderson
One of Nadia's closest friends. An older indie artist who is dating a much younger woman.- Call to Agriculture: Despite her hedonistic lifestyle, she laments that she didn't go raise puppies upstate with an ex-girlfriend.
- Extreme Omnisexual: In multiple loops, Nadia wakes up to see Lizzie in a pile of a half-dozen sleeping men and women, all of them half-naked and some of them with sex toys, uh, attached to them.
Ruth
Ruth Brenner
Played by: Elizabeth Ashley, Annie Murphy (young)
"We do not use the word crazy in this house!"
A level headed therapist that raised Nadia when her mother was deemed unfit to do so. She serves as Nadia's mother figure and they have perhaps her healthiest relationship.- Accidental Murder: Accidentally shoots Nadia in one loop after mistaking her for a burglar.
- Ambiguously Gay: It's unclear what Ruth and Lanora's relationship was, and Nadia wanting to stay with Ruth is implicitly framed like a child choosing between two parents in a divorce. She has no explicit love interests.
- In one shot, urns of her several husbands along with photos of them are seen in her home.
- Jossed as of season 2, with Nadia mentioning to Ruth's younger self that she'll have many husbands in the future.
- Morality Pet: Nadia sees her as the stable mother figure her biological mother never was.
- Parental Substitute: Became Nadia's legal guardian after her mother's mental illness made living with her untenable.
- There Are No Therapists: Played with. She is a therapist and even explains why she believes that her profession is so important, but neither Nadia nor Alan are interested in therapy, despite clearly needing it.
Lanora
Lanora Vulvokov
Played by: Chloë Sevigny
Nadia's birth mother. A woman that Ruth described as brilliant but had a sickness in her mind. Her mental issues pushed her daughter away and caused her to be taken away by the government before being taken in by Ruth. Lanora died some time after Nadia stopped living with her.- Parents as People: It seemed that Lanora truly loved Nadia, and invested on her future with everything she had, but her mental illness eventually took the best of her.
- Posthumous Character: Died sometime after Ruth became Nadia's legal guardian.
- Trauma Conga Line: It is revealed that things were not easy for Lanora in season 2.
- A Day in the Limelight: This is primarily the focus of the second season of the show - getting to see the daily life of Nadia's mother, through her own eyes.
- Black Bug Room: Come season 2, we are treated to this visual in order to represent the advancement of Nora's drug addiction - the resultant hallucinatory visuals and sensations of bugs - as well as her rapidly deteriorating mental landscape.
- Generational Trauma: Although we are presented with a less than sympathetic narrative at first, we find that there are many factors behind Lanora's madness — that it is more nuanced than Nadia or the viewer might believe it to be. Nora's parents were far from the blameless victims of a Genocide as they were thought as; the loss of the family inheritance and the profound trauma surrounding their history as Holocaust survivors was what was continuously lorded over Nora - as a form of control and emotional abuse. Much of her rebelling was in order to gain control over her life, and her continued exploitation by others was the driving force for her later disenfranchisement - resulting in drug addiction, severe paranoid delusions, enmeshment with her child and later suicide.
Oatmeal
Nadia's cat, who from the beginning of the series has been missing for three days. A combination of Nadia suddenly seeing him across the street and not looking where she's going caused her first death.____
- Living MacGuffin: At the start of the series, finding and caring for Oatmeal seems to be Nadia's only long-term goal in life. As with most cats, it's not entirely clear that he needs the help.
John
John Reyes
Played by: Yul Vazquez
A real estate agent and Nadia's ex-boyfriend. After their romance caused him to divorce his wife she broke up with him fearing things were getting too serious. He comes to the party trying to get back together with her. Chez
Chez Carrera
Played by: Sharito Copley
A con artist that Lanora had a relationship withAlan's Circle
Beatrice
Beatrice
Played by: Dascha Polanco
Alan's long time girlfriend. However, she fell out of love with him a long time ago and dumps him on the same night the loop starts. Agnes
Agnes
Played by: Carolyn Michelle Smith
Alan's grandmother with whom she never had much contact with- Foil: To Alan, in regards to his anxiety. They are both overachievers who are unsure of their place. It's telling that Alan doesn't change while being himself since the things Alan said are things Agnes could have said
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In the last episode Alan meets his grandmother in a sort of purgatorium if it was really her or just a product of both Nadia and Alan dealing with loss in their ways is left ambigious
Ferran
Ferran
Played by: Ritesh Rajan
The owner of a grocery store that knows Nadia and is a close friend of Alan.- Foil: To Alan, in regards to relationships. In one timeline, he admits to also have dealt with infidelity in his current relationship, but he and his girlfriend worked through it and even went to couple's therapy and are still together after that. Alan and his girlfriend have broken up once and it was a total disaster because of the infidelity and he refuses to seek therapy.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Subverted. He tried to keep Nadia away from a drunken Alan in the final timeline, unaware that she was the only one capable of stopping him from committing suicide, but once he leaves Alan in his apartment, Nadia is free from his interference and is capable of interacting with Alan freely.
Others
Horse
Horse
Played by:Brendan Sexton III
A strange homeless man that Nadia believes to have met before and has a strong desire to cut Nadia's hair, strangely holding very good hairdresser's tools. Mike
Michael "Mike"
Played by: Jeremy Bobb
A literature professor with whom Beatrice cheated on Alan with. He is a sleazy man who made a habit out of sleeping with his students.- Jerkass: Shamelessly sleeps with his students, even if they're in committed relationships.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: On the final timeline, Alan sends Beatrice a picture of Mike making out with Nadia, causing her to break up with him and tell his son what a Jerkass he is, after Alan had, in many timelines, mentioned how he never got any comeuppance for sleeping with his students and stealing his girlfriends.
- May–December Romance: Spends much of his time getting into the pants of his students, including Alan's girlfriend Beatrice.
