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Jonas's Cluster
Jonas
Jonas Maliki
Portrayed By: Naveen Andrews
A sensate of an earlier cluster who appears to each member of the main eight and guides them.
- Ambiguously Evil: Jonas' exact motives are hard to pin down. Is he atoning for working with Whispers? Did he work with Whispers? He convinced Angel to kill herself to protect the new cluster and tried to convince Riley and Will to do the same.
- Broken Pedestal: In Season 2 he makes a slow descent from The Mentor into this, to the point where the main eight give him a "with us or against us" ultimatum and then kidnap him when he seemingly makes his choice.
- Deal with the Devil: Makes one with the BPO in Season 2.
- Despair Event Horizon: Seems to have crossed this when Will makes eye contact with Whispers, telling him he's lost and Whispers has won.
- Determinator: Yrsa describes losing a cluster-mate as the worst pain she's ever experienced. Jonas himself is the last surviving member of his own cluster, but he's functioning well.
- Face–Heel Turn: He is eventually "turned" by BPO, having succumbed to despair. He serves the Chairman of BPO by keeping tabs on Whispers.
- Fantastic Racism: Downplayed, as he still considers sensates human (if a different kind of human), but is dismissive of 'regular' humans and their culture and very likely thinks they're incapable of true empathy. It's especially driven home by his constant use of the word "them" when describing normal humans.
- Generation Xerox: He tells Will that his relationship with Riley is very much like Jonas's own relationship with Angelica. Its also quite possibly mirrored by Kala and Wolfgang, but they haven't interacted with Jonas yet.
- Heroic Suicide: He is a firm believer in this in order to keep the cluster safe. He convinces Angel to do this at the beginning of the series, and almost convinces Will to do so as well in the Season One finale.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Zigzagged. The FBI considers Jonas a dangerous terrorist, but (as we see again with Nomi) the BPO's reach is wide enough to run a smear campaign to help capture him, which seems the case when he helps Will and Nomi. Of course, then Yrsa reveals that he and Angelica worked for Whispers, so he might not have ever precisely qualified as a hero.
- Humiliation Conga: Season 2 ends with him getting punched out by Sun and kidnapped along with Whispers.
- Last of His Kind: He reveals in "Obligate Mutualisms" that he's the last remaining member of his cluster. Some of them were killed by Whispers, the rest through other means such as Angelica's Heroic Suicide. With his death in the Grand Finale his cluster has been entirely wiped out.
- Meaningful Name: Possibly. Jonas can mean 'destroyer' or 'he who oppresses', which is fitting for a man who used his gift to hunt down other clusters for Whispers.
- The Mentor: He's the voice of experience to the main eight, as a sensate of a prior cluster, and the only one who can assure them that they aren't succumbing to psychosis.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the second episode he connects with Nomi during the Pride Parade and the shock of it causes her to fall off Amanita's motorbike. She's taken to the hospital which is how BPO become aware of her sensate status.
- Precision F-Strike: After two seasons of being relatively clean-mouthed, he gives a quiet "Oh fuck" at seeing most of the main cluster at his door to kidnap him.
- The Quisling: Becomes this in Season 2, if he didn't already qualify due to his shady past with the BPO and Whispers.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: The main eight punish him for betraying them to BPO by kidnapping him out of his flat.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
- A rare, non-fatal variation. After Will and Riley escaped Iceland, BPO no longer considers it worth the hassle to allow Jonas to visit Will. As such, they now keep him medicated to prevent him from visiting altogether. It's only in the rare moments where the meds wear off that he can contact Will or Nomi.
- Suffers this for real midway through Season 2. Almost.
Angelica
Angelica Turing
Portrayed By: Daryl Hannah
A sensate of another cluster whose suicide kickstarts the events of the series.
- Ethereal White Dress: Angelica first appears wearing a white dress, and is usually wearing the same outfit when she appears to the sensates she birthed after her suicide, emphasizing her mysterious and otherworldly nature as well as her angelic characteristics.
- Heroic Suicide: Angelica shot herself to prevent Whispers from getting other sensates through her.
- Love Triangle: Whispers's overly affectionate language, declaration that Angelica was lying about loving Jonas (and that it was "[their] little secret"), and the way he referred to her returning with him as 'coming home' suggests that either Angelica had an affair with Whispers or Whispers was romantically obsessed with her. Season two confirms the former, but leaves it ambiguous as to how genuine it actually was on either side.
- Meaningful Name:
- A blonde woman in white who appears in a vision? What else could she be called but Angel?
- Her last name of Turing could also qualify; the human brain is the greatest super-computer and she reprogrammed the main eights' brains by birthing them as sensates. Also, much like Alan Turing invented the first computer, Angelica used Whispers's research and technology to develop the neural graft, a machine intended to trace her psycellium connection to her sensate children, then used by Whispers to control lobotomized sensates as drones.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Angelica expressed a fear that "anyone else" would die because of her and Whispers says that she threatened suicide many times before the beginning of the series. This lends a fair bit of credibility to Yrsa's claim that she and Jonas were working for Whispers.
- Angelica seems especially horrified by the neural graft procedure that she helped develop, in particular when members of the first cluster she birthed were subjected to it.
- The Ophelia: At the end of her life, Angelica was fragile physically and emotionally, addicted to drugs to block Whispers, and dressed in flowing white.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Angelica was an ecologist but knew enough about robotics/bioengineering to develop the neural graft/drone procedure.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Her death creates the main cluster, empathetically linking them together. The first visions the eight share are of her death.
- Posthumous Character: She dies in the opening, but we see her numerous times in the echos she leaves on the cluster, and a lot of her actions in life have a huge impact on the cluster.
- Super-Empowering: Through great emotional duress, Angel (and presumably other sensates) can (and did) awaken a new cluster. Played rather darkly later on, as Yrsa claims Angel used her ability to birth new clusters so Whispers could hunt them down.
- The World Is Just Awesome: Before fleeing from Whispers, Angelica was said to have seen the beauty in everything to the point of being an ecologist. Fleeing Whispers took a heavy toll on this.
BPO
Whispers
Dr. Milton "Whispers" Brandt/Matheson/Friedman/Ellison/Gibbons
Portrayed By: Terrence Mann
A sensate who turned against his own kind. He leads a group of people who want to capture and experiment on or kill sensates.
- Beard of Evil: He has a white beard and is as bad as they come.
- Beneath the Mask: It's a thin mask to begin with, but in Season 2 we get to see just how much of a sociopath Whispers really is as Will pushes him further from his comfort zone than any sensate before him ever has. Through his brutal murder of Croome and Evil Gloating to Will in the last episode we see that Whispers don't so much care about power as much as sadism for its own sake.
- Big Bad: Played with in that while he is the main "face" of the organization hunting the eight mains, he is not actually in charge of said organization and there are men above him, namely the mysterious "Chairman". Though given that Whispers is a Dragon with an Agenda, a case can be made Whispers and the Chairman comprise a Big Bad Duumvirate.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Suffers from this to a degree, though it's at least partly due to things getting personal between him and Will.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Will confronts him about Sara Patrell, Whispers responds "Who?" It's made worse because he was her tutor when he kidnapped her.
- The Corrupter: BPO was founded as a way to help Homo Sapiens and Homo Sensorum coexist peacefully. Then its founder died, and Whispers joined on. It’s very different now.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Will basically stomps him into a mudpuddle at the end of Season 2. Of course, considering how he just finished promising to hunt down all the other sensates even if Will cooperated and kill Riley just for the pleasure of torturing Will with her pain, one feels no sympathy at all for him.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Whispers is invaluable to the Chairman due to his work on the BPO's "zombie program", but Whispers true goal with his experiments is to make himself immortal through transferring his consciousness into the sensates he lobotomizes.
- The Dreaded: Falling into Mr. Whispers's clutches is considered so awful that some prefer suicide to the possibility. Somewhat justified in that his organization radically lobotomizes the sensates they catch and he uses them as Meat Puppets. Plus, falling into his hands gives him access to other sensates through them.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Revealed in the Christmas special that he has a daughter and is quite possibly married. Downplayed, somewhat, in that he spends Christmas day tormenting Will instead of spending time with his family.
- Evil Brit: Never outright confirmed, but the fact that his wife and child are clearly both British citizens and resides in London, strongly implies this.
- Evil Counterpart: Narratively, Whispers is this to Jonas - they're both looking for the main eight for very different reasons. This extends to his abilities - somehow, through the lobotomy procedure he forces on potential sensates, he can turn them into his People Puppets.
- Evil Gloating: Loves to indulge in this in his particular Soft-Spoken Sadist way.
- Evil Old Folks: Terrence Mann is nearly twenty years older than even Naveen Andrews; Whispers seems to be about the same age, as he looks the same now as he did when Will was a child and witnessed what he did to Sara Patrell.
- Fatal Flaw: His Sadism and inability not to indulge in Evil Gloating eventually get the better of him.
- Faux Affably Evil: Has a tendency to tell his sensate prey he's looking forward to meeting them in the most terrifying way possible.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Adding to the motif of sensates needing to avoid his eyes, Whispers has clear spectacles in front of his dead hunter gaze.
- The Heavy: While Whispers isn't the head of the BPO, he effectively serves as the "face" of the organization since he's one of its most vital assets and the villain who personally squares off against the heroes.
- Humiliation Conga: Season 2 ends with him getting the tar beaten out of him and kidnapped by Will. In the finale, we discover that his wife has filed for divorce.
- Hunter of His Own Kind: Whispers ruthlessly exploits his ability to Visit other sensates through eye contact to use their senses and manipulate them into revealing the identities of the rest of their clusters.
- Hypocrite: His whole deal is that he is a sensate who killed off his whole cluster and now spends his time hunting down his own kind remorselessly, yet when he finds himself locked alone in a room with Will he pleads for Jonas, the only sensate he has any connection with left, not to leave him alone with Will, and is left mewling and terrified when Jonas proceeds to do exactly that.
- I Have Many Names: Besides Whispers, a name given to him by Angelica, he has gone under the alias Dr. Ellison, Dr. Matheson, and Dr. Friedmann. His superiors at BPO know him as Gibbons, and Carol Cumberland originally knew him as Dr. Milton Bailey Brandt. Dr. Metzger called him Milton when he was begging for his life, and Will also calls him Milton during the Christmas special, suggesting that is his true first name.
- Icy Blue Eyes: Besides the supernatural element to them, his eyes are pretty piercing on their own and underscores his job as a cold, calculated hunter.
- Immortality Immorality: The reason he jumped on the zombie plan is in order to make himself functionally immortal.
- It's Personal: Between him and Will.
- Lack of Empathy: Oddly for a sensate, but then that is what makes him the villain. He's basically The Sociopath with sensate abilities.
- Mad Doctor: Whispers, a medical professional, performs immoral medical experiments on his fellow sensates.
- Manipulative Bastard: He is quite good at getting people to move in ways that benefits his own plans.Jonas: Don't underestimate him, Will. He's very good at manipulating people.
- Morality Pet: Subverted with his family, as he still keeps on tormenting the sensates even when it puts his loved ones in harm's way. Being The Sociopath in literally every other way, it's debatable if he even really loves them at all.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: He's used the title of Doctor in three of his aliases; presumably, he actually has it, considering he was photographed as having met Metzger in medical school.
- Mortality Phobia: He developed this as a byproduct of killing his own cluster.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Another name he goes by in Sensate circles is The Cannibal.
- Non-Action Big Bad: What makes Whispers terrifying is his utter relentlessness and ability to break sensates down mentally (and physically, if BPO gets ahold of them), but in a straight-up fistfight he's just an old man with little to no combat training. When he and Will finally meet face-to-face in a soundproofed room, Will utterly curbstomps him.
- Oh, Crap!: His expression when Will shows up during his meeting with Croome is priceless.
- Politically Correct Villain: Despite trying to lobotomize her, Whispers never fails to use Nomi's proper pronouns and name, for some reason.
- Serial Killer: Has shades of this, being a sensate who hunts down his own kind as much for the joy of it as he does because it's his job.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: Appropriately for a man called Whispers, he rarely (if ever) raises his voice.
- Stepford Smiler:
- Yrsa called losing a cluster-mate the worst pain she's ever known. Whispers's entire cluster is dead and, according to Angelica, this troubles his sleep. However, given that he ate his own cluster to get stronger, that's sort of on him.
- It gets worse. Each time he killed a clustermate, he experienced his action twice: once as the murderer, once as the victim.
- Super Supremacist: Though it's downplayed compared to Lila, he does tell Will once that "you and I have more in common than you'll have with any sapien".
- Tom the Dark Lord: Paradise Lost allusions aside, Milton is not a threatening name, even if you stole his stapler.
- Torture Technician: Demonstrated at the end of Season 2 when BPO captures Wolfgang.
- Villainous Breakdown: He goes through a slow one throughout Season 2 as the heroes get closer to taking him down, becoming more willing to slaughter innocent people and even profanely yelling at his wife and daughter when he'd earlier proudly said they were a completely happy family.
- Villainous Crush: His language and demeanour in the opening scene serves to darkly mirror Jonas's love for Angelica - he calls her "my dear", calls her a liar when she tells Jonas she loves him (and refers to the lie as a secret between them as if they had a romantic history behind Jonas's back), and (despite the white van and men in Hazmat suits with guns) tells her that she's "coming home" rather than being abducted. He even brushes off her last threat of suicide the way an emotionally abusive lover would.
- Weak, but Skilled: Whispers is an old man with no combat skills, but when it comes to breaking down sensates he's second to none.
- White Hair, Black Heart: It's the result of age; that doesn't make him kinder.
- Worthy Opponent: Sort of with Will, in that he eventually (and begrudgingly) comes to respect Will as a threat but feels no inclination to treat Will any more courteously for it, and in fact, seems to hate Will for it, as things escalate quickly to It's Personal levels between them.
- Would Hurt a Child: Sara Patrell was barely ten, but Whispers hunted and dissected her like any other sensate.
- Wrong Context Magic: The sensate rules are not well-defined, true, but Whispers still shattered them over his knee through logical and brutal means. The lobotomy procedure Dr. Metzger performs on sensates is essentially a surgical execution - the result is an Empty Shell a trained Sensate such as Whispers can use as a People Puppet. By Visiting a lobotomized Sensate, Whispers can exert total control over all their actions despite their not being part of his cluster and there being no possibility of positivity or consent, simply because there's nobody home to disagree with his commands - even if he chooses to have them shoot themselves in the head.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: This happens to him early in Season 2, when Will manages to track him down and blackmail his then-boss Mr. Croome through him. Will demands he be put "on ice", a request Whispers implores Croome not to make, only for Croome to basically quote this line at him. But Whispers is quickly put back in action and ends up pulling this right back on Croome by using one of BPO's lobotomized sensates to assassinate him.
Carol
Carol Cumberland
Portrayed by: Janet Ulrich Brooks
A sensate who worked for BPO for multiple decades.
- Ambiguously Evil: Carol helps Riley and Will find Whispers, but she also assisted in a neural graft procedure on Raoul and kept him in her basement.
- The Atoner: The scars on her wrist imply she has been dealing with a lot of guilt over her involvement in the neural graft project.
- Properly Paranoid: Insists on meeting Riley alone, without physical or sensate company. It's implied Jonas drove her to suicide as retaliation for meeting with her at all.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Speaks in one episode (with a non-speaking cameo in another) before Riley and Diego find her dead in her bathtub.
Lila's Cluster
Lila
Lila Facchini
Portrayed by: Valeria Bilello
A sensate from Naples, Italy who belongs to another cluster, first introduced to Wolfgang as Sebastian Fuchs's right-hand woman.
- Ambition Is Evil: She might just be the most ambitious sensate we've met yet, and certainly proves herself to be one of the most evil when she sells out Wolfgang to BPO.
- Betty and Veronica: Is hinted at as the Veronica to Kala's Betty for Wolfgang, as she continuously seduces him mentally while he pines for the more chaste and distant Kala. Subverted, however, because Wolfgang ultimately stays loyal to Kala, and Lila was only trying to manipulate Wolfgang for her own aims.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: She seduces and betrays multiple Berlin crimelords in her quest for power.
- Dark Action Girl: Appears to be a proficient assassin who expertly wields guns, and she racks up a high body count in the series. It is unknown, however, how much of this is her innate ability, and how much of this skill is borrowed from a cluster mate.
- Fantastic Racist: Her ultimate goal is to kill the other crime lords of Berlin, and make it a safe city for sensates. She turns on Wolfgang when he rejects her offer to rule the city with her.
- Femme Fatale: She is first introduced sprawled on Fuchs's couch in a short dress, and then proceeds to continuously flirt psychically with Wolfgang. Later, she is also shown to be a highly effective killer.
- Insistent Terminology: She's Neapolitan not Italian, something she firmly corrects when Felix refers to her as the latter.
- Karma Houdini: Whereas Jonas and Whispers both get their comeuppance by Season 2's end, Lila escapes punishment.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: In the finale, she is killed by Wolfgang via rocket launcher.
- Manipulative Bastard: Plays people off of each other to get what she wants.
- Ms. Fanservice: Appears primarily in outfits that reveal her cleavage and/or legs, and is even naked (in Wolfgang's head) at points.
- Playing Both Sides: She plays multiple Berlin crimelords against each other, and later uses the BPO to take her revenge on Wolfgang.
- Smug Snake: At no point does she actually display anything other than sheer arrogance to Wolfgang and the rest of the characters.
- Standard Evil Organization Squad: Lila's cluster seems to be Obviously Evil, concerned primarily with survival and expanding their influence.
- Super Supremacist: She believes sensates can never coexist with sapiens, and wants to turn Berlin into a sensate-ruled city.
- The Unapologetic: Shows zero qualms about screwing others over when they don't give her what she wants, such as betraying Wolfgang's location to Whispers.
- We Can Rule Together: Offers this to Wolfgang.
- Wild Card: Her only true loyalty is to herself and her cluster. Berlin crimelords, Wolfgang, even BPO, Lila doesn't care. Though it doesn't stop her from cutting a deal with BPO when Wolfgang proves to be someone she can't control.
- Woman Scorned: After being rejected by Wolfgang.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Attempted on Wolfgang after he turns down her We Can Rule Together offer.
Maitake
Maitake
Portrayed by: Akira Koieyama
A sensate from Japan who belongs to Lila's cluster.
- Cool Shades: Wears his insanely cool sunglasses whenever he appears.
- Satellite Character: He is the most prominent of Lila's clustermates and appears to function as her right-hand man but gets no characterization beyond that.
The Lacuna
Bodhi
Bodhi
Portrayed by: Sarah Kants
A monk who visits Riley on a plane. She has a distinctive tree tattoo on the back of her skull.
- Bald Mystic: Her head is completely shaved, presumably due to being a monk. This allows her tree tattoo to extend onto her scalp. She also demonstrates unique Sensate abilities, such as blocking Riley from seeing her location during a Visit and being able to connect to the entire August 8 cluster despite only making eye contact with Riley.
- Jade-Colored Glasses: Seems like a kind person, but sees BPO as so evil that even trying to make a difference in the world will do harm.
- Meaningful Name: Her name is a Buddhist word meaning something along the lines of "enlightened". Fitting for a monk who is part of the Lacuna, a neutral council of sensates who merely oversee the global happenings.
- Neutral No Longer: In the finale, she decides that some evils are so monstrous that neutrality is tantamount to complicity, and brings her faction into that standpoint.
- Withholding Their Name: Considers Riley to be too close to "their [way of] thinking," and refuses to share much information with her. In the credits, they are named as Bodhi, a Buddhist concept, and her name is spoken aloud in "Amor Vincit Omnia".
The Mother
The Mother
Portrayed by: Ursula Jones
The leader of the Lacuna, an Impartial Purpose-Driven Faction that aims to pass on knowledge.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": She is only ever referred to as "the mother".
- Last Episode, New Character: She, along with the rest of the Lacuna, is introduced in the last episode of the series.
- My Greatest Failure: She's Whispers's sensate mother, and his betrayal scarred her so badly she left her life behind to become the Lacuna's leader.
- Small Role, Big Impact: She only appears in one scene, but is the one to lead the 8/8 cluster to Naples, setting up the final act of the finale.
Other Sensates
Sara
Sara Patrell
Portrayed by: Margot Thorne
A young girl who went missing when Will was a child.
- Creepy Child: In Will's visions of her, she appears as the age she disappeared, where she tells him not to tell anyone he's seeing her.
- Death of a Child: She was killed by Whispers as a child, which is clearly meant to be harrowing.
- That One Case: At the start of the series, Will hasn't ever really gotten over her disappearance.
- Posthumous Character: Will's father was never able to find her after she went missing, as she was killed by Whispers.
Yrsa
Yrsa
Portrayed by: Lilja Þórisdóttir
A sensate of an unknown cluster. She is a middle-aged Icelandic woman who seems particularly invested in protecting the sensates.
- Back for the Finale: She reappears in the Series Finale, leading Riley to Ruth El-Saadawi.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Yrsa manipulated a confused child into thinking she was hexed (giving her lifelong guilt issues and self-loathing) for the greater good of not letting her be dissected by Whispers.
- Jade-Colored Glasses: She doesn't have as glowing a view of sensate abilities as Jonas does. She also swore to never have children for fear they would inherit those abilities, and she also has extremely negative opinions regarding intra-cluster relationships, calling them narcissistic and pathological (whereas Jonas says Angel called it "love in its purest form").
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: She tried to protect Riley and get her out of Iceland by telling her she was hexed, causing Riley to struggle with crippling survivor's guilt and other kinds of emotional damage when bad things did start happening to her.
- Wham Line: Delivers one by telling Riley that Jonas and Angel worked for Mr. Whispers.
Puck
Puck
Portrayed by: Kick Gurry
A chemical engineer, possibly from Australia, and a hunter of clusters who are collaborating with BPO.
- Abhorrent Admirer: He's into both Sun and Riley, both of whom find him an unlikable creep.
- The Bogan: Australian and probably the crudest character in the whole cast.
- Captain Oblivious: He seems to think he's actually charming and not even Sun wrenching his toes back convinces him otherwise.
- Good Is Not Nice: He's fully on the main cluster's side, but is a complete jerk whom no one wants to deal with.
- Jabba Table Manners: Another tip-off for how gross he is is how disgustingly he eats the vongole in Naples.
- The Hedonist: His main use for his sensate abilities seems to be partying and/or sex. He does take the hunt for BPO collaborators seriously, though.Puck: Listen, I am a lover not a fighter. You guys want a Sens-orgy that circles the globe? I'm your guy.
- Rescue Sex: Discussed: he clearly expects this after getting Sun away from the police, but neither Sun nor Riley is remotely interested.
- Stalker with a Crush: Implied. By the time he meets Sun in Seoul, he seems to have dyed his hair to match Riley. When they meet him again in Naples, he's gotten a dark bob to match Sun.
The Old Man of Hoy
The Old Man of Hoy
Portrayed by: Sylvester McCoy
A veteran sensate and the Speaker of the global sensate Archipelago.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: In the finale, he considers shooting himself in the head a better option than getting captured by BPO, which would likely resort in torture, lobotomy, or death otherwise. Kirsty manages to talk him out of it.
- Cool Old Guy: A quirky old man and experienced sensate who lives in a beautiful estate in the Scottish Highlands. He and Kirsty quickly prove two of the most likeable characters in the whole show.
- Defector from Decadence: He was there when BPO was founded, but turned his back on it when it was corrupted after the death of its founder.
- Living Is More than Surviving: He's spent decades staying under the radar and it's tiring him out.
- Man in a Kilt: Wears a kilt in most of his scenes. There doesn't seem to be a reason for it beyond emphasising that he's Scottish.
- Mr. Exposition: In "Isolated Above, Connected Below", he serves to give Riley a rundown on BPO's history.
- Oh, Crap!: His reaction to realizing that Riley is a sensate... and that he has just linked himself to her. See Precision F-Strike below.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: He is only ever called the Old Man of Hoy
, and his real name is never revealed. - Precision F-Strike: His first line "Holy shit!" doesn't stand out much on the show itself, but after McCoy had spent a half-century spanning career always being kid-friendly, it's a huge shock.
- Properly Paranoid: After 30 years on the run from BPO, it takes a lot to convince him the August 8 cluster is trustworthy.
- Platonic Life-Partners: In his old age, he lives with the widow of one of his clustermates. According to him, they take care of each other.
- Tired of Running: He decides to help Riley because of this.
- Trilling Rs: Goes hand in hand with being played by Sylvester McCoy, naturally.
The Grafted
All
The Grafted are sensates who have undergone a surgical procedure that enables non-grafted sensates to control their actions, mimicking the natural ability of clustered sensates known as as "sharing". The surgery in question also lobotomises the patient, rendering them vegetated husks.
- Death of Personality: The lobotomising surgery effectively kills the people it is performed on. What is left is an empty shell with no agency or control over it's own actions.
- Fate Worse than Death: If Nomi's reaction to seeing what Bolger had become is anything to go by, she clearly believes it is this.
- People Puppets: The Grafted are able to be controlled by other sensates. It is usually Whispers.
- Person as Verb: The neural graft procedure is known to the August 8th cluster as being "Bolgered."
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: When a Grafted has been used to fulfil a given task, they're typically promptly disposed of by their controller, usually Whispers.
Bolger
Niles Bolger
Portrayed By: Tim Lajcik
A former sensate, subjected to the brain-destroying surgery that Dr. Metzger tried to force on Nomi.
- Ate His Gun: After shooting Metzger, Whispers makes Niles shoot himself through the back of the head.
- The Brute: The surgery Metzger did to Bolger allows Whispers to use him in this capacity to kill Metzger.
- Knight of Cerebus: Bolger serves as a physical embodiment of Whispers's return, highlighting his dangerous powers and ruthless approach.
- Person as Verb: "Bolgered" ends up being used as a term for others who've suffered the same procedure.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: By way of Ate His Gun.
- Walking Spoiler: No one (especially not Nomi) expected Bolger to be anything but an example of BPO's lobotomies, never mind seeing him act as a walking murder weapon for Whispers.
- What Could Have Been: In-universe. Nomi is brought to tears at the sight of Niles, literally saying, "That could have been me."
The Painter
The Painter
Portrayed by: Luisa Wolf
The female sensate seen painting in a museum.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: By way of Slashed Throat.
Angelica's First Cluster
The members of the first cluster birthed by Angelica, before the August Eighth Cluster, who were all taken by BPO and grafted.
Raoul
Raoul Pasquale
Click here to see after his lobotomy
Portrayed by: Erik Hayser
A sensate who was part of the first cluster Angelica birthed. He was also a reporter and had earlier interviewed Lito from before he became a sensate himself.
- Mercy Kill: It is actually Angelica who kills him; rather than have him commit murder and take his own life as is usually the fate of the Grafted, she uses him to destroy her research, hoping to prevent more Grafted from being created by burning down the cabin with him and the research inside.
- Never Found the Body: He disappeared years ago and no trace of him had ever been found.
- Posthumous Character: Those who know about his disappearance seem to have long since concluded that he is dead. Angelica killed him while she was still working with BPO, before the show started.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: By way of Self-Immolation.
- Self-Immolation: Angelica manipulates a lobotomized Raoul to burn down a cabin containing her research, while he remained trapped inside.
- Straight Gay: He had a sexual encounter with Lito, but showed no stereotypical traits of a gay man.
Todd
Todd McCarver
Portrayed by: Ben Cole
A sensate who was part of the first cluster Angelica birthed. He was also deeply religious, saw his sensate nature as an abomination and wanted to become an ordinary human.
- The Brute: He underwent the same procedure that Bolger did, with the same results. Whispers used him to assassinate MP Mitchell Taylor, staged as a mass shooting.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: He hated being a sensate and wished to be a regular human.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Under the control of Whispers, he opened fire during a lecture and tried to shoot himself before being apprehended. Soon afterwards he committed suicide in his cell.
Habib
Habib
Click here to see after his lobotomy
Portrayed by: Satya Bhaba
A sensate who was part of the first cluster Angelica birthed.
- All There in the Script: Only named in the ending credits.
