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Main Characters:
Elena Federova
Played By: Morena Baccarin
Known leader of the Skazka o Myortvoy Tsarevne from Belarus of Brazilian origin.
- Anti-Villain: Her plans, so far, involve exposing corrupt people.
- Big Bad: She's the leader of a criminal syndicate and the mastermind behind the plot.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Elena's father was killed in a rocket attack when she was a child, and she herself almost died when the attacker stabbed her in the stomach. Later a bombing which struck their wedding left her and her husband as the only survivors.
- Deadpan Snarker: In "Sleepover", Elena snarks on Val finding a dagger and scabbard and asks if they should it when they take on Crowe aka Ghost in case he's a musketeer.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: Elena is Belarusian/Brazilian and has a criminal operation with people of many different backgrounds in her employ (white, black, Latino etc).
- Evil Laugh: Elena does this at the end of "Fairytale Wedding", after Sergey tells her a joke via morse code.
- Expy: She's the head of an international criminal organization with loyalty to no country, she's always ten steps ahead of everyone, she's from the former Soviet Union, and when the series begins she allows herself to be captured by the FBI so that she can manipulate them into taking down her enemies. Simply put, she's Raymond Reddington.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Invoked by herself. She sees herself as a hero exposing corruption while claiming the spoils of war, even telling her daughter that her obvious stand-in in the story she was telling her had "justice" on her side.
- "Not So Different" Remark: She tells Val that they're alike.
- Reading Lips: What Val and Doblin suspect in "#1 with the Bullet".Doblin: (after getting a note from Val that the fugitive wishes to speak to Elena)' Call Agent Turner. Tell her to instruct the SWAT snipers to blow the fugitive's brains out.Elena: Stop!Doblin: I guess you can read lips.
- Sensual Slavs: Elena is a gorgeous, glamorous and sultry woman who's introduced in a very nice dress, smiling with false charm at her interrogators as she plays mind games against them.
- Villain Protagonist: Elena is one of the two co-leads alongside Val, and the series is just as much about what made her into what she is as it is about Val facing her. Downplayed in that, while she initially seems to be the Big Bad, she's actually A Lighter Shade of Black, focused on exposing corruption within the United States Government as revenge for the bombing of her wedding while stealing the Federal Gold Reserve, the actual Big Bad being President Andrew Wright, and the Greater-Scope Villain being the Beloks.
- Villain with Good Publicity: By the end of "Bury the Lede", she seems to be on her way of becoming this.
Val Turner
Played By: Ryan Michelle Bathe
An FBI agent who gets involved in investigating Elena.
- Experienced Protagonist: She's a seasoned FBI agent at the start of the show.
- Ignored Expert: Val tries to warn her superiors that Elena's plans are way more complex than simply robbing banks, but since she has a bad reputation after her husband was convicted, her superiors ignore her until it's too late.
- Not So Similar: In response to Elena's "Not So Different" Remark.
- Prim and Proper Bun: Starting in "Fairytale Wedding", Val starts wearing her hair up in a bun.
FBI:
Anthony Flowers
Played By: Jordan Johnson-Hinds
- The Watson: His initial role was to serve as someone for Val to explain her reasoning behind Elena's actions to, with him in turn questioning the thought processes. He starts to move past this though the longer he works with Val, coming to understand Elena's thought process himself, and instead having his role shift to functioning as Val's Morality Chain as Elena continually tries to make Val see her way of thinking.
ADIC Jonathan Doak
Played By: Noah Bean
- Ambition Is Evil: Doak's defining trait is his ambition and drive to climb the political ladder, even at the expense of everyone around him. This prompts him to make numerous questionable actions and overlook blatant corruption in the name of progressing his career. Réal warns him that this ambition will be his doom one day, but he refuses to listen. Réal and Anthony both speculate that he's now aiming to blackmail President Wright now that it's evident how corrupt he really is.
- Break the Haughty: When he thought he was close to death in "#1 with a Bullet". Also Doblin orders him to listen to Val from now on since she has more insights and access to Elena than anyone else.Doak: (scoffs) That sounds like a demotion.
Doblin: It's reality, Doak. - Heel Realization: After spending a long time caring more for climbing the political latter over anything else, Doak finally stops to think for a second upon realizing Head of Secret Service Gallows is involved with the theft of the Federal Gold Reserve, not Elena, meaning by proxy, President Andrew Wright, the man offering to make him interim Director of the FBI, is just as corrupt as Elena's other targets. Réal even lampshades it by invoking All That Glitters. It doesn't get him to have a Heel–Face Turn though, but instead changes his ambition.
- It's Personal: With Elena after the humiliation inn "#1 with a Bullet".Doak: (to Elena) I'm gonna destroy you.Elena: He looks like he's had a hell of a day.
- Jerkass: Towards Val, even before the Federova incident.
- Never My Fault: Anthony spent an entire night trying to get in contact with people, Doak included. But while Val and Réal have the excuse of suffering a power outage and dealing with a rogue CIA agent, Doak was actively ignoring Anthony's calls in favor of celebrating liberating the bank. When Réal calls him out on this, he tries to instead switch topics and berate Val by claiming the guards died because Elena was being kept at the base in the first place. Réal isn't having it though, and demands Doak provide a full account on what the hell he was doing that night.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In "#1 with a Bullet", he revealed that when he was a junior agent who worked on a smuggling case in Venezuela. He was told by his superior to let a kid go because he was just in the "wrong crowd", and that kid ended up running a drug ring a few years later. And a lot of people died, most of them teenagers. This is the reason why he's a blowhard, because he doesn't want something like that to happen again. For that, he believed he was the next target.
- Token Evil Teammate: While "evil" is harsh, he's the member of the taskforce that's the most unpleasant, constantly berating Val even after he's told to follow her lead, favoring more unscrupulous methods in fighting Federova's forces, and lacking any sympathetic traits outside of his backstory.
Rogelio Réal
Played By: Mark D. Espinoza
- Token Good Teammate: Of the various authority members that confronted Elena upon her arrival, he was the only one to not be corrupt in some manner, and in turn not be subjected to Elena's tactics.
Government:
Andrew Wright
President of the US.
- Impaled Palm: Courtesy of Lady Belok in "Happily Ever After".
- President Evil: He was part of the group that bombed the church, and had stolen the gold from the reserve and replace them with gold-painted clay bricks.
Reed Doblin
Played By: Kelly AuCoin
US Attorney General
Joan Bradbury
Played By: Jenna Stern
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
- Corrupt Politician: Joan Bradbury turns out to be a corrupt official who's taken money from a Mexican drug cartel boss in exchange for information on federal operations against him.
Family:
Sergey Vodianov
Played By: Costa Ronin
Owen Turner
Played By: Kamal Angelo Bolden
- Ambiguously Evil: He was framed by Elena, but he's still working with her and Sergey while in jail.Elena: (to Val) May I suggest you reframe your outlook on Owen. Maybe his involvement is for a good reason.
- Frame-Up: Val's husband is serving time in prison for theft when he was an FBI agent, though he'd actually been framed by Elena.
- The Mole: He turns out to be this for the FBI in both infiltrating Elena's faction and investigating the President's connection with the Belok in "Happily Ever After". However, Sergey and Elena had known all along, and the only reason they saved his life was because he (and his wife whom he told them about) could be useful.
Antagonists:
Natalia aka Lady Belok
- Greater-Scope Villain: Lady Belok's responsible for ensuring Wright gets into power as the president.
- Moral Myopia: Despite her father and sister trying to kill Elena as a child, she hates Elena for killing them and "ruining her life", prompting her to bomb the church in an attempt to kill her, setting Elena's revenge crusade into motion, including stealing from the Belloks. This just prompts her to kidnap Elena's daughter and kill her husband, all while claiming that justice is on her side.
- You Have Failed Me: When President Wright finds Lady Belok inside his office to personally berate for him for failing to eliminate Elena he immediately attempts to talk her out of killing him. Luckily, Lady Belok still has use for the President, but she stabs his hand through a desk and bluntly says he owes her for this mercy.
