Characters / The Mist

The 2007 film

Main Characters

David

David Drayton

Portrayed By: Thomas Jane

• The Cassandra: Before the creatures of the mist are revealed to the trapped store customers, very few people believe David's warnings. Naturally, some of them learn the truth the hard way.
• Death Wail: He's left repeatedly howling and screaming in wordless grief for 34 seconds just after he kills Billy and his three other fellow survivors (per the latter three's consent) when they've given up hope. And then he lets out an even more anguished one when he discovers minutes later that he killed them for nothing and they would've found sanctuary if they'd waited for just a few more minutes.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Mercy Kill: He does this to all the remaining survivors, including his son, to prevent them from suffering a much worse death from the monsters. To add insult to injury, he soon finds out the military was right behind them.
• Only Sane Man: He is this throughout most of the movie, presumably until the end, after he finds out he killed his own son and three others for nothing.
• Papa Wolf: His highest priority throughout the movie is to keep his son safe.
• Sole Survivor: Assuming Bud Brown wasn't rescued by the military along with the survivors from Mrs. Carmody's group, he's the only one from his own group to survive.

Amanda

Amanda Dumfries

Portrayed By: Laurie Holden

• Adaptation Name Change: Her surname is changed to Dunfrey in the movie.
• Berserk Button: She is normally a harmless woman, but she can only put up with Mrs. Carmody's ravings for so long before she slaps her.
• Mama Bear: She is just as protective of Billy as David is.
• Nice Girl: Amanda is the ultimate empath. She constantly checks up on the emotional states of the other members of the group, looks after Billy, and is even nice to Mrs. Carmody at first.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Becomes the receiving end of this, as she originally doesn't believe that people can become so barbaric in such a short amount of time.

Ollie

Ollie Weeks

Portrayed By: Toby Jones

• Almighty Janitor: He's just a somewhat menial grocery store employee but becomes a leader during the crisis and is one of the most capable survivors.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: One of the lobster creatures in the mist tears Ollie apart when he and his group try to escape the store.
• The Lancer: Ollie quickly becomes David's number two, backing up and improving upon all his plans.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: He is normally rather meek and modest, but he proves to be very handy with a revolver.
• Only Sane Man: Probably even more so than David.
• Sympathetic Murderer: David literally said "thank you" to Ollie for killing Mrs. Carmody.

Jim

Jim Grondin

Portrayed By: William Sadler

• The Atoner: Tries to be this in the book. However, after seeing the headless guy in the pharmacy, he freaks out and runs away into the mist, where one of the monsters gets him.

From the looks of it, he may have been the one to let Bud Brown back into the store when the latter ran back in a panic. The fact that Bud was standing right next to Jim as the patrons were watching David and crew drive off supports this.

• Adaptational Villainy: In the book, Jim is, at worst, just a guy who talks big but is a wimp deep down, and tries (but fails) to make up for his cowardice. In the movie, he goes completely off the deep end and ends up joining Mrs. Carmody's cult.
• Dirty Coward: Jim's response to the crisis is cowardice. He talks big, especially when threatening David, but does nothing to help Norm, panics during the pharmacy run, and turning to Mrs. Carmody's cult so completely that he participates in sacrificing Jessup, and is perfectly willing to sacrifice Billy. All this out of fear.
• Face–Heel Turn: He joins Mrs. Carmody's cult after growing increasingly traumatized from the mist phenomena.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: He is reduced to a gibbering mess upon seeing the spiders hatch from the MP's body.
• Hypocrite: He originally mocks David for being a coward when Norm volunteers to investigate the generator outside, yet he does nothing but gape in terror when Norm is slowly attacked by tentacles. This only establishes how weak-minded he is throughout the movie.
• Jerkass: Is originally rude and aggressive toward David, but soon grows much more cooperative toward him and others. However...
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: After he joins Mrs. Carmody's cult he grows very hostile toward David and his group, including his best friend Myron, and even turns Private Jessup in to Mrs. Carmody after he mentions the Arrowhead Project.
• Karma Houdini: As far as we know, he never gets any sort of comeuppance for his actions, regardless of whether or not he let Bud Brown back in.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Clearly has this look on his face as he watches David's car drive by.
• Sanity Slippage: He grows more and more shell-shocked from the monsters and the deaths caused by them, before he finally snaps and joins Mrs. Carmody's cult.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the novel, he dies during the expedition to the pharmacy when he runs out into the mist and gets killed by something (most likely a spider), and it's his friend Myron who joins Mrs. Carmody's little cult. In the movie, though, Jim is the one who ends up siding with Mrs. Carmody, and consequently survives.
• Those Two Guys: With Myron.

Myron

Myron LaFleur

Portrayed By David Jensen

• Adaptational Heroism: Due to switching roles with Jim, Myron winds up on David's side instead of joining Mrs. Carmody's cult as he does in the book.
• Death by Adaptation: As a result of his Adaptational Heroism, Myron is killed by a Gray Widower when David's group tries to escape the grocery store. In the novel his fate is left ambiguous, as is the case with the rest of Mrs. Carmody's cult.
• Jerkass: Starts off very rude and hostile to David, though not quite to the same extent as Jim.
• Those Two Guys: With Jim.

Norton

Brent Norton

Portrayed By Andre Braugher

• Adaptational Attractiveness: Norton is described in very unflattering terms in the novella, but in the film he is played by the rather dashing Andre Braugher.
• Adaptational Heroism: Very slightly. Norton is noticeably sleazier in the novella than in the film, but dropping this aspect of his personality isn't quite enough to redeem him.
• Agent Scully: Norton's response to the crisis is denial. He refuses to acknowledge the extent of the present danger up until he leaves the store and (presumably) to his doom.
• Amoral Attorney: Averted. Norton is a successful attorney and an unpleasant person, but he's not evil.
• Asshole Victim: Assuming he didn't survive his journey outside the store, given he was knowingly Tempting Fate for the entire movie and closed everyone else (read: the "irrationals") off.
• City Mouse: Norton vacations in Bridgton from New York City, and is clearly not cut out for the country life. He demonstrates a lack of competence with his fancy chainsaw when attempting to chop up a felled tree, and he possesses a haughty disdain for the locals, who think just as little of him in turn.
• Jerkass: Despite a few rare moments of kindness, Norton is generally haughty, confrontational, and rude to David and the other locals.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: He does nothing to lighten the stressful situation that everyone trapped in the store is in, and only asks the "rational" people to join him for help.
• The Paranoiac: Norton is convinced that the locals, and especially David, are out to get him over a property dispute in his and David's past. This suspicion is part of what drives his unreasonable refusal to believe David and the others about the circumstances of Norm's death.
• Race Lift: Was white in the novel, but black in the film.
• Smug Snake: Norton is always convinced that he's right, and almost always turns out to be wrong.
• Straw Vulcan: Norton rejects out of hand the possibility that there might be monsters in the mist. While most of the survivors in the grocery store have the same reaction at first, Norton's skepticism quickly goes beyond the point of reason, and his subsequent decision to leave the store with a band of like-minded skeptics is blatantly unwise by any standard of risk analysis.
• Uncertain Doom: It's never shown just what happens to Norton after he and his group leave the market, but since one of them is almost immediately killed, the odds for the rest aren't good.
  • Behind the scenes, Greg Nicotero created a life size model of Norton with his back ripped open that was never used, which lends credence that his fate was sealed.
• Upper-Class Twit: He's a New York City Mouse Obstructive Bureaucrat Straw Vulcan who looks down his nose at the town's locals.

Carmody

Mrs. Carmody

Portrayed By: Marcia Gay Harden

• Adaptational Attractiveness: Beauty certainly lies in the eye of the beholder, but Marcia Gay Harden is quite not the old hag Mrs. Carmody is portrayed as in the book.
• Adaptational Sympathy: While her Holier Than Thou attitdue and flaunting of her religious faith and values is obnoxious from the offset, Carmody comes off as a slightly less awful person when first met in the movie, one who is frightened and conflicted by the crisis with the Mist that ends up bringing out the worst in her. Whereas in the book, she's an openly unpleasant and despicable person from the moment she first appears.
• Asshole Victim: The tears shed, in-universe and out, when Ollie shot Mrs. Carmody were either nonexistent or joyful.
• Ax-Crazy: Even prior to her Villainous Breakdown, she's still a religious Cloudcuckoolander. But afterwards, if you tick her off or disagree with what she believes, she will destroy you.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Ollie finishes her off.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Although she clearly wasn't planning to let him live, Mrs. Carmody reacts just as horrified as David when one of her followers starts stabbing a defenseless Jessup.
• Evil Luddite: She seems to think that any scientific advance past 1940 is an affront to God. Stem cells and abortions are surprisingly her last appeals to Science Is Bad, although she appears to be going roughly in chronological order.
  Mrs. Carmody: We are being punished! For what? For going against the will of God! For going against His forbidden rules of old! Walking on the moon! Or... or splitting His atoms! Or... or... or stem cells, and abortions!
• Female Misogynist: She calls Amanda a "whore" at one point.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Before the events of the film Mrs. Carmody was just another civilian who was an antiques store owner and the town's local Cloudcuckoolander for being Holier Than Thou, but once these monsters rampage through the streets, she becomes the human Big Bad with her cult made up of other survivors.
• Hate Sink: She's just a shrill, obviously insane, religious fanatic who looks down her nose at anyone who isn't as "righteous" as she is. She eventually whips an angry mob into a religious frenzy that results in the death of Private Jessup. It's nothing less than good riddance when Ollie finally puts two bullets in her gut and head.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Even in a story filled with krakens, giant man-eating lobster creatures, and acid-web-spitting spiders, she still manages to come across as the most vile and despicable character of them all. Most notably, David is his group decide they would rather risk going outside with the bugs than remain in the store with her any longer.
  Amanda: I'd rather die trying out there than waiting in here.
• Hypocrite: Denounces humanity (and particularly the humans that don't fall in line with her) as vain and prideful. Yet she visually basks in the attention she gets from her followers, even calling herself "Mother Carmody" and "God's vessel." All is revealed in David's final confrontation with her, where she demands his boy be sacrificed just to spite him. As the situation escalates, she demands Amanda too be sacrificed over an earlier slight, and eventually orders David's group killed for not following her.
  Mrs. Carmody: Kill them! Kill them all!
• Jerkass: On top of being a murderous extremist, she's also just a bitch even in regular conversation.
  Mrs. Carmody (to Amanda): The day I need a friend like you, I'll just have myself a little squat and shit one out.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Despite being nothing short of unpleasant, she did advise against venturing outside the grocery store, warning anybody who did leave that they would die out in the mist. Every group that attempted to escape was attacked, with fatalities occurring each time. Justified in that most of those who followed her most likely survived, or at least were not shown to have the same grim outcome as her naysayers did in the film adaptation.
• Karmic Death: She gets shot twice by Ollie, a member of the group she tried to have killed in the store.
• Knight Templar: Against anyone who doesn't have the same viewpoint as her.
• Multiple Gunshot Death: Ollie kills Mrs. Carmody by shooting her in the abdomen and then in the head.
• New England Puritan: She's a fundamentalist in a Maine town. She's typically not taken seriously by the town, but gains a following once the Mist engulfs the town.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: The crux of Carmody's following. She prophesies doom for every venture outside the supermarket, and correctly predicts an attack, but incorrectly posits that the Mist is the product of Biblical Armageddon, rather than a military mishap. The film goes to great lengths to show how she spins recent tragedies to fuel her growing following.
• Villainous Breakdown: While clearly insane, Mrs. Carmody remains rather collected for the most part, with the occasional aggressive outburst. However, it isn't until she catches David and the others trying to steal food and escape the store that she completely wigs out and screams for Billy, Amanda, and eventually the whole gang to be sacrificed to the monsters.
• Would Hurt a Child: Mrs. Carmody convinces her cult to sacrifice Billy in hopes of making the creatures lose interest in the cult. However, given that she was arguing with David during this time, this may have been more for personal gain rather than appeasing the creatures. Thankfully, Ollie kills her before they succeed.

Jessup

Pvt. Wayne Jessup

Portrayed By: Sam Witwer

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He's so horrified by one of the monsters that he turns to pleading for help from the very people who just stabbed him and threw him out to die. Subverted in the sense that the pleading directs audience antipathy towards the cult, rather than judging the character for cowardice.
• Canon Foreigner: There are only two soldiers in the book. Jessup is a character created for the movie.
• Human Sacrifice: Mrs. Carmody has her cult throw him to the monsters outside, resulting in his death.
• Nice Guy: One of the nicest characters by far.
• The Scapegoat: Instantly set upon by Mrs Carmody and her group when they find out about the Arrowhead Project, even though he was a low ranking soldier with no significant involvement in it.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Sally. Sadly, they both get killed by the creatures.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It's revealed that the creatures in the mist were brought to Earth thanks to a portal made by the Arrowhead Project which got messed up by some kind of storm.

Miller

Dan Miller

Portrayed By: Jeffrey DeMunn

• Composite Character: In the book, Dan and the man who ran into the store yelling that John Lee Forvin got taken by something in the Mist are two different characters.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the novel, he dies along with Mike Hatlen during the doomed expedition to the pharmacy. In the movie, he makes it to the Land Cruiser along with everyone else, but participates in the murder-suicide at the end after the vehicle runs out of gas.
• Doomsayer: He's the first character to see that there's something in the mist and survive. Unfortunately, after being questioned, he admits that while he heard a man scream after vanishing into the mist, he didn't actually see what it was that caused him to panic.
• Properly Paranoid: Quickly assuages the potential for Mrs. Carmody to stir up a mob and has little faith in the panicking people's ability to resist falling under her sway.

The Creatures

The TV Series

The survivors (for a time) of Bridgeville. Open the tabs at your own risk as Walking Spoilers lurk in the mist.

Main Characters

Kevin

Kevin Copeland

Portrayed By: Morgan Spector

• Bound and Gagged: Happens to him in Episode 6.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Kevin tries his best to be the hero. His efforts to not leave anyone behind and save everyone rather than shooting the dog sometimes work out, but just as often leave everyone in a worse shape than they started.
  • Him saving the prisoners leads to Connor abandoning them. If they hadn't found the second car, their quest would have been over then and there.
  • At the gas station, he lies to the man with the car to spare him the pain rather than tell him they have found the body of his son, resulting in the man not being willing to drive them to the mall because he wants to continue looking for his son.
  • In the hospital, he doesn't Mercy Kill his dying brother and instead tries to save him with a plan that is highly unlikely to work, endangering himself in the process and finally failing at the last second.
• Distressed Dude: Gets tied up and gagged in Episode 6.
• Papa Wolf: His motivation throughout the first season is to keep his family safe.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: A source of major character development: At the beginning of the season, he absolutely cannot take a life and Bryan suffers for it when the guy at the gas station shoots him in a struggle after Kevin had a clear shot at him. He then can't bring himself to Mercy Kill his suffering brother, instead enacting a crazy plan to save him that fails at the last minute and forces him to mercy kill him to spare him an even more agonizing death. Afterwards, he becomes more and more comfortable with violence, first killing the serial killer in the psych ward after having beaten him down, then beating Adrian within an inch of his life and finally ramming the car into the mall entrance, dooming everyone within.

Eve

Eve Copeland

Portrayed By: Alyssa Sutherland

• Good Cop/Bad Cop: As Eve puts it, Kevin allowing Alex everything has left her 16 years of playing Bad Cop, massively straining her relationship both to Kevin and to Alex.
• Mama Bear: Her actions in the mall are mainly driven by the desire to keep her daughter safe. Ironically, some of the more extreme ones rather put her in danger.
• Really Gets Around: Before settling down with Kevin, she was known as the town slut. This reputation still haunts her at key points of the story.

Alex

Alex Copeland

Portrayed By: Gus Birney

• Bratty Teenage Daughter: She's openly hostile to her mother since she considers her overprotectiveness merely projection from her own wilder days.

Mia

Mia Lambert

Portrayed By: Danica Curcic

• Action Girl: Together with Bryan, she provides the muscle for Kevin's group.
• Casual Kink: When a bruised character mentions he had sex, she advises him to remember his Safe Word the next time. Hers is "dolphin".
• Death Seeker: Despite being quite active when it comes to the survival of the group, she almost succumbs to an apparition of her mother wanting to "help her to die". She only survives because she realizes that now with Bryan, she has something to live for.
• Functional Addict: She abuses painkillers, but is one of the more effective members of the group, only going into severe withdrawal once.
• Recovered Addict: In the hospital, she undergoes a painful rapid detox. Time will tell whether it works.
• The Medic: While she doesn't do too much medicine herself beyond her painkiller abuse and a detox to combat it, she is valuable to the group for her knowledge about medicine and hospital procedures.
• Troll: Kevin asks if she can hotwire cars. She chews him out for assuming she could do it just because she was in jail and wonders if he'd like to ask the black guy next... before revealing that yes, of course she can hotwire cars.

Bryan / Jonah

Bryan Hunt

Portrayed By: Okezie Morro

• Amnesiac Costume Identity: Assumes his name is "Bryan Hunt" when he awakens in the woods in military fatigues, with no memory and a wallet of Hunt's in his pocket. He discovers the truth upon encountering the real Bryan Hunt at the hospital, being treated for injuries suffered when someone beat him up and stole his uniform.
• Identity Amnesia: His main problem.
• You Have to Believe Me!: When he stumbles into the police station, his rather rambling warnings about the mist lead to him being locked up first as a drunk and then as an AWOL soldier rather than listened to. Of course, the fact that he couldn't provide basic details about himself and wore a military uniform without being anywhere near anything military didn't help much.

Jay

Jay Heisel

Portrayed By: Luke Cosgrove

• Clear My Name: He is in fact innocent and tries to prove it. Unfortunately, he can't leave the mall or get at the results of the DNA test, severely limiting his options to do so and leaving him only with trying to befriend and save Alex which further aggravates her mother.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the season finale, he pulls Alex from a mist vortex and gets swept up in the same.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: He is the most flawless major character in the season. His worst actions were inviting (and mildly pressuring) Alex to drink with him before putting her to bed without watching over her. Other than that, he was consistently friendly and levelheaded, trying to do good when possible and withdrawing from the main mall group as soon as it hinted at going downhill. Nope, he doesn't make it.

Adrian

Adrian Garf

Portrayed By: Russell Posner

• Abusive Parents: His father hates him for being gay, and for how he dresses.
• Big Bad: Him raping Alex and blaming Jay is the catalyst for much of the social tension in the groups.
• Dirty Coward: Adrian has the tendency to use his "innocence" to manipulate others to save himself and be favored by Alex and whenever he is confronted or questioned for his actions he will beg or spill information to save his own skin.
• Faux Affably Evil: He acts polite and helpful, but in reality he's a repulsive psychopath.
• Narcissist: Adrian only cares if his desires are satisfied and would even kill or lie about what he does to get what he wants even raping Alex just to do so.
• Non-Action Big Bad: The revelation that he raped Alex doesn't make him any better of a fighter - except when he has a gun and his opponents don't, he still crumbles like wet tissue paper and wouldn't have survived up to this point if it wasn't for Kevin protecting him.
• Patricide: Kills his dad when he states that Alex only loves him till "someone can f**k her" to which Adrian shoots him and states he did. Considering that his father abused him, it can be understandable in a way.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Rapes Alex to frame Jay and have her for himself.
• The Sociopath: All that matters to him is satisfying his own desires. He'll act nice when it suits him, but he'll dispense with the act when it no longer suits him.
• Stalker with a Crush: It turns out that he is obsessed with Alex to the point that he raped her, then set up Jay to be blamed, for fear of Jay "taking her away" from him. Despite the rape, it seems he mostly wants a platonical relationship with her to make up for his lack of family.
• Walking Spoiler: With the revelations of episode 8, it becomes rather hard to talk about him without revealing that he raped Alex and left Kevin for dead.

Nathalie

Nathalie Raven

Portrayed By: Frances Conroy

• Big Bad: Graduates into the role somewhen after winning her trial by ordeal - roughly at the point where she douses the church in gasoline and has it set on fire with some of her followers still inside because they wouldn't join her on her way to the mall.
• Decomposite Character: Takes over the cult part of Mrs. Carmody.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Starting with seeing a fellow survivor grow moth wings when exposed to the mist, she starts to revere the mist. When she puts her "death is beautiful" philosophy into practice, the bodycount starts going way up.
• No-Sell: On both sides of it. First, she appears to be immune to the supernatural effect of the mists in her trial by ordeal. When she arrives in the mall, she tries to establish her cult once more. Since she has very little time to do so and can't use the events in the church to her advantage, she fails utterly and is disregarded as a babbling lunatic.
• Non-Action Big Bad: The most physical action she ever gets into is breaking a window and running out of the room to escape (and doom) Link when he tries to convert or kill her.
• Religion of Evil: Her cult begins innocently enough, until her research leads her to conclude the mist is Gaia's Vengeance, which she is happy to help along.

Romanov

Father Romanov

Portrayed By: Dan Butler

• Dirty Coward: By his own admission he was too weak to stand up to Link when he suggests murdering Mrs. Raven to silence her and makes no attempt to stop him carrying it out.
• Face Death with Dignity: Attempts this during his trial by ordeal (although he hoped God would protect him and Mrs. Raven would be taken instead.) It quickly fails when he's impaled in the chest by an arrow and dragged screaming into the mist.
• Sinister Minister: Averted. Although he believes the Mist is the Day of Judgement, he's open to the possibility that it might not be. He is a genuine man of faith who is very concerned for his flock, but doesn't resort to extremism to try and bully them into submission. His main flaw is being too meek to stand up against Mrs. Raven or his own disciple, Link.

Gus

Gus Redman

Portrayed By: Isiah Whitlock, Jr.

• Dirty Coward: His main character flaw that in the end allows the situation of the mall to go to hell. He tries to do good, but fails to take responsibility for his own misdeeds (that would likely see him cast out of the mall). The first time it is hinted at is when he, one of two people best qualified to go get the radio, insists on a lottery instead. The major two instances occur when he tries to make Shelley confess that she doesn't actually believe Alex is guilty of anything and she shuts him up by revealing she knows about his hidden food stockpile. Rather than letting her blackmail him, he kills her and upon her body being found, claims that Alex did the deed.
• Karma Houdini: He actually seems to survive the season one finale, holing up in his office with his stockpiled food supply.