Characters / The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Main Group

Reynard "Reynie" Muldoon

Played by: Mystic Inscho

• All of the Other Reindeer: He's faced ostracism for other kids for his smartness.
• Anxiety Dreams: Reynie is sometimes prone to these in response to his worries about the Society's missions.
• Bookworm: Reynie loves to read.
• Gender-Blender Name; Maybe not the formal one, but since it's compounded by his actor's name, to be clear for those coming in Mystic Inscho as Reynie Muldoon is a boy.
• Happily Adopted: By his tutor Miss Perumal at the end of the first book.
• Race Lift: Although Reynie's race isn't explicitly stated in the books, he is described as pale and all the illustrations depict him as white. In the show, however, he is played by the mixed-race (Chinese and white) Mystic Inscho, who also has a noticeably tan complexion.
• The Nondescript: Towards the beginning of the first book, he is described as being "...the least noticeable of boys. He was of average size, of an average pale complexion, his brown hair was of average length, and he wore average clothes." Later in the same book, he and Kate are spying on activities in the gym at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened when he is suddenly spotted by S.Q. Pedalian. However, he doesn't get caught because, as Kate explains...
  They were questioning students when Constance and I came down the hill. Nobody saw you. Jackson asked us and we told the same story. He was yelling at S.Q.: "Is that really the best you can say? An average-looking boy? An awful lot of boys are average-looking, S.Q.!" And, poor S.Q., he just kept arguing that this boy was especially average-looking. Jackson seemed ready to strangle him.

Kate Wetherall

Played by: Emmy DeOliveira

• Action Girl: Out of all the main kids, she is the most adept at physical ability, including fighting.
• Iconic Item: Her red bucket, which she is seldom seen without.
• Parental Abandonment: Her mother died and her father ran off. Subverted with her dad. He didn't intentionally run off, he just had amnesia.
• The Runaway: She ran away to the circus after her father disappeared.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: She wears her hair in a long ponytail.

Constance Contraire

Played by: Marta Kessler

• Acting Your Intellectual Age: Averted. Constance is a genius for her age, being able to articulate, read, write and grasp concepts on the same level as the rest of the Society that are around ten years older than her, but emotionally, her attitude and personality is appropriate for a kid her age: stubborn (since toddler-age is the time most children first form hard opinions), immature, and prone to pushing the buttons of the other members. This disconnect is discussed in The Perilous Journey.

  She might be a budding genius, but her emotions were still as complicated and ungovernable as those of any child her age. So while on the one hand Constance wanted to be pleasant, courteous and helpful, on the other she was inclined to be argumentative and grumpy, and indeed this was the sort of behavior that came most naturally to her.

• Alliterative Name: Her given name and surname both begin with "con-".
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Hates being felt sorry for in the initial trilogy due to her independent nature.
• Embarrassing Nickname: "Connie-girl", by Kate.
• Improbable Age: She looks and acts like a 6-8 year old but only turns 3 at the end of the first book.
  • She appears to be older in the show, presumably due to the impracticalities of casting an actual 3-year-old.
• Non-Residential Residence: Her backstory is that she flees from an orphanage before she can be taken away from it by the Ten Men, known at the time as Recruiters. She then takes a bus to a public library as far away from there as the lines go and discovers an unlocked storage room with a stack of dusty boxes labeled "To be processed when funding is approved" that look like they haven't been touched in years. She then spends months hiding there, sleeping there at night and having the run of the library. By day she comes out rarely, only coming out when the library is busy, so that any casual observers assume that she's with someone, i.e., "the young woman over in nonfiction might be her mother." She survives on snacks scavenged from the library breakroom, but is careful never to take too much, both out of fear of being noticed and as a kindness to the staff. When they start leaving mousetraps, she springs the traps and eats the cheese. She also manages to find the key to the vending machine, but again is careful not to take too much. This continues for several months before she finally leaves in response to Mr. Benedict's ad - "Are you a gifted child seeking special opportunities?"
• Punny Name: Constance Contraire is, fittingly enough, constantly contrary.
• Rhymes on a Dime: She likes to rhyme a lot.
• Sensor Character: Beginning with the second book, The Perilous Journey, Constance can usually sense other people's presence or when someone is coming and can usually figure out who it is as well. This saves the Society's bacon more than once when she detects the presence of the villainous Mr. Curtain's agents, the Ten Men. She's not sure how she does it, though she says it may have to do with what Mr. Benedict told her about her being good at recognizing patterns.
• The Runaway: She ran away from her orphanage to avoid the Ten Men.
• Sleepyhead: Sleeps excessively in the first book, including during class and in meetings of the Society. This is due to her being a toddler, and therefore needing more sleep than the others.
• Younger Than They Look: She's three but looks a few years older.

George "Sticky" Washington

Played by: Seth Carr

• Abusive Parents: His parents start out financially abusive, but they later change their ways after he runs away.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the television series, he moved to live with his aunt and uncle after his parents died and it was they who abused him financially. In the books, his parents are both still alive.
• Bookworm: He reads a lot, helped by his photographic memory.
• Cowardly Lion: Sticky ran away from his parents, often grows jittery or tongue-tied under pressure, and is afraid he'll never live up to his real name, George Washington. However, he always comes through for his friends, such that Reynie is proud to call him one of the bravest people he knows.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": He doesn't believe his name fits him. In The Riddle of Ages, he begins, however, to insist that his friends call him by it because he's trying to be more adult, yet it still doesn't feel right to him and he's secretly happy when they slip up and call him "Sticky." He decides at the end to go by "George" when introducing himself to new people, but his friends should call him "Sticky."
• Omniglot: Sticky is able to read numerous languages, but has trouble actually speaking anything besides English. In The Perilous Journey, the group encounters a man that they need to ask how to get to the train station, who speaks Portuguese. Sticky hands him a note written in Portuguese, only for them to discover that he can't read and doesn't speak English. Reynie, however, speaks rudimentary Spanish and as the man does too, this is enough to get them what they need.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Everyone calls him "Sticky".
• Photographic Memory: He has one, which his parents used to their advantage in contests.
• The Runaway: He ran away from his overbearing parents. They end up reuniting at the end of the first book.
• Starbucks Skin Scale: He's described as having "light brown skin the very color of the tea that Miss Perumal made each morning."

The Adults

Mr. Nicholas Benedict

Played by: Tony Hale

• Adaptational Attractiveness: The illustrations in companion material for the books depict Mr. Benedict as having messy gray hair, perma-stubble and nicks on his face due to poor shaving because of his sleeping fits, a lumpy nose and unattractive asymmetrical glasses that seem to be designed to fit properly on the unusual nose. All of this is a fair match for the way the character is described in the text of the books. The TV character has none of these things and Tony Hale is himself reasonably attractive.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the television series, he actually knew his brother, Nathaniel as a child when they were together in an orphanage. He was adopted by a family who was only able to adopt one child and promised to come back for his brother, but was never able to, which ended up being his greatest regret and something that Nathaniel, now "L.D. Curtain," resents him for as an adult. In the original novels, he and his brother were split apart at a very young age, such that he never even knew he had a twin until he sees his brother on Nomansan Island through the spyglass.
• Bookworm: As a child, Mr. Benedict loved reading, but had access to few books, and was mostly left to scrounging for newspapers. Simply reading a dictionary was for him a real treat. When he moved to a new orphanage, his delight at discovering it had a massive library was matched only by his bitterness and disappointment that only a very limited amount of free time was allowed each day for reading and that he couldn't get permission to borrow books to take up to his room. He eventually discovered that the library was the treasure of the wife of the former owner of the manor that became the orphanage, and managed to negotiate a deal to be allowed to read as much as he wanted.
• Omniglot: Like Sticky, he is able to pick up on languages from reading them in books and from context clues. In the prequel book, The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict, he meets a girl and comes to the realization that she is deaf. When he meets her the next day, he communicates with her using sign language learned from a book he read the night before. She is astonished and is sure he is somehow pranking her until she realizes that as the conversation continues he is fluently using signs that wouldn't be in any book because they're personal signs she normally uses only with her own family.
• Parental Abandonment: He's an orphan.
• Photographic Memory: He's only shown using it in the prequel, however.
• Sleepyhead: Due to having severe narcolepsy, he falls asleep upon feeling strong emotion, usually in response to joy or laughter, but also in response to severe sadness.

Rhonda Kazembe

Played by: MaameYaa Boafo

• Cloudcuckoolander: Subverted. She looked this was originally, but it was a disguise during the Secret Test of Character.
• Child Prodigy: She was one as a child.
• Happily Adopted: By Mr. Benedict.
• Older Than They Look: She can pass as a child with just a clothing change.
• The One with a Personal Life: Unlike Number Two, Rhonda is shown having a life outside of her work for Benedict, once going to vandalize pro-Emergency billboards in the city. It cause a lot of tension between both, until they both go vacationing together at the end.
• Photographic Memory: It's implied that she has one.

Number Two

Played by: Kristen Schaal

• Child Prodigy: She was one as a child.
• Embarrassing First Name: Pencilla.
• Happily Adopted: By Mr. Benedict.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: "Number Two" is her codename as an agent to Mr. Benedict. It's also a Punny Name as she's often described as resembling a pencil.
  • In the series, it's revealed that "Number Two" actually is her real name, and her mother addresses her as "Number."

Milligan

Played by: Ryan Hurst

• Luke, I Am Your Father: He is Kate's amnesiac father.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: He initially doesn't know his real name. Curiously, even once he gets his memory back (as well as access to his old household and records), he still goes by "Milligan," and his real name is never even mentioned.
• Meaningful Name: His name is actually a reference to a memory he had of taking his daughter to the mill and promising that they would go to the "mill again" since they had so much fun there. When his memories are wiped, the last two words of his promise are all that remain.

Antagonists

Mr. Curtain

Played by: Tony Hale

• Children as Pawns: This is pretty much his modus operandi. He views children as nothing more than tools that he can use to broadcast the messages of his Whisperer, or serve as his Executives. Any children that try to act against him he claims to regard as gnats who can't do anything real against him though secretly he's scared.
• Evil Cripple: He uses a wheelchair and is the main villain. Subverted because he merely uses the wheelchair to hide his narcolepsy.
  • Specifically Averted in the show.
• Evil Twin: He's Mr Benedict's long-lost evil identical twin.
• Heel–Face Turn: In The Riddle of Ages he cooperates in the plan to trick his former subordinates into being jailed in the KEEP and while he still has a ways to go, Mr. Benedict is confident that he will turn his talents towards good.
• Parental Abandonment: He's an orphan.
• Related in the Adaptation: In the television series, S.Q. is Mr. Curtain's adopted son.
• Sleepyhead: Like his twin brother, he too has narcolepsy, but unlike Mr. Benedict, his trigger is anger. Often within the first book, thanks to his sunglasses and wheelchair, it only appears as though he's calming himself down after something angers him, but it turns out he falls asleep during those moments.

S.Q. Pedalian

• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Surprisingly, S.Q. is this to Curtain.
• Ignorant Minion: For most of the series, S.Q. is unaware that Curtain doesn’t actually have the world’s best interests at heart.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: When he does become aware of the extent of Curtain’s wickedness, he still refuses to abandon him.
• Obliviously Evil: Goes with being an Ignorant Minion.
• Sympathy for the Hero: Always tries his best to be nice to the Society members even though he knows he’s not supposed to. Especially prevalent in Prisoner’s Dilemma.
• Token Good Teammate: The only person working for Curtain who is genuinely kind-hearted.

Jackson and Jillson

• Ambiguous Situation: In both the books and the show, whatever these two have going on is never explicitly confirmed. Are they siblings? Are they dating? Are they best friends? The show casts actors who bear a heavy resemblance to each other — they are both pale-skinned white people with dark hair. And they dress identically, making them seem like twins. But then they start saying sweet, romantic-sounding stuff to each other, which results in Mr. Benedict and Number Two looking at each other in confusion.
  The children had never determined if [Jackson and Jillson] were brother and sister, boyfriend and girlfriend, or simply partners in crime. They didn’t even know them by names other than Jackson and Jillson — which could have been first names, last names, or nicknames.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Apart from dressing identically, they also do this, making them seem like a single entity rather than two separate individuals.
• Stepford Smiler: In the show, they put on a Faux Affably Evil persona that isn't very convincing, and simply creeps out our heroes.