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The Immortals
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From left to right: Joe, Booker, Andy, Nicky, and Nile
Though each immortal is a unique individual, they do have a few commonalities.
- Action Heroes: All of them are this to various degrees. Andy's been fighting for the longest, but Joe, Nicky, Nile, and Booker were all proficient fighters even before they acquired their immortality.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: The main characters' attractiveness in the comic ranges from moderately above average to outright Gonk. In the film, they're all played by absolutely stunning actors.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Andy, Nicky, and Joe were all born and trained in a time before the invention of guns, and as such they each carry a bladed weapon with them in combat.
- Badass Crew: It seems as though one of the prerequisites for immortality is to be some form of soldier or warrior — all the immortals were notable soldiers or part of one of the most powerful fighting forces of their time, such as the crusader armies, Napoleon's forces, or the US Marine Corps — and with hundreds more years of fighting together they have all become brutally efficient and work together like a well oiled machine.
- Badass Family: Of the Family of Choice variety. They're all brilliant soldiers, and they've spent hundreds of years being each other's found family.
- Been There, Shaped History: The immortals spend a hefty chunk of their time involving themselves in human conflicts, trying to help out those in need where they can. Copley's huge board shows only a small fraction of their effects on human history.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Their only actual power is their ability to rapidly heal from any injury (including what should be lethal ones), but centuries of practice and being able to make and learn from lethal mistakes have given them all inhuman combat skills.
- Cultured Warrior: They are all hyper-competent warriors, but are also shown to have an appreciation for the finer things in life: Booker is excited by a first edition copy of Don Quixote, Andy can identify the geographic origin of a piece of baklava from a single bite, Joe is an extremely skilled artist, and all of them are eloquent and philosophical, especially Nicky. Even newly-immortal Nile shows she fits right in when she recognizes an Auguste Rodin sculpture on sight.
- Establishing Character Moment: When the team is first seen together at the hotel in Marrakesh, their love and affection for one another as well as their individual personalities are quickly shown:
- Andy identifies the ingredients and geographic origin of a piece of baklava with a single bite, establishing that she is the most experienced and well-travelled of the team; furthermore, she is reluctant to accept Copley's job, as she has become so disillusioned with the world that she doesn't believe what they do matters any more.
- Nicky is the quietest of the team, showing his affection for Andy through a long, tight hug and a gift rather than words. But when Andy is reluctant to meet with Copley, he is the one to point out that they can "do some good" and that this is what they do.
- Joe lifts Andy off her feet when he hugs her, and laughs loudly when Nicky loses his bet with Booker, which shows that he wears his heart on his sleeve.
- One of the first things Booker does is add alcohol to his tea. He is also the only one who doesn't hug Andy, showing his emotional distance and hinting at his eventual betrayal.
- Family of Choice: More like family of necessity. Due to their circumstance, they can only really form emotional bonds with each other, seeing as they will eventually outlive everyone else in their lives. That being said, after having been together for hundreds of years, there is genuine love and familial affection in their relationships with each other.
- Foil: The team of immortals has several examples.
- Andy, who is thousands of years old, contrasts with the newest immortal Nile, who is in her 20s.
- Joe and Nicky, for whom Living Forever Is Awesome because their immortality allowed them to find redemption from their religious hatreds and eventually fall profoundly in love, versus Andy and Booker, whose immortality comes with unbearable loss.
- Joe and Nicky themselves make a Red Oni, Blue Oni pair.
- Four-Philosophy Ensemble:
- The Cynic: Andy, deeply so thanks to her thousands of years of life and deep personal losses.
- The Optimist: Nicky, who firmly believes the immortals are meant to do good in the world.
- The Realist: Joe also advocates for the team to do good, but in practical terms. He's also more strongly motivated by personal relationships with the others than by abstract ideals.
- The Apathetic: Booker, who has checked out so completely that he betrays the team to Merrick in the hopes of finding a way to simply end his life. Even when Nile comes to rescue them, he asks to be left behind.
- The Conflicted: When Nile joins, she is The Conflicted, and part of her character development is figuring out how to resolve the conflict (eventually landing close to The Optimist).
- Healing Factor: Though their immortality relies on them being able to literally come back from the dead, they do also have an impressively advanced healing factor. Nile manages to heal an open break in her arm in about a minute, and Joe survives multiple stab wounds by healing in seconds. It's when a comparatively small wound is still there after an entire day that Andy realizes her immortality is gone
- Mortality Ensues: As seen with Lykon and Andy, eventually the immortality does wear off for reasons unknown, leaving them vulnerable to natural death.
- Multinational Team: Due to the random nature of immortality, the group is not only from different nation-states geographically, but chronologically as well: the modern-day U.S., Napoleon-era France, medieval Mahgreb and Genoa, ancient Vietnam. Andromache is "of Scythia" but according to
Word of God actually predates that civilization. - Omniglot: Various members of the team have dialogue in English, French, Italian, Russian, and Nuer, and they presumably speak many more languages given the extent of their travels. As with many of their skills, this is justified by their immortality and averted with Nile, who's only shown to speak English and a small amount of Pashto.
- In the comic, Nile does also speak French and Spanish, so she is on her way to being an omniglot.
- Psychic Dreams for Everyone: When a new immortal is first killed and resurrected all the immortals will start to dream of them until they meet. The team has to use this as their only guide to track down new immortals as they emerge.
- Really 700 Years Old: Apart from Nile, who has only just become immortal, the rest of the group ranges in age from 250 to nearly 7000, though they all look to be in their 30s or 40s.
- Resurrective Immortality: They can be injured and killed, they just don't stay that way for long.
Andromache "Andy" of Scythia
Played by: Charlize Theron
The oldest of the immortals, and the leader of the group. She's profoundly cynical, having become convinced over her very long life that nothing she's done has ever made anything better or made any sort of difference.
- Action Heroine: Even among a group of Action Heroes, she stands out, since she'd been saving humans in perilous distress even when she was alone. She was always more than willing to throw herself into danger to save the day, because she knows nothing could kill her anyways. She keeps going even after years of becoming disillusioned with humanity and losing her immortality.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Of a technological sort—she's no idiot in the comic, but she's profoundly unused to technology and barely knows how to use an old flip-phone, let alone a smart one. Indeed, the comic has Nile realizing Booker is the mole when he's able to "gather" information off a laptop inside an underground bunker as Andy doesn't grasp that "just because you have a computer doesn't automatically mean you're on the Internet". In the film, she is much more tech-savvy, easily using a smartphone and modern weapons.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Like all the pre-gunpowder immortals, she tends use an old bladed weapon instead of or alongside firearms — in her case, a labrys battle-axe.
- Been There, Shaped History: Andy assumes nothing she does matters, but Copley's research shows that she has saved numerous lives who in turn aid others or have descendants who do, such as a woman whose daughter created a groundbreaking diabetes treatment or the man who prevented a false alarm incident from escalating into a full nuclear war.Copley: She saves a life and two, three generations later, we reap the benefits.
Nile: She's in it... she can't see it. - Boyish Short Hair: In the modern age, her hair is cut short to a practical pixie crop.
- Brought Down to Badass: Even without her immortality and having to feel the weight of her wounds, she's still a supremely skilled warrior more than capable of taking on a dozen enemies.
- Casting Gag: A famous Amazonian warrior from Greek myths was named Andromache, and archeological findings related to said myths were found in the modern-day locations corresponding to ancient Scythia. Theron famously refused to play the Queen of the Amazons in Wonder Woman (2017).
- Defeat Equals Friendship: She and Nile don't exactly see eye-to-eye at first. Nile is understandably not thrilled to have been kidnapped, and Andy doesn't care about her much beyond the fact that she's a new immortal. It's only after they fight it out and Andy hands Nile her ass that they start to respect one another.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Her reaction to Booker's betrayal.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Her hair is used to help visually distinguish flashbacks and present day. In the flashbacks, she has long hair, but in the present, she has Boyish Short Hair.
- Feeling Their Age: Her immortality has been gradually wearing Andy down, as she feels like nothing she's done has ever really made a difference.
- The Fog of Ages: She's gradually lost memory of her early years — she doesn't know how old she is beyond "too old", and doesn't remember what her mother and sisters looked like.
- God Guise: She was worshiped as a living goddess in antiquity.
- Karmic Jackpot: Allowing Nile to leave to see her family again is what prevented Nile from getting captured, giving her a chance to save Andy and the others from unethical medical torture.
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: Andy swears more often and more harshly than any other character in the movie.
- The Leader: As the oldest and most battle experienced, Andy is always the one calling the shots. The other immortals even call her "boss."
- Mortality Ensues: Loses her immortality halfway through the movie.
- Odd Name, Normal Nickname: Andromache of Scythia goes by the nickname "Andy".
- The Older Immortal: She's by far the eldest of the immortals, and was so even during the previous generation. As a consequence, she's unquestionably the leader of the group.
- One-Man Army: On multiple occasions, Andy goes up against several teams of heavily armed soldiers and mows through them like grass.
- Restored My Faith in Humanity: She initially has an attitude that nothing she's ever done matters, and the world seems to be getting worse. Copley's research into the people whose lives she saved and Nile coming back to save help her change her mind. As she says, there are still people worth fighting for.
- Save This Person, Save the World: Andy's actions, as Copley discovered, have done this over and over again through history — her actions have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of seemingly inconsequential people who years down the road either performed a great service to humanity or had children or grandchildren who did the same. Andy, notably, is entirely unaware of this for most of the film, as her policy of avoiding repeat jobs or interacting long-term with non-immortals kept her from realizing what was going on.
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Andy is hard-edged, embittered and cynical, but deep down she is hurt and exhausted by the many, many losses she has seen over her thousands of years. Most devastating, of course, is the loss of Quynh, who was consigned to a fate worse than death, with Andy powerless to stop it or to help her.
- Survivor Guilt: She was separated from Quynh during the witch hunts, and considers not going back for her a betrayal even though she spent decades trying to find her.
- Technician Versus Performer: Andy is the performer, banking on her immortality and years of combat with acrobatics and lots of violence, while Nile is the technician who's only just recently gained immortality and was trained more to make combat encounters quick and efficient with headshots.
- Time Abyss: She's millennia old — she no longer remembers precisely how much — and predates Greek civilization, the ancient Scythian people and written language in Europe. Her character poster reflects this as well — unlike the other characters whose posters show their birthdate
◊, Andy's◊ obscures most of the date, leaving only "***8 BCE"Greg Rucka: She predates Greek civilization by... at least 2500 years or so. She's almost 7000 years old. To actually put that in perspective, that means she lived for almost 5000 years before the Common Era, or AD. She was a myth even to Herodotus. Scythia wasn't a place when she was actually born and learning to ride and leading her people as a Warrior-God. - Trademark Favourite Food: Downplayed. She loves baklava so much (and has lived for so long) that she can identify the geographic origin of a given piece just from a single bite, but it's not commented on much.
- Tragic Keepsake: Implied. In the present day, she's always seen wearing the same pendant necklace. The flashback sequence shows that it originally belonged to Quynh and that she must have given it to Andy at some point before the witch trials.
- Unkempt Beauty: She keeps a very low-maintenance appearance and is visibly dirty throughout much of the film, which in no way detracts from her beauty.
- With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: She must have always been a firm believer in this, as even before she found other immortals, she used her immortality to save people.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: She's really worn down after being alive for almost seven millennia, and hardly sees a purpose in all the fighting she's done, woefully unaware of the impact her actions have had. She eventually realizes that she can control the way she lives and in her own words she's been doing a shit job of it.
- World's Best Warrior: She's a fantastically deadly combatant, and has "forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn."
Yusuf "Joe" Al-Kaysani
Played by: Marwan Kenzari
A veteran of the Crusades, during which he met and fell in love with Nicky after the two killed each other multiple times.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Like all the pre-gunpowder immortals, he tends use an old bladed weapon instead of or alongside firearms — in his case, an Arabian scimitar.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Although they're already together, and have been for hundreds of years, Joe gives one of these about Nicky to some homophobic guards who've got them tied up. It's quite something.Joe: You're a child. An infant. Your mocking is thus infantile. He's not my boyfriend. This man is more to me than you can dream. He's the moon when I'm lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold and his kiss still thrills me after a millennium. His heart overflows with the kindness with which this world is not worthy of. I love this man beyond measure and reason — he's not my boyfriend. He's all and he's more.
- Beware the Nice Ones: He is outgoing, jovial, and affectionate. Do not harm or threaten his family, especially not Nicky.
- Battle Couple: He and Nicky are lovers and mercenary comrades-in-arms — and have been for a good few hundred years, too.
- Boisterous Bruiser: He's the most outgoing and jovial of the group as well as being a highly competent fighter.
- Bruiser with a Soft Center: Joe comes the closest to filling The Big Guy role on the team, yet is also loyal and affectionate to his found family, and of course deeply in love with Nicky. He looks close to tears when he's waiting for Nicky to revive after the latter is brutally shot by Keane.
- Combat Pragmatist: During his first skirmish with Keane, Joe has the presence of mind to rip off the latter's gas mask, which ultimately forces Keane's retreat.
- Crusading Widower: A variation in that Nicky doesn't actually stay dead. But given that the immortals all know their healing can stop randomly at any time, Joe is clearly terrified that will be the case when Nicky lies dead for a few long moments after being shot in the mouth by Keane. Later, during the final assault, Joe goes directly for Keane and kills him with his bare hands.
- Cultured Warrior: He deserves a special mention outside the group tropes. Joe is shown to be a skilled artist, being able to draw a realistic portrait of Nile after only seeing her face for a few seconds in a dream, as well as prone to making off-the-cuff poetic declarations of his love for Nicky.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Dating someone on the other side of a HOLY WAR.
- Deadpan Snarker: His dry sense of humor is responsible for many of the film's funniest moments—winking flirtatiously when Nicky says the immortals are meant to be together, snarking at Copley throughout his and Nicky's kidnapping, remarking that Nile throwing herself and Merrick from the top floor of a skyscraper was "faster than the elevator," et cetera.
- Dynamic Entry: He leads off the final attack on Merrick by bursting in through a skyscraper window.
- Et Tu, Brute?: While nobody is happy about Booker's betrayal, Joe is the most openly, personally furious about it.
- Manly Facial Hair: Joe sports a thick, manly beard and kicks a lot of ass — including the curb stomp he dishes out to Merrick's henchman Keane.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: He and Nicky, handcuffed and chained to the floor of a truck, still manage to kill all of their captors barehanded.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The normally good-humored, warm, and expressive Joe goes into full Tranquil Fury mode when confronting Keane, who brutally (though temporarily) killed Nicky shortly prior, flatly telling him, "You shot Nicky. You shouldn't have done that," before snapping his neck by judo-throwing him into the concrete floor.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Nicky's Blue, being the more outwardly emotive and hot-tempered of the pair.
- Shooting Superman: Joe defiantly lampshades this when one of Merrick's goons attempts to intimidate him out of talking to Nicky.Joe: What are you gonna do, kill me?
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Joe delivers a very satisfying Talk to the Fist variant by headbutting Merrick when the latter is in the middle of a villain speech.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Up to eleven, as Nicky and Joe killed each other multiple times during the First Crusade before falling in love. By now, they think it's funny.Joe: [laughing] We killed each other.Nicky: [smiling] Many times, yeah.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He's not happy that Booker is helping them escape Merrick, but rightly stifles his anger when Andy points out there will be time for recriminations after they're safe.
- Tranquil Fury: In his final confrontation with Keane outlined above.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Dispatches Keane with a brutal Suplex Finisher.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: A male variant. If you do anything to hurt Nicky, Joe is going to make it his personal mission to destroy you. Also, don't call Nicky his boyfriend - it's a wild understatement if sincere, so if it's homophobic mockery...
Nicolò "Nicky" di Genova
Played by: Luca Marinelli
A Genovese crusader who became immortal when fighting in the Middle East, where he met and fell in love with Joe.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Like all the pre-gunpowder immortals, he tends to use an old bladed weapon instead of or alongside firearms — in his case, a European longsword.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Nicky makes something of a specialty of this, as the only character able to verbally rattle both Kozak and Merrick.
- Badass Bookworm: Nicky seems to prefer books to TV, given his first response to a sleepless night is to start reading a well-worn paperback while Booker and Joe watch sports.
- Battle Couple: He and Joe are lovers and mercenary comrades-in-arms — and have been for a good few hundred years, too.
- Beware the Nice Ones: He may be the kindest, most open one of the group, but he's still a nearly 1000 year old warrior who can tear through a group of heavily armed soldiers like a hot knife through butter. He also manages to calmly and cold-bloodedly intimidate Merrick when the latter goes into a villainous rant.
- Church Militant: In the past. He was a priest and fought in a Holy War explicitly called by Pope Urban II, and so is part of the historic codifiers for this trope.
- Cold Sniper: Downplayed and overlaps with Friendly Sniper. He kills two enemies with just one shot, and is generally the most level-headed of the group.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Dating someone on the other side of a HOLY WAR.
- The Fatalist: A heroic example. Nicky explains Nile's emergence with the idea that everything happens for a reason, believes the immortals are destined to find each other, and is completely unimpressed by Merrick's attempts to unlock the secret to their immortality as he regards it as a matter of fate rather than biology.
- Friendly Sniper: He is shown to also be the most empathetic and friendly of them.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Has dark-blonde hair and is pure of heart. His first response is always kindness, unless of course, the person is evil.
- The Heart: He's always to first to speak up when it comes to the question of doing the right thing, and is generally shown to be the kindest and most empathetic of the group. Joe even mentions this during his Anguished Declaration of Love, though to be fair his opinion may be a little biased.
- Heel Realization: Nicky is notable as the only member of the group to express remorse for his pre-immortality actions, disavowing his Church Militant past and stating that the love of his life (Joe) was of the people he'd been wrongly taught to hate. Unlike Andy or Booker who have grown cynical and depressed over the years, immortality has allowed Nicky to evolve into The Heart and Team Mom of the group (helped by being happily coupled with Joe for nearly a millenium).
- Hometown Nickname: "di Genova" simply means "from/of Genoa."
- Knight in Shining Armor
- The McCoy: Nicky is the strongest advocate of the team's moral duty to help others. He absolutely will not hear of leaving Nile on her own even when searching for her might mean a risk to the group, and he is the last of the group to give up on finding the kidnapped girls in South Sudan, even when it's apparent to everyone else that it was a trap.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: He and Joe, handcuffed and chained to the floor of a truck, still manage to kill all of their captors barehanded.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In contrast to Joe, who normally wears his emotions on his sleeve but goes into Tranquil Fury when he's really angry, Nicky is normally kind and cool-headed, but gets very upset if Joe is at risk of harm.
- The Philosopher: He's the team member most prone to philosophizing about their immortality, remarking on how it allowed him and Joe to overcome the hatred they'd been taught, suggesting that their psychic dreams are a form of destiny, and telling Merrick that the reason they haven't died is simply because it's not their time.
- Pillow Pistol: Another reason to Beware the Nice Ones — when the team is startled awake, it's Nicky who instantly has a gun in his hand and looks ready to use it against any potential threat.
- The Quiet One: Says the least of the group, and the words he does chose to say are almost always very meaningful. It also makes his Armor-Piercing Response to Kozak and Merrick all the more effective.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Joe's Red, being more quiet and reserved than his partner.
- Religious Bruiser: Prays before going into battle, believes the team is still alive to do some good in the world, and shows kindness and compassion to everyone except those who commit evil. He is also an ex-Priest from the Crusades who is the Team Sniper.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Up to eleven, as Nicky and Joe killed each other multiple times during the first crusade before falling in love. By now, they think it's funny.Joe: [laughing] We killed each other.Nicky: [smiling] Many times, yeah.
- Team Mom: Nicky looks after the team in practical, tangible ways, most especially in how he treats Nile. In contrast to Andy who is a very Stern Teacher, Nicky makes sure that Nile is fed and rested, and tries to offer clear, comforting explanations of how their immortality works. In the comics, it's also noted that Nicky habitually cooks for the rest of the team.
- Tranquil Fury: He is not one to let his emotions get the better of him, but that doesn't make him any less deadly. Or scathing.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: A male variant. While Nicky is typically the most soft-spoken and calm Immortal, he becomes clearly angry when Joe is hurt (for instance, right after they are gunned down in the opening mission, and when Merrick stabs Joe repeatedly). This is also apparent when the group is startled awake by Nile's nightmare: while Joe awakens relatively slowly, Nicky instantly snaps awake and has a gun in his hand, and he's positioned between Joe and the rest of the room.
Sébastien "Booker" Lelivre
Played by: Matthias Schoenaerts
A French soldier who fought under Napoleon. He's the youngest of the group, a mere 200-some years old, and haunted by the memory of the sons and lovers he has lost.
- The Alcoholic: He regularly takes swigs of liquor from a hip flask, and in the end is seen to have been drowning his grief in alcohol.
- The Baby of the Bunch: He's the youngest immortal until Nile comes along, a mere two centuries or so in age compared to their millennia of existence. Inverted in the physical sense, because according to his Twitter character announcement, he's physically 42, with only Andy (age unspecified, but played by then 45-year-old Charlize Theron) being physically older.note
- Blessed with Suck: Booker regards immortality as this in general, but he is also in a unique position on the team as the only one besides Nile who never met Quynh before she was thrown into the ocean. Because the immortals only stop dreaming of each other when they meet, this suggests that he's been dreaming of her endless drowning for 200 YEARS.
- Driven to Suicide: His motivation for betraying the team. He saw all three of his sons die, and the guilt has become too much for him to bear. He figures that if Merrick can learn why they can't die, perhaps he can learn a way to kill them.
- Easily Forgiven: Only by Nile for his Face–Heel Turn. Andy even tells him that she was gonna let him off with an apology.
- Face–Heel Turn: He betrays the team because he wants to die and hopes medical science will find a way.
- Feeling Their Age: While the youngest immortal besides Nile, he's being worn down by his experiences and consumed by guilt about living while his sons died.
- Heel–Face Turn: Once he realizes that Andy is mortal, and that Merrick is willing to torture his friends in the name of science, he's firmly back to fighting with the gang.
- Informed Attribute: Nile calls him "the brains of the operation," and while he is intelligent, he doesn't seem to be above and beyond the rest of the team, who are all philosophical, well-spoken polyglots - though she could be referring to his technical expertise in that context.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Once he realises Andy is no longer healing he seems to realise the gravity of what his betrayal could do to the people who have been his family for nearly 200 years.
- Outliving One's Offspring: He outlived all three of his sons, and that fact still haunts him.
- Regretful Traitor: He truly regrets giving up the team, but he's so tired of living that he considers possibly dying an even trade.
- The Smart Guy: Downplayed. He's shown tracking down Copley with nothing but a laptop, and Nile refers to him as "the brains of the operation," but given that he was working with Copley all along, his actual skill level is unknown. Given that the rest of the team trusts him without question, he must be pretty good at his job, though.
- Survivor Guilt: He's tormented by the memory of his sons dying.
- This Is My Name on Foreign: Booker's surname means "the book" in French. He also gets excited about books.
Nile Freeman
Played by: KiKi Layne
A US Marine who discovers her immortality when her throat is slashed in Afghanistan, Nile becomes the immortals' newest recruit. Throughout the film, she struggles to accept the burden that's been thrust on her and the fact that she will likely never see her family again.
- Action Girl: She's a trained Marine who was deployed in Afghanistan. She graduates to Action Heroine by the end of the film.
- Agony of the Feet: She shoots herself in the foot at one point to demonstrate her immortality... then immediately curses that it hurts.
- All of the Other Reindeer: When she comes back to life from a slashed throat without even a scar, her fellow soldiers are understandably freaked out and start ostracizing her.
- The Baby of the Bunch: On two levels. First, Nile is the youngest immortal, only experiencing her first death at the beginning of the film. The other level is that she's the only immortal in her twenties (26 to be exact), while the others are all in their thirties or forties. Andy even calls her this when she sees Joe's drawing of her.Andy: Jesus. She's just a baby.
- Body Horror: Her body is left badly mangled after jumping off the skyscraper with Merrick to protect Andy. Thanks to her Healing Factor, she gets better.
- Boom, Headshot!: Andy shoots her in the back of the head when she first tries to escape. Since she's immortal, she recovers in short order.Andy: You've got blood in your hair.
Nile: Wonder why. - Catapult Nightmare: Nile suffers one thinking of the man she killed and then feeling Quynh drowning and resurrecting infinite times.
- Changed My Mind, Kid: She walks out on Andy's mission to rescue Joe and Nicky. Only when she realizes Booker is a traitor and that Andy is walking into a trap does she turn back.
- Defeat Equals Friendship: Nile is justifiably belligerent towards Andy when first meeting her, but lets down her guard after they fight it out and Andy defeats her quite soundly.
- Destination Defenestration: She rather spectacularly gets the kill on Merrick by grabbing him and hurling them both through a skyscraper window. She survives, he doesn't.
- Deuteragonist: While Andy is The Protagonist, Nile gets a great deal of focus as well. Her struggle to accept her new immortality is a major story arc, and her critical choice to turn back and rescue the other immortals, culminating in getting the kill on Merrick herself drives the entire last act of the film.
- Establishing Character Moment: Her first appearance shows her give out candy to the local children, but snap quickly to attention once she is called upon. This establishes her as a kind-hearted but dutiful warrior.
- Foil: To Andy. Nile is a young, idealistic new immortal who's still grappling with what being a warrior means for her personally, while Andy is an embittered Time Abyss who is more concerned with the impact her life as a warrior has had on the world.
- Good Is Not Dumb: It only takes a tiny detail for her to deduce Booker's betrayal and realize she needs to go back.
- Good Is Not Soft: Nile fights brutally against Andy when they first encounter each other, and actually holds her own fairly well considering Andy has a few millenia of experience on her. Then, of course, there's the way she dispatches Merrick by grabbing him and hurling them both out of a skyscraper window.
- Hidden Depths: She identifies a Rodin sculpture almost instantly, suggesting an interest in art.
- The Lancer: Over the course of the movie, Nile evolves into this role to Andy. Her youth and strong sense of principles contrasts with Andy's age and cynicism. And in the end, it is Nile who steps in when Andy is betrayed by Booker, and ends up rescuing the team.
- Newcomer Saves the Day: And how! The other immortals are at their darkest hour — captured by Merrick and riven by infighting — when Nile decides to single-handedly turn back and rescue them.
- Nice Girl: She's a good person. After all, not many people would be willing to let off a traitor with an apology and nothing more.
- Religious Bruiser: Nile is a one-woman army who turns to prayer as the reality of her new situation sinks in (and snaps Andy back when the latter makes a disparaging comment about it).
- Reluctant Warrior: Nile takes a life for the first time after shooting an enemy combatant who was hiding in an Afghan village. She feels incredibly uncomfortable with killing and temporarily leaves the team because she can't bring herself to kill another person. Nile only changes her mind when she realizes that Andy is in legitimate danger because Booker betrayed her.
- Sixth Ranger: She's the newest member of the Old Guard. A large part of her story arc is her accepting her newfound immortality and her new purpose. She eventually graduates to become The Lancer.
- Slashed Throat: Nile dies for the first time after an enemy insurgent slashes her throat. Her squad-mates are shocked when they look at her neck and find that there's no trace of the wound.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Nile is the one who finally pushes Copley over into a Heel–Face Turn, and gets him to provide vital assistance with her rescue mission.
- Technician Versus Performer: Andy is the performer, banking on her immortality and years of combat with acrobatics and lots of violence, while Nile is the technician who's only just recently gained immortality and was trained more to make combat encounters quick and efficient with headshots.
- Token Religious Teammate: Surprisingly defied. Nile and Nicky are both shown to be religious, specifically Christian, in contrast to Andy's jaded cynicism. Nicky is an ex-Priest from the Crusades and still keeps to his Catholic traditions, and Nile is from a so-far non-specified Christian denomination. She wears a small cross throughout the movie, and prays while mentioning God early on. Her first question to the group is whether they are "good guys or bad guys," and she doesn't fully join the team until she finds out the reason they're probably immortal is all the good they've done over the centuries, thanks to Copley's research.
- The Watson: As she has only been immortal for about three days, she has a lot of questions about what is happening to her and why.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Nile tries to defy this upon learning she's an immortal. This is one of the reasons she temporarily leaves the team when they started their raid at Copley's house, besides her reluctance to kill. She eventually comes to term with this and Copley helps in proving that she "died in action".
Quynh
Played by: Ngô Thanh Vân
An old immortal, whom Andy knew long before she met the others. She's the reason they fear capture - she was locked in an iron sarcophagus and dumped in the ocean sometime in the early 16th century and has been drowning constantly ever since. Somehow, she turns up at the end of the film.
- Adaptational Name Change: She's named Noriko in the comic, suggesting she's Japanese, but this is changed to Quynh in the film to reflect her Vietnamese actress.
- And I Must Scream: She was locked in an iron sarcophagus and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean during the English witch hunts, where she's been drowning and reanimating over and over since the Middle Ages. By the end of the film, she's out - though how and why are so far unknown.
- Crazy Sane: It's obliquely implied that her experiences have done this to her, as Nile, shaken, remarks that she felt insane with rage and pain in her psychic dream (and as is pointed out, given she was constantly drowning in an iron coffin for five centuries, you can see why), yet she seems perfectly sane when she meets Booker six months after the events of the film.
- Walking Spoiler: It's very difficult to talk about her without necessarily going into one of two major plot twists.
Lykon
Played by: Micheal Ward
An Immortal who fought alongside Quynhn and Andromache in antiquity, but later lost his immortality, proving that the Immortals are somehow capable of permanent death.- Black Dude Dies First: He's the only immortal known to have permanently died and the only black one before Nile.
- Mortality Ensues: His immortality somehow ended mid-battle, leaving him to bleed out in Quynh and Andromache's arms.
- Posthumous Character: Lykon died hundreds of years before the start of the film.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Not much is known about Lykon other that he died years before the story, possibly even before Andy and Quynh found Joe and Nicky. He appears only in his death scene, and in deleted scenes.
Others
Copley
Played by: Chiwetel Ejiofor
A retired CIA agent, Copley contacts the team for a mission that turns out to be a trap. He's haunted by the memory of his wife, who died from a degenerative sickness, and is driven to find a cure for age-related and degenerative diseases.
- Anti-Villain: He genuinely admires the immortals, having gone to a great deal of trouble to not just trace them but all the good they've done, becoming animated when he discusses Andy's impact in particular - and pointing out that in terms of fine detail, this is just what he can find from the last 150 years. The only reason he's opposing them is that he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist who hopes their abilities can be replicated and is appalled when he realises that Merrick isn't content with just taking samples, but is utterly sadistic and intends to keep them locked up forever to get the secret and keep them out of the hands of his competitors.
- Heel–Face Turn: He turns on Merrick when he makes it clear he's more interested in profiting from the immortals' secret than genuinely helping people with it (plus, his willingness to torture them for years if necessary), helping Nile to save the others.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the church assault turns into a massacre as Andy obliterates the assault team, Copley tells the team leader its time to go, and they waste no time in leaving.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: His wife died of amytrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease). He thought that if the team's abilities could be studied and replicated, it might save other people in the future.
Steven Merrick
Played by: Harry Melling
The CEO of a large pharmaceutical company, Merrick is single-mindedly obsessed with research, developing revolutionary new medicines and, more importantly, the money he can make from selling those medicines. He's willing to do anything to secure his profits, as the immortals find out at their expense.
- Asshole Victim: The entire movie gives you reasons to hate him so that when the heroes kill him in the most brutal manner possible you'll be completely on their side.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Merrick orders Nicky and Joe's restraints to be removed when they are first brought to him. He is saved from the very obvious consequences of his stupidity only by his security chief Keane, who has seen what Nicky and Joe are capable of and flat out refuses.
- Establishing Character Moment: At first he seems like your typical sleazy Corrupt Corporate Executive. Then he repeatedly stabs Joe over and over for headbutting him, making clear that he's got a sadistic streak far beyond what the job would require.
- Greed: His primary motivation.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Multiple people have pointed out similarities between his character and corrupt Big Pharma executive Martin Shkreli. There have also been multiple comparisons to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, to the point it's almost a
meme. - Non-Action Big Bad: His security chief, Keane, poses the chief physical threat to the heroes. The only time Merrick attempts direct confrontation is when he's got a gun and he knows Andy has lost her immortality. It still doesn't go well for him.
- Villainous Breakdown: With his forces destroyed, he degenerates into ranting at Andy and trying to kill her, in spite of her possible use to him.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: He doesn't seem to consider the immortals human, likening getting their consent for experimentation to asking lab rats what they want before using them in research. Of course if they were human, he'd still consider it his "moral imperative" to experiment on them anyway.
Dr. Meta Kozak
Played by: Anamaria Marinca
The head of research at Merrick's company, she doesn't have many more scruples than her employer and is the one to actively experiment on Joe and Nicky.
- All There in the Manual: You wouldn't know her first name unless you sat through the credits.
- Establishing Character Moment: When Merrick stabs Joe and the wounds heal immediately, all she sees is "The Nobel Prize," showing that she doesn't see the immortals as any more human than Merrick does.
- Gender Flip: In the graphic novel, she is a man named Ivanov.
- For Science!: She wants to find out what makes the immortals immortal, ethics be damned. Nicky is unimpressed.Dr. Kozak: I believe this can change the world.Nicky: A fine justification. I've heard it so many times before.
- Mad Scientist: She is completely unfazed by Nicky's obvious pain when she performs a biopsy on him.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Has an unspecified doctorate and conducts immoral experiments on Joe and Nicky.
- Playing with Syringes: Her experiments can be described with many words, but "ethical" is not one of them.
- Scale of Scientific Sins: Commits the Second Sin of Hubris and the Sixth Sin of Resurrection.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Is knocked unconscious by Nile and then never seen again.
Keane
Played by: Joey Ansah
A former member of the UK Special Forces who is now head of security at Merrick's company, and in charge of abducting Joe and Nicky.
- Boom, Headshot!: He shoots Nicky in the mouth. Unfortunately, Joe is there to witness it, which results in the Neck Snap mentioned below.
- Combat Pragmatist: He only goes after Joe and Nicky once he's sure he has them on the ropes from being caught in an explosion.
- The Dragon: As Merrick's head of security and top enforcer, he is the biggest physical threat to the group of immortals.
- It's Personal with the Dragon: Joe is particularly, personally enraged with Keane after the latter shot Nicky in the face right in front of him.
- Flat Character: Doesn't really have a personality beyond being head of security and maybe being a little too willing to commit violence.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: He doesn't let the fact that Joe and Nicky are just coming around from being knocked out or possibly even killed get in the way of delivering the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown mentioned below. Given that he's seen what they're capable of, this is less unnecessary violence, more completely practical. It still doesn't help.
- Last-Name Basis: Not even the credits give him a first name.
- Neck Snap: Joe breaks his neck by flipping him over for having shot Nicky.Joe: You shot Nicky. You shouldn't have done that.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Hands one out to Joe and Nicky, which ends with him grabbing Nicky by the hair and shooting him through the head.
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: Keane is perhaps the only character in the film who doesn't make the mistake of underestimating the immortals. He makes liberal use of things like knockout gas and zipties to maintain an overwhelming advantage, refuses to follow orders that could compromise that advantage, and has no problem retreating and waiting for a better time to strike should he find himself outmatched.
- Worf Had the Flu: The only reason he is able to beat the living daylights out of Joe and Nicky is because they are still recovering from being caught in an explosion.
