Characters / X (2022)

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See also Pearl (2022), for characters unique to the prequel.

The Cast and Crew of The Farmer's Daughters

Maxine

Maxine Minx

Played By: Mia Goth

One of the film's two female leads.

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• Alliterative Name: Maxine Minx.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: She wears a striped crop top.
• Final Girl: She is the Sole Survivor of the farmhouse massacre.
• Identical Stranger: To Pearl, when she was young. They're both played by Mia Goth, and Pearl and Maxine being played by the same actress was a deliberate choice meant to highlight the duality of their characters.
• Ironic Echo: She repeats quite a few quotes out of the Bible as her personal mantras, namely the "I will not accept a life I do not deserve." It's ironic as she's a porn star who ran off to get away from her controlling conservative family. Maxine also echoes Pearl's line "it'll be our little secret" when she finally kills her, after Pearl had said that earlier in the film with the intent to molest Maxine later on.
• It's All About Me: Maxine is hyperfocused on herself and her desire for fame, to the point of being generally apathetic to everything going on around her.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's blunt, antisocial, and incredibly self-absorbed, but she jumps into action when she realizes that Lorraine is in danger.
• May–December Romance: She's presumably in her twenties, while Wayne is explicitly said to be forty-two, and it's mentioned that he left his wife for her. There's also a nineteen-year age gap between their actors.
• Mirror Character: To Pearl. Both have troubled relationships with their parents, are extremely self-absorbed, and dream of achieving stardom, to the point that they’re willing to abandon their old lives and resort to unorthodox means to fuel their futures. The difference is that Maxine's unorthodox method is doing porn, while Pearl's is committing murder.
• Ms. Fanservice: An attractive young woman who is shown both scantily clad and completely nude. Justified, given that she's acting in a porno.
• Narcissist: While it's not as pronounced as Pearl, Maxine is noticeably self-absorbed, vain, and hungry for fame, to the point that her very first scene has her staring at herself in the mirror and saying "I'm a fucking star!" The difference between her and Pearl is that Maxine hasn't completely lost her sense of morality.
• Offing the Annoyance: A rare example where the hero does this to the villain. After Pearl fails in her attempt to kill Maxine and breaks her hip, Pearl still has the gall to beg Maxine for help. When Maxine refuses and walks to the truck, Pearl resorts to calling her a "whore" and telling her that she will meet the same fate as an old, embittered woman like her. Maxine has none of it and reverses the truck into Pearl's head.
• Preacher's Kid: Maxine is revealed to be the daughter of a conservative Christian preacher, who is seen speaking on television many times throughout the movie. She's the rebellious type, having cut ties with her family to pursue stardom.
• Sole Survivor: She is the only one to come out alive from Pearl and Howard's 1979 killing spree.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Pearl ends up breaking her hip from the blowback as a result of firing Howard's shotgun at Maxine. Although Pearl at that point was incapacitated and no longer posed any threat, Maxine still made the conscious choice to reverse the truck into Pearl's head, though given that the elderly woman had sexually assaulted her, killed her friends, and attempted to murder her, it's more than understandable.
• Youthful Freckles: Maxine has an unusual pattern of freckles on her cheeks, which lend her the appearance of innocence and are used later on to identify her as the preacher's daughter.

Wayne

Wayne Gilroy

Played By: Martin Henderson

The film's executive producer and Maxine's boyfriend.

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• Agony of the Feet: Steps on a nail with his bare foot while walking through a barn looking for R.J..
• Eye Scream: Meets his end by getting both of his eyes stabbed out with a pitchfork.
• May–December Romance: He's forty-two years old and dating Maxine, who is at least in her early twenties, and it's mentioned that he left his wife for her. There's also a nineteen-year age gap between their actors.
• Mr. Fanservice: Wayne may not be in the film, but he's certainly no slouch in the looks department. The guy is handsome and well-built, and he meets his death clad in nothing but his underwear.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He's the one who contacted Howard and made arrangements to have the film crew use the farm to shoot their movie. In other words, Wayne is unintentionally the reason why all of the crew fall victim to Pearl and Howard's killing spree.

Bobby-Lynne

Bobby-Lynne Parker

Played By: Brittany Snow

One of the film's two female leads.

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• Beware the Nice Ones: Bobby-Lynne is a sweet person, to be sure, but she lashes out in anger when Pearl slut-shames her, saying that it isn't her fault that Pearl didn't get to live the life she wanted.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Pearl throws her into the pond, where she is subsequently mauled by an alligator.
• Ethical Slut: Bobby-Lynne loudly and proudly loves sex without a hint of shame and is also one of the kindest members of the film crew.
• Fed to the Beast: Her ultimate fate, at Pearl's hands.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Bobby-Lynne is blonde-haired and very kind. She answers Lorraine's questions about the business in an honest, Cool Big Sis-esque manner, helps her do her makeup and hair when she decides to do a scene, and immediately runs to Maxine's side when hearing her screaming in the middle of the night. The only person she is shown to be rude to is Pearl, and only after the latter had struck and insulted her by calling her a "whore".
• Hidden Depths: Several.
  • She is not only a porn actress but also a talented singer.
  • In addition, she later mentions that she has considered becoming a nurse someday when trying to help Pearl.
  • She also reveals that she cares for her grandmother, who has sundowning.
  • She shows some directorial skill, instructing RJ to change the camera angle on an early shot to make it look like Jackson is pumping gas with his penis.
• Ms. Fanservice: Bobby-Lynne is a gorgeous woman, who's featured nude and/or topless multiple times throughout the film. Justified, since she is acting in a porno.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: She's genuinely trying to help Pearl, believing her to simply be suffering from dementia, before Pearl pushes her in the lake, feeding her to the alligator lurking within.
• Only One Name: Her surname is never revealed.
• Slashers Prefer Blondes: She's the first of the women to be killed, and is offed in a much more brutal way than the dark-haired Lorraine. Ironically, the reason Pearl gives for killing her is, "I don't like blondes".

Jackson

Jackson Hole

Played By: Scott Mescudi

The male lead of the film.

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• Ethical Slut: Jackson clearly enjoys his profession, at one point stating that he was "born for it." However, he is a kind, brave person, and a good partner to Bobby-Lynne.
• Gag Penis: Has an almost comically large dick, which is seen in silhouette later in the film. Also doubles as Black Is Bigger in Bed.
• Hidden Depths: Shows himself to be quite the talented guitarist, accompanying Bobby-Lynne on a cover of "Landslide".
• Mr. Fanservice: A good-looking man who's shown fully naked multiple times throughout the film. Justified, since he's acting in a porno.
• Nice Guy: He's a pretty easygoing guy who is also kind and a good partner to Bobby-Lynne.
• The Pornomancer: His role as the male actor in The Farmer's Daughters.
• The Vietnam Vet: Served two tours in Vietnam. He wears his dog tags even while filming, and he is brave enough to wander into a pond in the middle of the night to search for Pearl. Unfortunately, this bravery doesn't stop him from meeting his end by way of Howard's shotgun.

RJ

RJ Nichols

Played By: Owen Campbell

The director of the film, who has ambitions beyond making a "dirty movie".

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• Asshole Victim: While his death was certainly horrific, brutal and not necessarily deserved, he was still a bit of a Jerkass. He didn’t tell Lorraine that they would be working on a porno and calls her a prude when she is clearly uncomfortable and then when she becomes interested in acting in the film he tries being controlling and giving her weak excuses instead of communicating his concerns about what it would mean for their relationship. After she goes through with it, he decides to steal the truck and attempts to abandon the crew at the farm.
• Author Avatar: RJ acts as a stand-in for director Ti West, justifying his part in the movie by saying "it is possible to make a good dirty movie".
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Is graphically and repeatedly stabbed in the throat by Pearl, to the point that his neck literally collapses.
• Emasculated Cuckold: He has to film his girlfriend Lorraine having sex with another man, and takes a Shower of Angst afterward. It ultimately causes him to try and quit.
• It's Not Porn, It's Art: RJ thinks that he's making a serious film with artistic intent, and seeks to elevate the respectability of pornography with it. Everybody else fully acknowledges that they're just making spank fodder.
• Jerkass: Downplayed. While he calls Jackson a "man-whore", and Bobby-Lynne and Maxine "not nice girls", it's clear that it's because he's upset at Lorraine acting in the movie, which he never consented with.
• Jerkass Has a Point: RJ may be pretentious, but he's right that the porn crew have lived different lifestyles than he and Lorraine. All signs point to RJ and Lorraine being in a committed, monogamous relationship, versus the porn crew, who've come to prior, consensual agreements about their sexual boundaries.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: He kills whatever sympathy he might have normally deserved for Lorraine ambushing him with her desire to be in the porno by basing his objections on this, instead of the fact that their relationship had been monogamous until that point. Wayne has to visibly get hold of his patience when RJ lets it slip - by contrasting them with Lorraine, whom he considers to be a "nice girl", i.e., a Madonna - that he considers Maxine and Bobby-Lynne to be "whores".
• Not Like Other Girls: Has this attitude towards Lorraine, who he considers a "nice girl", unlike Bobby-Lynne and Maxine. Wayne, for his part, tries to correct this attitude by saying that "nice girls" (as per the Madonna-Whore Complex) don't exist.
• Poor Communication Kills: While it may be understandable that RJ would have reservations about Lorraine acting in the porno given their previously monogamous relationship, he chooses to beat around the bush by giving her weak excuses as to why she can't rather than simply being upfront and voicing his concerns about what it would entail for their relationship. Lorraine only becomes more defiant as a result and goes through with doing a scene with Jackson, which leads to RJ attempting to leave the property and desert the rest of the crew. This is how he isolates himself, leaving him vulnerable for Pearl to kill him.

Lorraine

Lorraine Day

Played By: Jenna Ortega

RJ's girlfriend, who has been recruited as a camera operator for the film.

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• Affectionate Nickname: "Raine" from RJ, and "churchmouse" from Wayne.
• Boom, Headshot!: Howard kills her by shooting her in the face with his shotgun. Surprisingly, she doesn't die right away and ends up twitching and gurgling once, causing Howard to panic and die of a heart attack before she herself dies.
• Bunker Woman: She ends up going down to the cellar to get Howard a flashlight at his request, after which she discovers that he locked her in there. She remains trapped in the cellar for the rest of the film up until Maxine frees her, shortly before Howard kills her.
• Covert Pervert: Despite initially being upset about working on a pornographic film, Lorraine likes what she sees when she watches Jackson and Maxine have sex, and she later asks to participate in the film.
• Death by Irony: Early on, a few characters comment on Lorraine’s quiet demeanor, saying that that she "never talks." At the climax of the film, however, Lorraine’s unwillingness to stop screaming at Maxine (due to being terrified, traumatized, and having her hand mauled) attracts the attention of Howard and Pearl, and she’s promptly shot in the face, dying soon after.
• Decoy Protagonist: Ticks a lot of the traditional boxes for a Final Girl, especially with her shy personality and comparatively modest dress sense. However, she gets shot in the face by Howard at the film's climax, leaving Maxine as the last woman standing.
• Didn't Think This Through: Seems genuinely surprised that RJ is upset by her performing in the porno while he's forced to film, and says she didn't mean to hurt him. This is despite the fact that he protested when she said she wanted to be in the movie without first discussing with him what it would mean to their previously monogamous relationship, albeit he himself failed to address the latter by instead dancing around the point in a feeble manner using various week excuses for her not to do it.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: After getting shot in the face by Howard, Lorraine's death rattle kills Howard by giving him a heart attack, dispatching one half of the Big Bad Duumvirate.
• Facial Horror: The aftermath of Lorraine taking a shotgun blast to the face is brutal, with around half of it completely reduced to gore.
• Fingore: Howard smashes several of her fingers with the butt of his shotgun as she tries to escape his basement, and the bone can be seen.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Despite being shot in the head, she manages to twitch and gurgle before truly dying, startling Howard and giving him a heart attack, which kills him.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Despite Maxine insisting they have to stick together to make it out of the house, Lorraine attempts this, blaming the porn crew for her ordeal due to her extreme distress and an overwhelming panic attack. As she runs out the door, she's immediately shot down by Howard.
• Token Wholesome: Deconstructed. Lorraine seemingly starts out as this, being outright uncomfortable on the porn set and actually a bit judgmental towards the cast and crew with flashbacks revealing her inhibited raising as a child, but she eventually gets fed up with being seen as the "church mouse" and does a scene in the film herself (despite having a boyfriend) to explore herself.
• Toplessness from the Back: What the audience sees during her scene with Jackson.

The Farmhouse Residents

In General

Tropes that apply to both.

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• Big Bad Duumvirate: They're both terrorizing the film crew, though Pearl is the more prominent of the pair.
• Driven by Envy: All of the film crew (barring Maxine) end up murdered due to Pearl and Howard's intense envy towards them for being young and desirable in a different, more progressive time, with opportunities that they never had during their own youth.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Howard and Pearl may be depraved murderers, but they have been married for more than sixty years and sincerely, deeply love each other. When Howard dies of a heart attack, Pearl drops everything to help him and even begs Maxine for help.
• Evil Is Petty: The real reason why Howard and Pearl kill most of the crew was simply because they were jealous of their youth and free-love lifestyle. Lampshaded somewhat by Howard who asks his wife to help him bring in the bodies so they can make it look like they killed in self-defense.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Pearl and Howard did not age well at all throughout their several decades of being a Serial Killer couple.
• Evil Old Folks: Howard and Pearl are a very old couple who terrorize and murder people.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Both Pearl and Howard use their old age to deceive the film crew into believing that they are vulnerable and infirm, which allows them to get the drop on their much younger victims by taking advantage of their willingness to help them.
• Happily Married: Lack of intimacy aside, Howard and Pearl still love one another with the same devotion they'd had since they were young.
• I Was Quite a Looker: The prequel shows that this is true for both of them, as Pearl (despite lying about being a dancer) was indeed very pretty and Howard was boyishly handsome in his uniform. The ensuing decades have not been kind.
• Karmic Death: Pearl and Howard's killing spree of the film crew draws to a close with both of them meeting their demise, at the hands of two of their victims, no less.
  • Howard murders Lorraine in her attempt to run outside to freedom by shooting her in the face. As Pearl and Howard drag her body inside the house, Lorraine's corpse twitches in her final death rattle, bringing Howard down with her by giving him a fatal heart attack.
  • Pearl's death is brought about when she grabs Howard's shotgun and fires it at Maxine. While Maxine is able to dodge the bullet, Pearl breaks her hip from the resulting blowback. Pearl seals her own fate and gets herself turned into roadkill by continuing to slut-shame Maxine, which provokes Maxine into killing Pearl by rolling the truck over her head.
• Old People are Nonsexual: Very much subverted with Pearl. Played straight with Howard, because of his heart condition.
• Only One Name: Their surname is never revealed, nor is Pearl's maiden name (though Pearl's is presumably something German).
• The Resenter: Howard and Pearl are this to the crew for still being young and sexually free in ways they either aren’t anymore or never were.
• Serial Killer: Howard and Pearl murdered at least one other person before the film takes place, and Pearl implies that they have killed others as well.
• Sexless Marriage: Howard and Pearl have one despite Pearl’s frustration, because of Howard’s weak heart.
• Tragic Villain: Both of them. Pearl was deeply mentally ill, be it through bad genetics, an abusive and suffocating upbringing, or some combination thereof, was fully aware that she was not normal and had something terribly wrong with her, and grew less and less stable and able to control her violent impulses as she grew more isolated and lost all remaining hope of ever leaving her farm (hope that she built for herself in her head, as it's clear that none of it was remotely realistic), and finally completed her descent into murderous insanity. Howard, meanwhile, went off to fight in the Great War, had his wife have a homicidal self-destructive meltdown while he was abroad and lost his sister and in-laws to her, and became the caregiver and enabler to an extremely disturbed and unwell partner in the decades that followed, finding himself repeating the cycle that Pearl's own parents lived through.
• Unholy Matrimony: They are a lovingly married couple who commit several murders.
• Weak, but Skilled: Wayne and Maxine and the others are clearly creeped out by Howard and Pearl, but assume they're not in any physical danger from the elderly couple. Big mistake. What Howard and Pearl have long lost in physical capability they more than make up for with a practiced cunning for setting traps that can overcome even powerfully built men like Wayne and Jackson.
  • It begins when Howard assures Wayne that the shotgun is just a bluff. Not quite it turns out.
  • Pearl having No Sense of Personal Space with RJ grosses him out, but it provides an effective distraction for her to shank him in the throat.
  • Pearl sets up the board and nail for Wayne to step on. She then stabs him in the eyes with a pitchfork as he's looking through the holes of the barn door.
  • Howard tricks Lorraine into going to the cellar, and locks her in. He later blows her away with that shotgun when she runs out the front door in a panic after Maxine frees her.
  • Howard leads Jackson on a search and rescue, and then falls in with the suggestion to split up. He leaves his flashlight in the pool. Jackson finding it by itself, but then seeing Howard shortly thereafter, means he's effectively dead meat on a stick as Howard blows him away with the shotgun.
  • Pearl baits Bobby-Lynne into joining her on the dock. Pearl then pushes Bobby-Lynne into the lake to become alligator food.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Their hair has turned white as a result of their old age. While Pearl at the very least was murderous even while she was young, she and Howard decide to kill off the film crew out of jealousy for their youth, beauty, and freedom to do as they please, which they no longer have and can never get back.

Pearl

Pearl

Her in X

Her in Pearl

Played By: Mia Goth

An elderly woman whose family owned the farm that the film crew uses to shoot their porno, as well as Howard's wife. Assisted by her husband, they begin to slaughter them one by one.

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• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Howard leaving her to serve in World War I is what would lead to Pearl's infidelity with the Projectionist, though she would eventually kill the Projectionist and remain with Howard for the rest of her life.
• Alas, Poor Villain: She tries to use the shotgun to shoot Maxine but firing it causes her to fly backwards and break her hip. She is on the ground begging Maxine for help, and she seemed genuinely terrified when she realized she was about to meet her end.
• Ambiguously Bi: She was in a heterosexual marriage to Howard for decades, and appeared to genuinely like being with him, and she also had sex with the Projectionist and made advances towards RJ. She also made advances towards Maxine and later sexually assaulted her, and it's hinted fairly strongly that her feelings towards Mitzy are more than just friendly.
• Ambition Is Evil: Pearl's dreams of becoming a star is what ultimately leads her to commit murder, out of desperation to finally leave her farm life behind.
• Ax-Crazy: Impulsively so. She resorts to killing people whenever something doesn’t go her way, and her poor emotional regulation has her commit murder whenever she’s upset or angry.
• Bad Liar: She outright forgets the lie that she tells the Projectionist about having a dog that made a mess in the kitchen to justify the noises inside the house, later admitting to him in the barn that her family doesn’t have one when he asks about it. It was actually Pearl's mother, Ruth, who was barely clinging to life in the cellar after sustaining severe burns when she was pushed towards the furnace by her daughter the night before.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: She kills a goose with a pitchfork and feeds its carcass to Theda (the alligator in the lake near the farmhouse) in the opening of Pearl.
• Bigot with a Crush: One moment, Pearl calls Bobby-Lynne a "whore" and rants about the evils of sexual freedom; the next, she makes sexual advances toward Maxine and RJ.
• Bitch Slap: Inflicts this on Bobby-Lynne before Slut-Shaming her and pushing her into the pond to get devoured by an alligator.
• Bullying a Dragon: Continuing to call Maxine a "whore" was probably not the brightest idea after breaking her hip and incapacitating herself while Maxine is still able to walk around freely. If there was any chance that Maxine would've just left without killing her, Pearl effectively squandered it.
• The Corrupter: Heavily implied to be this to Howard. From Mitzy's account and his brief appearance at the end of Pearl, Howard was an upstanding young man who could've used his wealthy status to avoid the Great War, but chose to serve for his country, and is clearly horrified to see the corpses of both his in-laws seated at the dinner table. 61 years later, X depicts him as an embittered old man who is sincerely devoted to Pearl and is her accomplice throughout the film. It can be inferred that Pearl eased Howard into the habit of killing people over the years.
• Daddy's Girl: A very downplayed example. Pearl's relationship with her father is much less fraught than her relationship with her mother, but even so, it's largely based out of pity for his condition, and she openly expresses her desire to Mercy Kill him, which she ultimately does.
• Depraved Bisexual: Molests both Maxine and RJ and is a deranged Serial Killer too.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Pearl is very self-conscious about her old age rendering her frail and undesirable for sex, and thus views any acts of kindness as Condescending Compassion, as was the case with Bobby-Lynne.
• Dirty Old Woman: Pearl molests men and women much younger than her, and that's not even acknowledging the fact she's also an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Gender-flipped. The female Pearl genuinely loves her father, even though she kills him, and shows some of her only genuine remorse for killing him.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: She's portrayed by the beautiful Mia Goth, and in her younger days, presented herself as an innocent farm girl with dreams to become a star. Beneath that was an extremely psychotic Serial Killer who began killing people since 1918 and would continue to do so even as she grew old, before finally being put down by Maxine in 1979.
• The Fake Cutie: When she was young, she appeared at first glance to be an innocent Farmer's Daughter, but was already a budding sociopath who killed animals for fun and whose fantasies of stardom were growing increasingly deranged.
• Fan Disservice: After Howard lures Jackson away from the rest of the group, Pearl goes into Maxine's room and strips nude, revealing her decrepit body for the audience to see while also covered in blood. The fact that she climbs into Maxine's bed and molests her takes it to a whole new level of sickening.
• Farmer's Daughter: In Pearl, which is ironic given that's also the name of the porno that's shot there in the 1970s.
• Foregone Conclusion: Absolutely none of her scenarios for leaving the farm and seeing the world were remotely realistic, and she did not have a viable shot at leaving. Howard wanted to live a simpler and less privileged life and had everything he desired on that farm, her obviously Germanic features and middling skill as a dancer meant that she likely never had a chance as a showgirl with the ever-present xenophobia and anti-German sentiment during the height of the Great War, in addition to simply being too unstable to sustain a career in show business, and the Projectionist likely didn't see her as anything more than a lay to woo, and even if he had truly been into her, her clear mental instability would have scared him off regardless.
• Freudian Excuse: Pearl grew up in a small town where nothing exciting ever happened in a time when people of German descent were victims of xenophobic abuse and with a mother who treated her like dirt as a way of coping with Pearl's serious, untreated mental health issues and her own trauma, and constantly tormented by (perceived) opportunities to leave always being taken away from her. It's not really a surprise that she ended up the way she did.
• Gardening-Variety Weapon: She kills both the Projectionist and Wayne with a pitchfork.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Pearl and Howard's killing spree of the film crew is motivated by their jealousy towards their victims for being young and attractive while they themselves no longer are. 61 years prior, Pearl's murder of Mitzy was in part motivated by Mitzy being "younger and more blonde." In Pearl's eyes, Mitzy had everything handed to her because her looks were closer to the beauty standard of the time than Pearl's looks were, and this incensed her (in addition to the fact that Pearl had confessed to three murders in front of Mitzy) to the point of brutally killing her sister-in-law with an axe, under the belief that Mitzy had won the church audition instead of her. Considering that Pearl tells Howard "you know I don't like blondes" after pushing Bobby-Lynne to her death, it seems likely that Pearl still harbors that jealousy towards Mitzy even six decades later.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Once it's clear that Maxine has no bullets in Wayne's revolver, Pearl grabs Howard's shotgun and fires it at Maxine, who manages to dodge in time. However, since Pearl was never shown to have any expertise in handling firearms unlike Howard, the shotgun's recoil sends her flying out the front door and breaks her hip, thereby completely ending the threat she poses to Maxine.
• Hypocrite: After Howard rejects her advances, Pearl attempts to molest both RJ and Maxine but later calls Bobby-Lynne and Maxine a "whore." Pearl reveals this isn't a new thing for her, either, as she has sex with the Projectionist while Howard was away during the war.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: It's shown that Pearl's desire for fame and adoration is largely just a desire for love from as many people as possible to make up for getting so little of it from her own mother.
• I Just Want to Be Special: The main reason she resents the younger film crew is because they're everything she no longer is; young, more desirable, and making their way to stardom. When she was younger, her desire for fame and to be more than just some farm girl is what drives her to kill.
• Improbable Weapon User: Over the course of both X and Pearl, she kills her victims in a variety of ways. Her mother Ruth dies when she's set ablaze due to being pushed towards the fireplace, her father is suffocated using a pillowcase, both the Projectionist and Wayne are killed with a pitchfork, and Bobby-Lynne is pushed into a lake where an alligator devours her.
• Insane Equals Violent: Pearl is clearly severely mentally ill, with her traits resembling borderline personality disorder (a desire to be loved, constant insecurity, a feeling of grandiosity and deep devastation), as well as narcissism.
• Moral Myopia: When Maxine tells Pearl that the world will condemn her for her horrific crimes, Pearl mocks the idea that Maxine is innocent, treating Maxine's promiscuity as morally equivalent to her own spree murder and sexual assault, seemingly believing that others will see it the same way.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Pearl is much more violent and depraved than her husband, being willing to use farm tools, knives, and even an alligator to off her victims, as opposed to Howard's exclusive use of the shotgun. Pearl also has a much higher on-screen body count than Howard, with the former having killed a total of seven victims (her mother Ruth, the Projectionist, her father, Mitzy, RJ, Wayne, and Bobby-Lynne) across both X and Pearl, while Jackson and Lorraine are the latter's only two casualties in X.
• Murder by Inaction: While it's debatable on whether Pearl deliberately meant to set her mother on fire out of impulse or did so accidentally when she pushed her towards the fireplace, she opts to drag the horrifically burned Ruth into the cellar rather than get her any medical attention, allowing her to slowly die of her injuries. Pearl even opens the door the next day to find Ruth having crawled to the top of the stairs and tosses her back down there out of revenge towards her mother for mistreating her.
• Narcissist: Her obsession with Maxine (who has a striking resemblance to Pearl's younger self) and her resentment towards the film crew for getting the fame and attention she believes she deserves but never got paint her as such.
  • She shows signs of clinical narcissism in Pearl, such as a massive but fragile ego, delusions of grandeur, poor emotional regulation, a deep sense of entitlement, paranoia and hatred toward anyone who she feels is in her way or has what she doesn't, and an unsettling Lack of Empathy. She does have a limited capacity for love and remorse, though, indicating that she’s not The Sociopath.
• Not Good with Rejection: Murder seems to be her go-to reaction whenever she is rejected by anyone, and it’s how the Projectionist and RJ both meet their ends. She also had a breakdown after her audition at the church when the judges rejected her for the dance troupe, with Pearl screaming and crying as she was dragged off the stage because, from her perspective, she blew her one and only shot at leaving the farm.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • In the climax of X, she tells Maxine pointedly that she was like the younger woman once, being a youthful idealist with dreams of fame and stardom before they got crushed by things simply not working out, and warns Maxine that she can easily fall into that same sad fate too. The fact that both characters are played by the same actress adds an extra layer of meta irony to this.
  • In Pearl, her mother tells her that she recognizes the bitter, empty person Pearl "really" is.
• Not Wanting Kids Is Weird: Pearl admits to being glad when her fetus died during her pregnancy because she never wanted to be a mother. She's also an insane, murderous narcissist.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Pearl is very immature and childlike, getting lost in fantasies of escaping to a more glamorous life (to the point of outright hallucinations at times), and often acting more like a child than a married woman. The "psychopathic" part from her willingness to murder anyone she has to to achieve said dreams or for even pettier reasons.
• Red Is Violent: She changes into a red dress to get ready for her audition, shortly before suffocating her father to death with a pillowcase, and later on, brutally murdering Mitzy with an axe.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Subverted - everyone assumes she's one of these and she does play into this image a bit to lull them into a false sense of security, but Pearl still has some quick wits to her. By the time her victims realize she's not demented but willfully malicious, she already has the killing blow lined up.
• Self-Made Orphan: Pearl reveals that she killed both of her parents; after their dinner argument escalated to physical violence, her mother caught fire when Pearl pushed her towards the furnace, and her paralyzed, wheelchair-bound father was suffocated to death the next day when Pearl decided to Mercy Kill him.
• Self-Serving Memory: Not surprising, since Pearl is able to completely rewrite reality for things that are currently happening. Pearl claims that she was a dancer in her youth. What she means is that she danced around the farm a lot and fantasized about being in show business, but was summarily rejected at her one and only audition because her look wasn't what they were looking for and because frankly, she wasn't a particularly good dancer.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Pearl’s feelings regarding Maxine. And how.
• Shadow Archetype: To Maxine, in spades. Both of them are women who sought stardom in their youth because they wanted to escape their troubled home lives. Pearl wanted to be a showgirl so she could get away from living under the same roof as her abusive mother while also having to take care of her invalid father, and Maxine ran off to become a porn star so she could get away from her evangelist family. Pearl is, in many ways, a dark mirror to Maxine; Pearl's circumstances differ greatly from Maxine's, as Pearl was young during a time where purity culture was enforced, combined with the anti-German xenophobia as a result of World War I, while Maxine's youth is during a time where free love and sexual liberation was more positively seen. Pearl was driven to commit murder because of the unfortunate circumstances of her time, whereas Maxine has way more opportunities due to being young in a more progressive era. Pearl drives the point home herself by telling Maxine that she'll end up just like her as an old woman who's lost her beauty, attractiveness, and her chance to become a star. The fact that Pearl and Maxine are both played by Mia Goth only further cements it.
• Slut-Shaming: She calls both Maxine and Bobby-Lynne "whores" despite her sexual assault of the former and, 61 years earlier, her extramarital affair with the Projectionist while Howard was away during World War I.
• Spree Killer: Her first killing spree in Pearl ended with a body count of four, three of whom were close family members, including her parents. She killed all four of them in the span of less than 24 hours.
• Stepford Smiler: The closing shot of Pearl is of her smiling. However, the camera stays on her as the credits play, and she starts shedding tears and straining her face.
• Time-Shifted Actor: A notable aversion. Pearl is portrayed by Mia Goth as both her young self in 1918 and her elderly self in 1979 (under heavy prosthetic makeup for Goth to appear as an old woman), as a result of the Significant Double Casting between Pearl and Maxine.
• Turn Out Like His Father: Pearl's mother tells her that she'll turn out like her, bitter and trapped, with all her dreams gone and caring for her husband. Which is more or less what does happen.
• Ungrateful Bitch: Killing Bobby-Lynne by feeding her to an alligator is especially callous after she had wrapped a blanket around Pearl to keep her warm and was genuinely trying to help her, even offering to walk with her back to the main house.
• Villain Holds the Leash: Theda the alligator (named after actress Theda Bara) has been trained by Pearl to act as the corpse disposal for her victims. In 1979, an alligator (possibly Theda or a different one entirely) assists Pearl with one of her murders in X by devouring Bobby-Lynne.
• Villain Protagonist: Of the aptly named Pearl, which is set during her youth in 1918.
• Villains Want Mercy: When Howard has a heart attack from Lorraine's death rattle, Pearl begs Maxine to help him even while Maxine is holding her at gunpoint. Moments later, Pearl also begs Maxine to help her after breaking her hip, which was a direct result of Pearl's attempt to murder Maxine using Howard's shotgun. In both instances, Maxine (rightfully) refused to help the murderous couple.
• Your Head A-Splode: How she dies in 1979, when Maxine rolls the truck over her head and splattering it into goo.

Howard

Howard

Played By: Stephen Ure, Alistair Sewell (young)

A retired veteran who married Pearl prior to World War I and assists his wife in murdering the film crew on their property.

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• Defector from Decadence: He grew up in a well-off family but left it behind to pursue life as a simple farmer, a fact Pearl admits she greatly resents him for as she expected he'd bring her into his more glamorous life.
• The Dragon: While an equal partner in their marriage, Howard is less active in the murders than Pearl, acting primarily as an accomplice and enabler for crimes driven by Pearl's bloodlust rather than his own.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: Howard served in World War I before coming back to find Pearl having murdered both her parents. During the interim years between 1918 and 1979, Howard would go on to serve again in World War II, and eventually began to assist Pearl in her murders.
• Grumpy Old Man: Howard is rude and unpleasant to the group from the start.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His plan to stage a Self-Defense Ruse by dragging Lorraine's body inside the house is what ends up killing him, due to Lorraine's death rattle causing Howard to have a heart attack.
• Love at First Sight: He says with utter sincerity that he thought Pearl was the most beautiful girl he'd seen when he first saw her, and he still finds her beautiful after all these years.
• Love Makes You Evil: Considering that Howard stayed with Pearl for decades even after learning that his wife was a depraved murderess and is her accomplice in several murders. It's pretty clear that Howard is genuinely loyal to Pearl, and given that he wasn't indicated to have any outstanding mental issues prior to his arrival back home, it's likely that he loved her so much that he was willing to cover up her crimes, before eventually joining in on her killings.
• Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: A potential interpretation of his refusing to sleep with Pearl, as evidenced by their intense sex scene that doesn't at all trigger his bad heart. This makes sense given the film's themes of sexual stigma.
• Retired Badass: He's gone through both world wars.
• Riches to Rags: Howard comes from a wealthy family, who could've actually paid off a doctor to exclude him from being drafted for the Great War. Pearl hoped that Howard would take her with him to live with his family, but he chose to live on the farm with her and her parents.
• Self-Defense Ruse: Howard suggests this to Pearl and tells her to help him drag Lorraine's body in the house with the intent of framing her death as self-defense.
• Sex Signals Death: Mentions his bad heart several times, so the audience is led to believe that he will die when he and Pearl have sex after the murders. This doesn't happen, with Howard lasting for about twenty more minutes before being startled to death by Lorraine's twitching corpse.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The murders committed by Howard are exclusively with an elephant shotgun. His preference of firearms stems from his military background.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Stephen Ure plays the elderly Howard in X, while Alistair Sewell plays Howard as a young adult who appears in the ending of Pearl.