Character sheet for Deep Blue Sea 2. Spoilers may be unmarked. Characters listed in order of appearance.
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The shark fishermen
The first characters introduced and who had the ill fortune of meeting Bella and her pack.
- Ambiguously Related: They call each other "brother," but it's unclear if they really are brothers or if that's simply a term of endearment.
- Asshole Victim: Only Trent mourns their deaths, and even then it was because of how completely unnecessary they were.
- Karmic Death: They haul sharks unto the deck of their boat, cut off one fin, and throw the rest back into the water. When Bella and her pack catch them, their arms and legs are chewed off and the rest of them is left to sink to the bottom of the sea.
- No Name Given: They say each other's name once, maybe twice, and then are never mentioned by name again.
- Siblings in Crime: If they really are brothers, they're engaged in shark poaching in protected waters.
- Stupid Crooks: They continue poaching even when Trent's boat is rapidly approaching and sending off flares.
- Stupid Evil: Rather than try and maximize their ill-gotten gains, they cut off the dorsal fin and throw the rest away.
- Too Dumb to Live: In several distinct ways.
- When they see Trent's flare, they first think it's the Coast Guard, but then ignore it when Trent's voice comes over the radio.
- They respond to Trent's warning that their lives are in immediate danger by shutting off the radio.
- When they see Bella and the rest approaching as a school, something sharks never do in the wild, rather than be concerned, and rev their motor to leave the area, they throw out chum and start cheering about how money is jumping into their laps.
- Underestimating Badassery: They thought they could take down Bella and pack with ease. They were literally dead wrong.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Introduced and killed off within minutes, just to show how dangerous the genetically altered sharks are.
Trent Slater
The head of security, and the one sent to corral the sharks, or wrangle them back when they escape.
- Benevolent Boss: He treats his subordinates with respect and listens to their input.
- Ignored Expert: He's ignored both by the shark fishermen and Carl Durant when he reports how dangerous Bella and the other sharks are.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He blows up the compound holding the sharks, trying to kill them all. Bella and some pups survive and head out into the ocean, showing up again in the sequel.
- Stuff Blowing Up: He sets off Durant's auto-destruct at the end of the film.
Dr. Misty Calhoun
One of the experts called in by Carl Durant when Bella starts acting strangely.
- Anything but That!: She will swim (and has) with any species of shark, including great whites, but she won't swim with Bull sharks, due to how powerful and aggressive they are. Guess which shark is featured in the film.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Susan, the shark scientist in Deep Blue Sea, was so, so hated, that the directors had to film a death scene for her after the preview screening. Misty, another shark scientist, survived the film without complaint.
- Ignored Expert: She tries to tell Durant, repeatedly, just how boneheaded it is to do any kind of experiments with Bull sharks. He's too far into his paranoia to care.
- Nature Lover: Her shark research is about conservation and preservation.
- Too Desperate to Be Picky: With her grants drying up, membership in her classes on the wane, and tons of bills to pay, she signs the NDA to attend Carl Durant's research, even though Craig refused to share any details until after she got to the shark compound, where Carl filled her in instead.
- You're Insane!: To Carl Durant, after hearing everything he's done in his shark research. He's so paranoid and delusional that he thinks she's the fanatic while he's out to save mankind from the computers he's certain are out to get him.
Craig Burns
Carl Durant's right hand man and attorney.
- Amoral Attorney: Justified. His job is to point out if Carl's ventures are legal and ethical, not moral. Still, Carl's so far off the deep end that even legal demerits to his ventures are brushed off.
- Beleaguered Bureaucrat: He repeatedly tries to warn off Carl Durant from messing with Bull sharks. Carl does not care.
- Ignored Expert: Putting aside issues of morality, he constantly tries to warn off Carl Durant from his drug research on bull sharks because of how many laws it breaks. Carl Durant responds that the evidence, Bella, can be easily disposed of, if need be.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Shortly before everything goes sideways, he returns his sizeable retainer and tries to leave the shark compound. This comes too late to save him.
Carl Durant
The lead researcher and first (and last) human test subject for the intelligence boosting drug.
- Ambiguous Situation: How much of his paranoia is due to a pre-existing condition and how much is due to testing his intelligence serum on himself is never made clear.
- Asshole Victim: On both sides of the fourth wall, people cheer when Bella bites him in half.
- Bad Boss: He clearly doesn't care a whit about his employees as he openly kicks Aaron into the shark containment area for a laugh, and then sells it as "demonstrating that everything is 100% safe."
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Like Susan in the first film, he runs a shark research station that's engaged in extremely unethical shark experiments. Unlike Susan, he has absolutely no redeeming features. Susan was a Mean Boss, at worst, and actually had a legitimate reason and goal for her experiments. The sharks she was studying were the only source of a chemical needed to produce drugs to treat degenerative neurological diseases, like Alzheimer's. Durant is a straight-up Bad Boss who kicks his top IT guy into a shark tank "as a joke" and has no legit reason for his research, aside from his own paranoid delusions. While both die to being eaten by shark, Susan's death was a Heroic Suicide while his death is just a moment of raging megalomania.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: He doesn't hire a lawyer to keep his company in the clear legally. He wants his lawyer to tell him how to ignore the law and get away with it.
- Death by Irony: He spends the entire film convinced that everyone and everything will turn on and steal from or destroy him, at the first opportunity, except Bella. Guess what does him in.
- Did Not See That Coming: The fact that his own gene-modifying intelligence serum might mask pregnancy tests for Bella took him by surprise, but he later admits that the possibility is something he should have considered.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: His remark the shark area is "100% safe" sounds eerily similar to OJ Simpson's trial, where he pleads "100% Not Guilty."
- Entertainingly Wrong: His paranoia causes him to come to some ridiculous, but logically sound, conclusions.
- When he's informed that Trent managed to corral Bella and pack, after they escaped, he tells his lawyer that Bella and crew must like their life in confinement because they're being intellectually challenged. The fact that the sharks might, just might, hate their captivity and are plotting revenge is something he never considers.
- When he briefly spooks Bella after shouting underwater, he cries out "I am Bella's Master!" shortly before she swims up from below and chomps him in half.
- Faux Affably Evil: He runs a pharmaceutical company, and at first glance is affable, jovial, reasonable when people point out he's wrong, and genuinely works in mankind's, not his own, best interests. This all quickly unravels when he demonstrates that he will happily risk his employees' lives for a lark, is a paranoid nut-job who is utterly convinced that his toaster is burning his toast on purpose to spite him, and would kill him given the chance, and even before the climax, is a budding megalomaniac who thinks his intelligence serum makes him a god.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Bella bites him in half from below.
- Hypocrite: He calls Misty "a fanatic" for decrying his unethical and illegal shark research when he's the one who will do anything to "protect humanity from a machine uprising" when such a thing isn't even near likely, except in his own head.
- Improperly Paranoid: He is utterly convinced that machines are plotting to take over the world and enslave or eradicate mankind.
- "Just Joking" Justification: How he responds to kicking Aaron into the shark containment area, to demonstrate how "safe" the staff is.
- Kick the Dog: Repeatedly, but the establishing moment was kicking Arron into the shark containment area to "demonstrate" that they're not in danger when Trent uses the beeping signal to shoo the sharks away.
- The Paranoiac: He's convinced that everyone and everything, save his shark test subjects, is out to get him. He has so many booby-traps set up on his research facilities and intellectual property that even he can't remember them all. Unfortunately, the one thing that he thinks he fully controls is what ultimately gets him.
- Professor Guinea Pig: Deconstructed. He tests his intelligence serum on himself without witnesses, controls, recording himself, or any kind of third-party observer. Naturally, he knows absolutely nothing about whether the serum is actually effective, never mind what possible side-effects he might be experiencing. One thing is for sure, it doesn't help his paranoia.
- Smug Snake: He is nowhere near as brilliant as he thinks he is. He just makes one bone-headed decision after another because he thinks he knows best, and damn any opposing opinions or viewpoints.
- Stupid Evil: He treats the head of his IT department, which is only one person, like crap, pays him in peanuts, and has him run the department on a shoe-string budget, and decides the best way to showcase how "safe" the shark containment is, is by kicking the guy into the shark enclosure, forcing a rescue. Fortunately for Aaron, the sharks were far more fond of eating his shoes than him.
- Tautological Templar: He has utterly convinced himself that he's trying to save humanity from being enslaved or eradicated by machines, through unlocking the full might of human intellect through his intelligence serum. Anything or anyone who opposes this noble goal must be eliminated.
- Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about him without spoiling the entire movie.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: He thinks he's in a Matrix or Terminator franchise film. He's in a Deep Blue Sea franchise film.
Aaron Ellroy
The man in charge of IT at the shark research facility.
- Extreme Doormat: Carl Durant treats him like shit, and the pay is terrible, but he sticks with the company because he currently has no other place to go. After being kicked into the shark-confinement area, Aaron begins seriously updating his resume and consider leaving, whether another job is available or not.
- Hacker Cave: His IT work center looks like one, but he didn't design it that way, Durant did.
- Ignored Expert: He points out various problems with Durant's "perfect" security system. Durant always says he takes it under advisement but ultimately does nothing, except kick Aaron into the shark enclosure for a laugh.
- Servile Snarker: He does not hesitate to take digs at Durant every chance he gets, after Durant demonstrated his complete lack of empathy by kicking him into the shark enclosure as a "prank."
- The Smart Guy: He keeps all of Durant's electronic infrastructure going, all by himself. It took a combination of bad weather and the sharks slamming a boat into a generator to cause problems.
- Smart People Wear Glasses: He's the resident IT expert and wears glasses.
Daniel Kim
The husband of the husband-wife duo of researchers.
- Devoured by the Horde: His lower half was eaten by Bella's pups.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Fleeing from Bella's pups, he, Aaron, and Trent climb up a pipe as the water rises below them. When they all reach the top, Aaron and Trent pull him out, but only the top half. The rest is long gone.
- Happily Married: To his wife Leslie.
- Too Desperate to Be Picky: He signs on with Durant, after sharing the research he and his wife were doing with Durant, without letting his wife know first, because they were on the verge of bankruptcy.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It was the research he shared with Durant that led to the experiments on Bella, and all that came afterward.
Leslie Kim
Daniel's wife
- Devoured by the Horde: Like her husband, her death comes from being eaten alive by Bella's pups.
- Happily Married: To Daniel, though the fact that he shared their combined research with Durant without her consent did strain their relationship.
- What the Hell, Hero?: She calls out her husband when she realizes he shared their research without her consent.
Bella
The leader and only female of the research shark pack.
- Ambiguous Situation: When Durant is with Craig, and they're discussing shutting down the shark research, something Durant clearly opposes, Bella is right outside the underwater window, watching intently. She visibly reacts when Durant says he's got her tagged with a tracker and can easily eliminate her if the clearly illegal stuff he's up to comes to light, and prioritizes hunting Durant down during the film's climax. Did Durant's serum make her intelligent enough to learn and understand human language? Or was she reacting to his wild gesticulations as he was bragging, and there's some other reason she decides to go after him, like recognizing the fact that everyone else follows his lead, something wild animals have been demonstrated to understand in many species?
- Brick Joke: When Aaron is kicked into the shark enclosure, one of his shoes is eaten before he can be rescued. At the film's climax, she goes and eats the other one, letting him go in exchange.
- It's Personal: Implied. She prioritizes killing Durant at the climax over everything else, and unlike the first movie, has nothing to do with inherent shark instincts.
- Monster Is a Mommy: She goes into labor and births a large horde of pups.
- Nobody Could Have Survived That: Trent blows up Durant's entire compound, with the sharks trapped inside, using Durant's own self-destruct system. Bella somehow manages to survive and escape into open water.
- The Smurfette Principle: She's the only one of the sharks in the research site that's female. The reason why remains unknown.
- Super-Intelligence: For sharks, certainly. It's even hinted that she can perfectly understand human speech.
