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The 4400
Shanice Murray
Shanice Murray
- Played by: Brittany Adebumola
A young lawyer and mother who was taken in 2005. She has tactile telepathy.
- Brought Down to Normal: Afraid that she will end up abusing her powers, even unintentionally, she has Isaiah use his powers to take them away. They come back after Isaiah is stabbed by Manny.
- Chekhov's Skill: Her history as a lawyer comes in handy when the 4,400 are issued contracts intended to entrap them.
- Good Reason For Parental Abandonment: She didn't want to abandon her child, she was abducted against her will. Nonetheless it causes her some angst as her own father abandoned her and her child has suffered through the same thing.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: When her daughter was born she had postpartum depression so severe she considered abandoning her family entirely, but overcame it and became a loving mother. Then the green light took her, robbing her of the first 16 years of her daughter's life. Worse, the good-bye note she made during a particularly bad episode and then tucked away was found by her husband, so her family believed she'd left them.
- Soapbox Sadie: She was an anti-war protester and a lawyer before she was taken, and quickly becomes one of the more outspoken returnees.
- Touch Telepathy: She can see into other people's minds by touching them.
Claudette Williams
Claudette Williams
- Played by: Jaye Ladymore
A photographer and civil rights activist who disappeared in 1958. She has a healing factor.
- Awful Wedded Life: Her husband James was a sexist, controlling abuser.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Some of her experiments with her powers might have given her permanent damage if she didn't have her powers.
- Healing Factor: She can recover quickly from almost any physical injury.
- Restrained Resistance, Reckless Rebellion: She and her husband had sharply different opinions about the direction of the civil rights movement, with her husband advocating for sit-ins and nonviolent protests against the KKK, while she wanted to fight back.
- Taught by Experience: She was abused by her reverend husband, and thus is immediately disturbed by Isaiah's preaching and control over the returnees.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Her husband abused her frequently, but everyone else looked the other way because he was a reverend and the leader of a local civil-rights group.
Dr. Andre "Doc" Davis
Dr. Andre "Doc" Davis
- Played by: TL Thompson
A soft-spoken doctor from the Harlem Renaissance.
- Chekhov's Skill: While much of his medical training is out of date, his experience in dealing with traumatized soldiers in WWI comes in handy in "If You Love Something", when he has to talk Hayden out of an anxiety attack.
- Gentleman and a Scholar: He's a doctor who was once part of a community of intellectuals, and has a polite, erudite manner.
- Healing Hands: He has the power to heal people with a touch, although it has a nasty after-effect: he becomes deathly ill afterwards until he touches another person, who then suffers whatever injuries he absorbed.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: In the past, he did extensive research on bronchial and respiratory diseases and even invented a cure for whooping cough, while his white boss got all the credit and he was only ever referred to as an "assistant" to him.
- The Medic: He takes it upon himself to offer medical care to the returnees, having little faith that their mostly-white guards care about them.
- Never Got to Say Goodbye: He and his beloved partner Cynthia had an argument the night that he disappeared, and he regrets that that was the last time he saw her.
- The Smart Guy: He's highly intelligent and the one to start documenting and experimenting with their new abilities.
- Trans Tribulations: Downplayed and somewhat defied by Doc, who's a trans man, even in the 1920s. He found it difficult to advance in the medical field due to his race, but he was able to pass as cisgender and surrounded himself with queer black intellectuals during the Harlem Renaissance, and his partner was a trans woman.
- Workaholic: In the past, he got so wrapped up in his work on curing bronchial disease that he didn't realize Cynthia was feeling neglected. He's afraid he's slipping into the same patterns when he accidentally hits Mildred's Trauma Button during an experiment, ashamed that he got so caught up in the science that he didn't realize she was breaking down.
Rev. Isaiah Johnston
Rev. Isaiah Johnston
- Played by: Derrick A King
A charismatic and wealthy preacher who was taken in 1993. Previously uncomfortable with his family's wealth and influence, the abduction has convinced him that he is meant to be the leader of the returnees.
- Ambiguous Situation: Not long after he is stabbed by Manny, Rev vanishes into the green light with no indication as to whether he is still alive or dead. His fate is still unknown as of the Season One finale.
- Establishing Character Moment: While he has some dialogue beforehand, his first real introduction has him dispelling an impending riot and then using the moment to guilt the government into giving them real beds and answers, establishing his ability to work a crowd.
- Ignored Epiphany: He realized the problems with his father's Corrupt Church and decided to take his ring and sell it to have a life with his girlfriend. Instead he got abducted by the green light and taken forward, and took it as a sign from God that he should devote himself to religion and lead the returnees.
- I Have No Son!: Said word for word after he discovers his son is gay.
- Large Ham: He gets very riled up and dramatic when he preaches. Shanice even lampshades it at one point, saying "Rev has a flair for the dramatic.".
- Mission from God: He comes to the conclusion that leading the returnees is his.
- Noble Bigot: He cares deeply for the 4400 and would do anything to protect what he sees as his congregation, including taking away their powers if they asked him to. He is also a homophobe who disowned his gay son without even actually meeting him in person. While he does claim to "hate the sin, not the sinner," that doesn't actually downplay his prejudice and Keisha rightly calls him out on it.
- Power Nullifier: The Reverend Isaiah's power is revealed to be this in episode 8 when he tried to stop Mildred from attacking him and causing further damage - he can take away the powers of any 4400 he touches. The taken powers are restored when he gets wounded by Manny.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: It turns out that he has claustrophobia.
LaDonna Landry
LaDonna Landry
- Played by: Khailah Johnson
A reality TV star who was taken in 2015. Having spent most of her life being bossed around and observed, she is far more comfortable with her present confinement than the other returnees.
- Broken Pedestal: She is heartbroken to learn that her dad has become a bitter, right-wing paranoiac in the years since her disappearance.
- Daddy's Girl: She loves her father, and is still heartbroken that her mother cut him out of her life when they divorced.
- Hidden Depths: Beneath her seemingly spoiled, vapid exterior, she is an expert on technology. Had her mother allowed her to attend college, she was planning on studying computer science.
- Life Saving Misfortune: She realizes that she had been stumbling around drunk filming her reality show, accidentally tripped and was headed for a fatal twenty-story fall when the mysterious portal whisked her to 2021. Thus, unlike the others, she owes her life to the abductions.
- Master of Illusion: LaDonna can create realistic illusions with her mind.
- Phoneaholic Teenager: LaDonna seems more concerned with the fact that DHS took away her cellphone than she is that she's being detained against her will.Claudette: You do seem overly attached to telephones.
- Skewed Priorities: While the others are desperate to leave the hotel, LaDonna cares more about getting her cellphone back and trying to rebuild her brand. This leads to considerable friction with the others in "That LaDonna Life" when she agrees to help the government with a PR event in exchange for access to her phone.
- Small Name, Big Ego: In "That LaDonna Life", she tries to capitalize on her supposedly famous name, offering to be a spokesman for the 4400 in exchange for getting her cellphone back, only to discover that the rest of the world believes that she burned out and went into rehab, and thus her name is largely worthless.
- Stage Mom: Her mother controlled her entire life around her reality TV career, belittling her dreams of computer science and forcing her to spend all her time on her show. At one point LaDonna starts to break down crying at her mother's mistreatment...and her mother just grins and says that'll be so good for the cameras.
Noah Harris
Noah Harris
- Played by: Theo Germaine
A shy trans boy. He is able to influence people by singing.
- Afraid of Doctors: He is nervous about letting Doc inspect him, with it implied to be a result of negative past experiences due to being transgender. Doc helps him sympathetically though, and it turns out is a trans man too.
- Compelling Voice: He can influence emotions by singing.
- Cure Your Gays: It's implied that his fear of doctors stems from his parents trying to stop him from transitioning.
- Magic Music: His songs can influence people's emotions. For instance, he can make people fall asleep instantly by singing a lullaby, and can make someone ravenously hungry by singing a snack-food jingle.
- Trans Tribulations: Noah distrusts doctors, with it implied to be a result of his parents trying to stop him from transitioning. He approaches Doc nonetheless as he's now cut off from his hormone treatments for medical transition while they're being held in isolation.
Mildred Bell
Mildred Bell
- Played by: Autumn Best
A flower child from 1972. She has telekinesis and is one of the first returnees to discover their powers.
- Beware the Nice Ones: She's normally sweet and laid-back, but her telekinetic abilities are powerful enough to shatter a man's bones from the inside.
- Closet Key: For Mariah, who develops a crush on her after seeing her in action.
- Living Emotional Crutch: Hayden relies on her heavily when they first arrive at the hotel, as he has difficulty coping with being brought into the present, and he is inconsolable when she's taken away from him. Subverted when he and the others finally free her; he realizes that if he can plan a jailbreak without her, he's more independent than he thought, and thus he allows her to go her own way.
- Mind over Matter: She has telekinesis.
- Orphan's Ordeal: She and her older sister Millicent were raised in a cult after their mother abandoned them.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After being freed from her restraints at Ypsi Medical, she freaks out and nearly kills one of the guards in revenge for the experiments that were done on her. Later, she tracks down Bill Greene and hurls him from a hotel balcony, nearly killing him and exposing that the 4,400 have powers.
- Trauma Button: Never ever try and take her pulse. Or touch her neck.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: One of her first actions is to use her powers to help Shanice escape the hotel, but as the series goes on and the government starts cracking down on the 4,400, she gets increasingly bitter.
Hayden Turner
Hayden Turner
- Played by: Amarr M Wooten
A quiet teenage boy who was taken sometime in the thirties.
- Ambiguous Situation: When he has a premonition of the green light taking Logan away, he grabs hold of Logan and disappears with him. It's unknown where they ended up.
- Cute Mute: He initially doesn't speak, and is assumed to be mute before suddenly telling Jharrel that his missing brother is still alive.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Before being plucked out of his time, he was confined to a sanitarium by relatives.
- Happily Adopted: He grows to genuinely love the Kaminski family after they adopt him.
- Living Emotional Crutch: He relies heavily on Mildred for emotional support when he first arrives at the hotel, and becomes inconsolable when she is taken away to Ypsi Medical, to the point that he becomes obsessed with freeing her. After she's free, though, he realizes that the fact that he planned and executed a jailbreak without her means that he's not entirely helpless, and thus they amicably part ways as Mildred pursues her own agenda.
- Orphan's Ordeal: His mother died, and he was sent to live with his abusive Uncle Otis, who eventually had him confined to a sanitarium.
- Seers: Hayden can see into the future.
- Twofer Token Minority: He is black and neurodivergent.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He really hates hospitals and starts having an anxiety attack when he finds out that Ypsi Medical still has a wing with restraints like the kind that were used on him.
Ji-Eun Jeong
Ji-Eun Jeong
- Played by: Crystal Park
A young Korean-American woman who loyally serves the Rev as one of his acolytes.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: She serves Isaiah because he helped her adjust to her Return and helped her discover her powers.
- Beware the Nice Ones: When she focuses her light into a single direction, she can temporarily blind a whole crowd of people.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: After being reunited with her boyfriend, she asks Rev to take away her powers so that she can have a normal life.
- Light 'em Up: Her power is to emit light.
Bruno Comtois
Bruno Comtois
- Played by: Emmanuel K Jackson
A Haitian with fire-generating powers.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: As soon as he's able to get away from the Bois Blanc, he tries to leave, but gets recaptured.
Manny Campos
Manny Campos
- Played by: Calvin Seabrooks
Jharrel's missing brother.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Is affable and friendly to those he encounters but he is also a terrorist trying to radicalise the 4400 and will stop at nothing to accomplish his goals, including arranging events so that the 44orumers would kill enough of the 4400 that it would appall enough people to shift public opinion in their favour, and bombing the Bois Blanc to galvanize the surviving 4400s into fighting back.
- Cain and Abel: The Cain to Jherrel's Abel, as he has him and Claudette handcuffed to a radiator while he plans to blow up the Bois Blanc along with everyone inside.
- Disproportionate Retribution: He stabbed Rev just for shaking his hand. Granted, doing so inadvertently removed Manny's powers and he stabbed Rev on the theory that killing him would bring his powers back.
- The Ghost: He's not seen for the first 9 episodes.
- Invisibility: His power is to be invisible. He was temporarily De Powered by Rev but he got his powers back after stabbing him.
- The Reveal: Manny disappeared into the green light, but not to 2021. He was actually sent to the year 2062, and then sent back to the present to prepare the 4400 for some unknown calamity. As it turns out, the unknown calamity is a Bad Future, and Manny went renegade from the team trying to fix it because he felt that Sienna Stone was only changing enough of the timeline to maintain the status quo.
- Unseen No More: He finally appears in "Give Up the Ghost".
- Utopia Justifies the Means: He tried to arrange events so that the 44orum would kill enough of the 4,400 that it would horrify the public and turn them in favor of the survivors, allowing them to get into government and make the changes necessary to prevent a Bad Future from arriving.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He's trying to rebuild societal structures enough to prevent a Bad Future, and is willing to cause large amounts of death and destruction to do it.
Millicent Bell
Millicent Bell
- Played by: Raven Whitley
Mildred's older sister. She was taken two years after Mildred, in 1974.
- Les Collaborateurs: She's fallen in with the 44orum, and kidnaps Mildred and LaDonna on their behalf.
- Rape as Backstory: She was raped by Caleb, the leader of the cult in which she and Mildred grew up.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: After she helps the 44orum raid the Bois Blanc and take hostages, the 44orum decides to kill her first. Thankfully, LaDonna creates a distraction, allowing Mildred to rescue her.
- Super-Toughness: She has the ability to make her skin like metal, a la Colossus of the X-Men.
Others
Keisha Taylor
Keisha Taylor
- Played by: Ireon Roach
A parole officer from Chicago who is assigned to help process the returnees.
- Freudian Excuse: She is very withdrawn and tends to suspect the worst of everyone, the result of her sister being murdered by a parolee.
- Lost Lenore: Her sister was murdered five years ago, and this has made her far more cynical than is necessary for her job.
- Twofer Token Minority: She's a black lesbian.
Jharrel Mateo
Jharrel Mateo
- Played by: Joseph David Jones
A social worker assigned to help the 4,400 acclimate to the present.
- Establishing Character Moment: The first time we see him, he's arguing to remove the plastic barriers between himself and the returnees to make them more comfortable, demonstrating that he's kind, thoughtful, and with a dim view of authority.
- Missing Child: His brother Manny disappeared one year earlier, and he's been hoping that he is somewhere among the 4,400.
- Only Sane Man: He's the only one who realizes what a giant human rights violation the continued detainment of the 4,400 is, and is constantly pushing for their release and the restoration of their rights while everyone else dithers over red tape and supposed danger. When the video of the bad conditions at Bois Blanc gets leaked, he's the only one asking how to improve the conditions while everyone else is focused on how best to save their image and stop further leaks.
Soraya Abbas
Soraya Abbas
- Played by: Kausar Mohammed
An eccentric tech expert and profiler. Originally brought in to investigate how Shanice escaped from the hotel, she stays on to offer her insights into the returnees.
- Agent Mulder: She thinks time travel is "run of the mill".
- Broken Pedestal: She was a big fan of LaDonna Landry from her reality-TV days... up until LaDonna exploited that fandom in order to convince Soraya to give her access to a computer, which she used to send out video footage of the 4,400 being abused in custody. In the resulting firestorm, Soraya nearly lost her job and spent several days being interrogated by her bosses. Naturally, she's pretty pissed at LaDonna now.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The government puts up with her quirky behavior because her insights are usually valuable.
- Genius Ditz: She's a brilliant profiler who credits her skills to watching lots of reality TV.
- My Country, Right or Wrong: Subverted; as a queer Muslim woman, she has a healthy distrust of the government but believes that it's easier to monitor the system from within than from without.
- Twofer Token Minority: She is a queer Muslim woman working in a system that is often hostile to such people, which makes her more sympathetic to the 4,400.
Mariah Kaminski
Mariah Kaminski
- Played by: Sophie Echendu
Shanice Murray's teenage daughter. Having grown up without her biological mother for a decade and a half, she has conflicted feelings about having her back in her life, although she's also become one of the more outspoken allies of the Returned, especially after her dad and stepmom adopt Hayden Turner.
- Affectionate Nickname: Her dad calls her "Ri" for short.
- Big Brother Worship: A strange example, as Hayden is only older than her by virtue of having been born earlier, but she is very eager to have him see her as cool, to the point that she reluctantly helps him break into Ypsi Medical to free Mildred.
- Heritage Disconnect: Though she is biracial, she's spent most of her life being raised by her white father and white stepmother, and thus doesn't have much connection to her black roots.
- Twofer Token Minority: She is biracial, and also, as it turns out, queer; she has a crush on Mildred.
Jessica Tanner
Jessica Tanner
- Played by: Wilder Yari
The head of Detroit's Department of Homeland Security office, and Keisha's girlfriend. She is left in charge of the local response to the 4,400.
- Alpha Bitch: She runs the 4,400 response with an iron fist, caring more about how it can advance her career than how the Returned are being treated.
- Everyone Has Standards: She is horrified when Bill Greene refuses to call in the police to disperse the 44orum, even as they raid the Bois Blanc.
- Heel–Face Turn: Is revealed to have been the one who called in the National Guard to disperse the 44orumers and was subsequently fired from her job because of it.
Logan Kaminski
Logan Kaminski
- Played by: Corey Jeacoma
The owner of a landscaping company. He is Mariah's dad and Shanice's ex-husband. He remarried after Shanice's disappearance and spent years rebuilding his life, and now has very mixed feelings about her return.
- Ambiguous Situation: He is mortally wounded when the 44orum storms the Bois Blanc, and disappears in a burst of green light. His fate is unrevealed.
- Good Parents: He is a good father to Mariah, and turns out to be exactly the kind of patient, loving father figure that Hayden needs.
- Lost Lenore: He never really got over Shanice's disappearance, even after remarrying.
- No Sympathy: Having spent almost two decades mourning Shanice's disappearance and believing that she walked out on him because she didn't want to be a mother, he has very little sympathy for her when she suddenly returns.
Bill Greene
Bill Greene
- Played by: Chris Johnson
A mysterious man who has been put in charge of the federal government's response to the 4,400.
- Meaningful Name: The fact that his last name is "Greene" and that green light seems to be related to the 4,400 suggests that he knows more about them than he's letting on.
Steve Miller
Steve Miller
- Played by: Vinh Nguyen
A sympathetic guard at the 4400 facility that the main characters are quarantined in.
- Heel Realization: He finally realizes he's on the wrong side of things when Ken smashes up Claudette's bar, just like the bigots who smashed up his family's store.
- Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: His family has suffered constant harassment during the era of COVID because of their Asian ancestry, and he is desperate to be seen as just another one of the guys, even if it means having to come down on the 4,400.
Ken King
Ken King
- Played by: Zachary Keller
A vicious guard at the 4400 facility that the main characters are quarantined in.
- Control Freak: He is obsessed with control and interprets everything as a challenge to his authority. He won't even let Claudette play the piano because he didn't give her permission to and knocks her into the keys for it.
- Dirty Coward: For all his bigoted bravado, he wimps out whenever one of the 4,400 actually stands up to him. Claudette offers to let him take a swing at her with a bat, and he instead uses the bat to smash in the windows of her bar and then runs away. In the first-season finale, when Mildred threatens him and his posse with floating shrapnel, he orders his posse to stand down and surrender.
- Jerkass: He'll make up rules just so he can threaten people for breaking them.
Bridget Templeton
Mrs. Grover
Mrs. Grover
- Played by: Adilah Barnes
An old family friend of Shanice who helps update Shanice and Claudette about what has happened between their disappearances and the present day.
- Cool Old Lady: She helped raise Shanice growing up, completely believes her when she hears her story, then bluntly tells her she's in no fit state to look for her family and puts her to bed. When she hears that she's hosting Claudette, an activist from the 50s, she pulls out all her scrapbooks so that Claudette can see all the progress the Civil Rights movement has made.
Loretta Landry
Loretta Landry
- Played by: Anji White
LaDonna's overbearing mother who had her own reality show that LaDonna's was a spin-off from. She believes fame is more important than anything.
- Lack of Empathy: LaDonna breaks down crying, and she just smiles and says "that'll be great for the cameras".
- Stage Mom: She controlled every aspect of LaDonna's life to make her more marketable and famous. That said, she'll also sabotage her daughter if she's worried that LaDonna will outshine her.
Sienna Stone
Sienna Stone
- Played by: Autumn Reeser
The anti-government head of a corporation that openly supports the 4400. She is also a scientist from the year 2064, whose team is responsible for taking the 4400 from their original times and displacing them in 2021.
- Alliterative Name: Sienna Stone.
- Bad Future: Comes from the year 2064 which is described as one of these. She and her team of scientists have been using time travel in order to make enough changes to the timeline that this future no longer exists.
- Close-Enough Timeline: Manny accuses her and the rest of her team of changing the timeline only just enough that 2064 is no longer a Bad Future but the status quo is still maintained.
- Mysterious Benefactor: Her company has shown itself to be the 4400s' biggest ally against the government and the 44orumers. Such support appears to come with an ulterior motive, as Sienna desires Doc Andre to help her construct a new time machine in 2021.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Pulled Manny from his time to the year 2062 so that he could help her and her team change the timeline. It only results in radicalising Manny to believe that the only thing that will work would be to bring down the system that modern-day society is built on, resorting to terrorism and mass murder in order to accomplish his goals.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: She and her team have been trying to change the timeline to the point where 2064 isn't so much of a Bad Future, but according to Manny her efforts aren't enough. According to him, the entire system was the problem, and Sienna was only changing enough of the timeline to maintain the status quo.
- Walking Spoiler: You can't really read much of this entry without going deep into spoiler territory.
