Characters from Orion and the Dark
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Main Characters
Orion
Click here to see him as an adult.
Click here to see him as an old man.
- Voiced by: Jacob Tremblay, Colin Hanks (adult)
The protagonist of the movie. He's scared of everything, especially the dark.
- Absurd Phobia: Some of his fears are very unusual and impossible to happen, such as getting cancer through the phone.
- Afraid of Clowns: He is afraid of murderous gutter clowns.
- Bratty Half-Pint: The Night Entities are annoyed by Orion's presence, especially since he's so disruptive to their work.
- Bully Magnet: He constantly gets picked on by other kids for always being scared. He has a list of the people who bully him. There's even one girl who always sends him threatening letters on his birthday even though she moved away.
- Character Development: Over time, he stops being scared of Dark, and learns to just "feel the fear" when he does something that's scary.
- Childhood Friend Romance: He eventually married Sally, the girl he had a crush on as a child.
- Child Prodigy: He knows a lot of big words for someone his age, and suggests reading Infinite Jest for a bedtime story. He can also speak fluent Japanese.
- Cosmic Motifs: He is associated with space in general. He is named after a constellation, his class is going on a field trip to the planetarium, and when he grows up, he works at a planetarium (not the same one from the field trip).
- Digging Yourself Deeper: When he's showing the other Night Entities how great light is, he unintentionally offends Dark by suggesting that he's the one holding them back. Later, Orion tries to clarify what he meant by using the Grass is Greener adage, but that just leads to the other Night Entities wanting to go into the daylight even more, abandoning Dark.
- Friendless Background: He doesn't have many friends and is constantly bullied at school. However, he later becomes friends with Dark and the other Night Entities.
- Glasses of Aging: When he's an old man, he starts wearing glasses.
- Good Parents: In the future, he's a great father to Hypatia, telling her a bedtime story to help her overcome her fear of the dark, listening to her, and even letting her insert herself into his story.
- Hairstyle Inertia: He keeps the same hairstyle throughout his life.
- In-Series Nickname:
- Due to his habit of being afraid of everything, Orion has become infamous with the nighttime entities to the point of being referred to as "The Screamer".
- Richi Panichi calls Orion "Cryin' Orion" for the same reason.
- Interspecies Friendship: He, a human boy, becomes best friends with Dark, a Night Entity, as well as the other Night Entities.
- Ironic Name: Orion is afraid of the dark, but is named after a constellation that is only visible at night.
- Kiddie Kid: Downplayed. While he is a Child Prodigy and he constantly nitpicks a cartoon for being unrealistic, he's still afraid of the dark and still needs bedtime stories to go to sleep. However, the story he wanted to read was a novel written by David Foster Wallace (likely Infinite Jest, since it was a Doorstopper).
- Nervous Wreck: Orion is filled with anxiety and fears of unlikely events.
- Primal Fear: His fear of the dark is what kickstarts the story.
- Puppy Love: He has a crush on his classmate, Sally. They get married in the future.
- Shrinking Violet: He is very nervous around Sally and can't work up the courage to talk to her.
- Spoonerism: One of Orion's many fears. He often refuses to speak in class when he knows the answer, or even say good morning, out of worry that he'll swap the letters by accident.
- Stellar Name: He is named after the constellation.
- Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: In-Universe. The film's main plot is actually a bedtime story that an adult Orion is telling to his young daughter, Hypatia, and they both work together to make it up as they go along. Plot elements are added at random and dropped just as quickly.
The Dark
- Voiced by: Paul Walter Hauser
The living embodiment of the dark.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: In the book the Dark is depicted with having some blue and stars on him giving a night sky look while in the movie he is completely dark shaded.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Dark is a dark being who is meant to represent all darkness.
- Black Cloak: He wears a black cloak to emphasize that he's the Dark, but unlike other examples, Dark Is Not Evil.
- Dark Is Not Evil: In fact, he’s a friendly, jovial fellow who just wants to teach Orion some courage.
- Driven to Suicide: Once the other Night Entities quit and realizing how lonely and dreary his job is without them, Dark decides to quit and accepts being erased once Light catches up to him. However, he later comes back when he is retrieved from Orion's memories.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Though he's nominally a friend to the other Night Entities, they're annoyed at his attempts to convince the world that he isn't so bad, and later ditch him when they hear about how great the day is. However, by the end of the movie, they learn to appreciate Dark and what he does.
- Hated by All: Billions of people worldwide are afraid of him, and he even keeps track of all of them. He admits that it's giving him a complex, and he is saddened when he overhears a little boy saying that he hates the dark.
- Interspecies Friendship: He becomes buddies with Orion, a human boy.
- The Movie Buff: He seems to really like movies. He has made a short film about himself, but it didn't get into Sundance.
- Psychological Projection: Light accuses him of projecting his insecurities onto him.Light: It’s always the same routine with you, man. I show up, you feel inadequate, then you start to project your insecurities onto me. Every day, I bring brightness and hope to the world, and you bring the exact opposite.
- Secretly Selfish: Though Dark tries to act like his quest to help Orion overcome all of his fears, especially him, is a truly altruistic goal on his part, the rest of the nighttime entities accuse him of being this by trying to use it as a way to help boost his own fragile self-esteem— which is a pretty fair accusation since, in addition to keeping multiple lists of all of the numerous children and people that are afraid of him with him at all times and showing clear resentment and envy towards his much more beloved and popular counterpart, Light, kidnapping Orion for a 24-hour joy ride isn't even the first time that Dark has tried to make the rest of the world like him more through a crazy, hair-brained scheme.
SPOILER CHARACTER
Click here to see her as an adult.
- Voiced by: Mia Akemi Brown, Shannon Chan-Kent (adult)
Hypatia is Orion's daughter.
- Chekhov's Skill: Hypatia is stated to have an interest in poetry. When she inserts herself into her father's story, she uses a new poem to rally the Night Entities to return.
- Child Prodigy: Like her father when he was her age, she is very astute.Hypatia: Fear of the dark is an evolutionary adaptation that people developed to protect themselves from nocturnal predators.
- Cosmic Motifs: She continues the space theme from her father. She is named after an ancient astronomer, has stars around her room, and goes to the planetarium where her father works.
- Daddy's Girl: She is shown to have a deep bond with her father throughout the movie.
- Foregone Conclusion: Her design gives away the fact that Orion succeeds in courting his childhood crush Sally.
- From the Mouths of Babes: Non-vulgar example. Hypatia is a very perceptive and insightful little girl, something an adult Orion comments on more than once.
- Girlish Pigtails: She had pigtails when she was younger, but when she grew up, she changed her hairstyle.
- Genre Savvy: She is aware of why Orion is telling her the story, and assumes that the story will be simple and have a Dance Party Ending (probably Self-Deprecation at DreamWorks Animation constantly using that trope).Hypatia: Parents love simple stories like that because whatever problem the character has, it all gets fixed, and then they don’t have to worry about it anymore. Orion meets Dark. Dark’s not so bad. Orion isn’t afraid of him anymore, then there’s a dance party.
- Hidden Depths: She turns out to be an excellent poet.
- Like Parent, Like Child: She and Orion are alike in many ways, like how they were both very smart as children and had a fear of the dark. Hypatia even inserts herself into the story because she thought that she and her father would be friends if they were the same age.
- Meaningful Name: She's named after an ancient philosopher and astronomer from Alexandria, and is very wise beyond her years.
- Nervous Wreck: She has some of this but toned down compared to Orion, mostly sharing a fear of the dark and anxiety expressing her feelings with others.
- Primal Fear: She has a fear of the dark, which is why he tells her a bedtime story to help her get over it.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: She makes very insightful comments for someone her age.Hypatia: We should be able to look at the real sky at night. They build a city that blocks out the stars, then they put up fake stars to look at?Orion: That’s… That’s a really profound thought, sweetie.
- Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: In-Universe. She helps her dad make up the story as they go along. Hypatia somehow inserts herself into the story near the end, and it isn't until a grown-up Hypatia has her own son and passes the story onto him that they finally figure out an ending to it.
Night Entities
General
- Anthropomorphic Personification: They embody Sleep, Insomnia, Quiet, Unexplained Noises and Sweet Dreams respectively.
- Character Development: They're not that fond of Dark at first, but by the end of the movie, they learn to appreciate him.
- Color-Coded Characters: Insomnia is green, Quiet is white, Sweet Dreams is purple/pinkish, Sleep is blue, and Unexplained Noises is gold.
- Colorful Contrails: They leave behind contrails matching their colors as they fly. Sleep's contrails has Zs and Insomnia's has numbers.
- Motifs: Some of them are based on real-world objects
. Sweet Dreams is based on a lava lamp, Sleep is based on a stuffed animal, and Unexplained Noises is based on a Sony Sports Walkman. - Two Girls to a Team: Gender-inverted. Including Dark, there are only two guys on the team. The others are girls (Quiet's gender is hard to tell at first, but she is referred to with she/her pronouns at one point).
Sleep
- Voiced by: Natasia Demetriou
- Catching Some Z's: Unlike the other Night Entities, Sleep fittingly leaves behind a trail of Z's whenever she flies.
- Instant Sedation: Sleep puts people to, well, sleep quickly by using magical items including a magical chloroform rag.
- Shout-Out: Sleep is designed after a Muppet.
- Signature Headgear: She always wears a nightcap, which helps show that she gets people to sleep.
- Sleepyhead: She's prone to dozing off in the middle of doing something.
- Tap on the Head: How Sleep does her job does not look pleasant, like using a pillow to smother someone unconscious or a chloroform soaked rag. Orion moves to stop her when she's about to use a (magical, spectral) hammer on a baby.
- True Blue Femininity: Sleep is a blue female Night Entity with an unmistakably feminine voice and noticeable eyelashes.
- Unexplained Accent: She somehow has a Russian accent.
- Vorpal Pillow: One of her tactics to get someone to sleep is to smother a pillow on them.
- Would Hurt a Child: She's willing to use a hammer to get a baby to sleep.
Quiet
- Voiced by: Aparna Nancherla
- Abstract Eater: Quiet does her job by sucking up all the sound out of the surrounding area, nullifying it within her body.
- Planimal: She may squeak and have hears like a mouse, but she also resembles a dandelion, with her fuzzy appearance and her green tail resembling the stem.
- Stealth Pun: Her mouse-like appearance is a reference to the phrase "quiet as a mouse."
- The Unintelligible: Quiet talks in squeaks that the other Night Entities only pretend to understand. Barely audible beneath the squeaks is a whisper, which is more evident when she whispers in Orion's ear at the climax.
Insomnia
- Voiced by: Nat Faxon
- The Cynic: He always thinks the worst of everything, and to keep people awake, he whispers worrisome things into their ears.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: He has dark circles under his eyes, since he embodies insomnia.
- Necessarily Evil: Insomnia is shown to be this as he targets people who should be awake so they can continue their job or work on their personal dilemmas.
- Nervous Wreck: Given that he represents a nervous feeling, it’s more or less inevitable he’d behave like that.
- Telepathy: Implied. He would have to read minds in order to know what would get them to stay awake, and he has tapes of people's embarrassing memories.
- Voice Changeling: He can change his voice into other people's so he can say worrisome things in their ears and keep them awake. He can even speak other languages, like Japanese.
- Wingding Eyes: Insomnia's pupils resemble a digital clock display. They're usually both zeroes but they shift through different numbers whenever he stresses out.
Unexplained Noises
- Voiced by: Golda Rosheuvel
- Brutal Honesty: When Dark introduces Orion to the Night Entities, she makes an "insightfully harsh" comment at Dark.Unexplained Noises: Helping random children to boost your fragile self esteem is not in our job description!
- The Comically Serious: She takes her job very seriously? Her job? Making noises that scare children.
- Fembot: Her eyelashes and voice establish her as feminine.
- Make Some Noise: We don't get to see much of her job, but she makes an art out of making noises. It seems as though she amplifies the noises she makes so that they're loud enough to be heard from indoors, as the green light on her body is seen flickering whenever she does this.
- Meaningful Name: Her temporary rename, "Debby," means "bee." This is fitting, as she is yellow and busy as a bee.
- Meaningful Rename: When she quits, she feels like she has no purpose in the day and says her new name is "Debby." She isn't called that for the rest of the movie.
- Shout-Out: She's modeled after a Sony Sports Walkman.
- Take This Job and Shove It: She's the first one to quit their job, and does so angrily.
Sweet Dreams
- Voiced by: Angela Bassett
- Beauty Equals Goodness: She's unearthly beautiful, and always wants to give everyone pleasant dreams.
- Dream Weaver: She uses people's memories and desires to create dreams that inspire them. She is not pleased when Orion's negative outlook starts influencing the dream she's giving someone.
- Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Sweet Dreams, a gentle female Night Entity who looks like she's wearing a long, flowing dress, is a pinkish-purple color.
- Implied Love Interest: It's implied that Dark has a crush on her. When he's introducing Orion to the Night Entities, he calls Dreams the most creative and poetic of them all and says her name softly. At the end of the movie, she tells Dark that she admires his work, and he gives a soft chuckle.
- In-Series Nickname: She tends to just be called "dreams."
- The Leader: It seems that she's the de-facto leader of the Night Entities. Sleep and Insomnia only quit their jobs because Dreams did.
- Sizeshifter: She's already tall, but she becomes giant when she's conjuring people's dreams.
- Statuesque Stunner: She's beautiful and the tallest of the Night Entities. Dark is also implied to be attracted to her.
- Team Mom: She acts like a gentle but firm leader and mother figure to the other Night Entities.
