Best TV Characters of the 2020s to Date: No matter the genre, a great TV show is uplifted by strong characters. A great character can even keep one watching a mediocre but growing show until the rest of the pieces fit together. To honor recent TV, I created this list of the 20 Greatest TV characters introduced in the 2020s. In a couple of examples, like “Ramy” or “What We Do in the Shadows,” the shows premiered in 2019, but the characters were introduced as series regulars in the 2020s.
After I brushed up on some old favorites and limited myself to some ground rules:
- Miniseries were omitted: Even if the show was canceled after a season, I wanted characters with the potential to grow, and miniseries has an endpoint.
- Real characters created in a writing room are what I was aiming for. No reality TV or game show hosts (despite how amazing Rob Riggle is on “Holey Moley”)
- No more than one character from any show. The entire cast of Severance or “The After Party” is worth it, but there were just too many picks.
12. Mandy
Dossier: A mid-20s psych student torn between going to grad school and her current job as a caretaker to three autistic adults
There’s a telling scene towards the end of this show’s sole season in which Mandy pleads to one of her three charges, “I love you…you have to know how much I care about you.” Yet, it’s not a romantic scene. It’s the rare examination of love between a caretaker and a patient, and it’s certainly not uncommon in real life.
As someone with a mental disability not unlike the characters on this show, I can testify that it takes kind and understanding people like Mandy to give you hope in society, and Mandy oozes kindness and super-human levels of patience. Mandy is the rare character who demonstrates that caring for someone is not a one-way street: She’s equally enriched in these unique relationships. As an added bonus, Sosie Bacon’s chemistry with Chris Pang (the Elvis impersonator from “Palm Springs”) is off the charts.
11. Sheikh Malik
Dossier: A Muslim imam to whom Ramy goes for spiritual support.
With the success of “Poor Things” this year and Ramy Yousef playing a third lead in that film, there’s even more hope that people might backwatch this wonderful gem of a series on Hulu. If those viewers make it to the second season, they’ll find none other than Academy Award winner Mashersha Ali in the role of Sheikh Malik. Ali became the first Muslim to win an acting Academy Award back in 2017. As such, he reportedly jumped at the chance to be in the most mainstream piece of pop culture portraying American Muslims to date (although “Little Mosque on the Prairie” gives Ramy a run for its money) after the show’s initial success.
Malik is a spiritual advisor who has no shortage of wisdom and authority, but he’s also a practical, salt-of-the-earth man imbued with a sense of community service. There’s also a lot to be said about the way Ali pauses in conversations to show that he’s meditative.
10. D’Arcy Bloom
Dossier: Former Olympic skier dealing with her post-glory days as a bar proprietor in small-town Colorado
What often goes unreported in the pageantry of the Olympics (especially the Winter Olympics) is the scarcity of opportunities or career-making visibility that exists outside of that four-year window. This can lead to a lot of post-competition depression (look up the suicide of Jarrett Peterson for a real-life example of this trope played out most tragically).
D’Arcy is such a rich character because she has shades of these tragic undertones (not particularly well-explored in the media as is) layered on top of one of the most fun personalities on TV. She has a unique relationship with nearly every other main character, and her unfiltered nature has often sparked the series’ most memorable scenes. Despite her messy personality, she also possesses honesty in her relationships, an openness to making friends, and true ride-or-die loyalty to Asta. The irony is that while she laments being stuck in the same town, she’s living, learning, and loving, and that’s an inspiration.
9. Elizaveta Petrova
Dossier: In the Russian Court of the 18th century, Elizabeth is the closest family member to the monstrous and inept Tsar Peter and the quiet confidante to Empress Catherine the Great.
Cautious enablers of autocrats might not necessarily be in vogue right now, but the beauty of a period piece is it enables us to look at characters from a distance. Rather than looking at Elizabeth as a proverbial Ivanka to an 18th-century Donald Trump, we can simply take her as an interesting character on her own merits and that she is. She’s firmly old money, and her loyalty should lie with the existing dynasty when our interloper protagonist (Catherine the Great, Elle Fanning) enters the picture.
But she is a sharp woman (especially considering this is a pre-feminist era) and has the uncanny ability to gain the sympathy of both sides. In a world where cruelty seems to reign, Elizabeth is a kind soul but one who’s never completely out of the loop. She’s never far removed from power, either. Of course, it helps that the real-life Elizabeth character was a brilliant politician who actually managed to take the throne for 21 years and enjoyed widespread popularity.
8. Misty
Dossier: A soccer team manager caught in a traumatic plane crash. She grows up to be a Pollyanish nurse with a dark side.
“Yellowjackets” is an unraveling puzzle of a show with several corners already revealed: In the face of trauma, Shauna and Natalie end up bitter; Taissa compensates for it with ambition; Von sinks into nostalgia; and hopefully, Lottie has found her own little happy place. On the other hand, Misty is a question mark, and it’s not inconceivable that we could go through the entire show without knowing her motivations. She spends her days as a caretaker and keeps up the façade off-hours as well. At the same time, she’s casually ok with murder and pretty darn creative about how to go about it.
Underneath this bundle of contradictions is a person who clearly wants to fit in and has a whole bundle of intimacy issues. As a teenager, she was just the manager of the high school soccer team. As such, she wasn’t exactly considered an equal to her peers on the state championship steam. That she continues to trail after them like a lovelorn puppy in adulthood is the kind of endearing trait that makes her slightly less monstrous.
7. Helen
Dossier: A personal assistant to hotel heiress Bitsy Brandenham (Stanley Tucci), who is constantly treated like a doormat.
To call Helen “subservient” would be a disservice to the word. Helen has made it her mission to surrender as much of her dignity as possible on a daily basis. At the end of the tunnel? That sweet, sweet inheritance. Her story might seem sad, and she might seem jaded, but this is a former pool hustler from Weehawken, New Jersey (her pride in the city, as expressed through rap, is quite a highlight). She’s playing the long game, and all indications are that she enjoys the hustling (beautifully expressed in another delightful song). Certain episodes, like the end of the strike and the fall of Ambrose’s bid, were engineered by Helen, proving she is quite the mastermind.
Helen’s deadpan delivery comes courtesy of Daveed Diggs simply voicing the character as himself without any efforts at inflection. It’s not a commentary on gender, but the casting director simply thought Diggs would be the best for the part (Ditto Stanley Tucci as an old woman). While it is jarring to see an old white woman in tights as a Daveed Diggs character, it really works.
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6. Hetty Woodstone
Dossier: An unctuous matriarch from America’s Gilded Age who lives in the present as a ghost with a number of dead companions in the New England mansion of one of her descendants.
This British import boasts one of the best ensembles on TV from top to bottom. However, Hetty really takes the show’s dialogue to new levels, with her pitch-perfect snootiness backed by Wisocky’s delivery. Despite being born 800 years after the first ghost to appear at Woodstone Manor, Hetty is the most fish-out-of-water character and the one who is most hilariously fussy about inconveniences. There’s never enough cocaine, and none of her companions seem to know how to throw a proper dinner party. Considering that the afterlife is 100% inconvenient, her character is a non-stop source of humor.
Because this is also a show with a heart, the writers have been careful to give her a little bit of a “melting ice queen” arc that continues to pay off the farther we get. She is not ready to tolerate Flower yet, but she’s softened quite a bit on Finn and Alberta and has really softened on Trevor (if you get our drift).
5. Travis (Paul Walter Hauser), The After Party (Apple)
Dossier: The quintessential embarrassing ex at a wedding-turned-murder-mystery.
If PG-13 comedies were still in vogue at the box office, Paul Walter Hauser could make a killing as the next Jack Black or Zach Galifianakis. Until then, he’ll have to make do with memorable scene-stealing roles like Sting Ray in “Cobra Kai,” the inept hitman in “I, Tonya,” and this fedora-donning Casanova wannabe. In the second season’s wedding, no guest is respected as little as Travis, who can’t seem to get the hint that he wasn’t really invited. Yes, if you think too hard about why he would be invited, you run into more questions than answers. That’s not the important thing, though.
However, in this genre-bending season, Travis sees himself as a sly noir detective who’s the only one capable of saving the day. Obviously, he’s not, but he’s useful enough in what he knows to figure out the plot and create the funniest episode of the season in the process. I’m sure Grace is happy he came after all, if not for sheer entertainment purposes.
4. Dr. Agnes Jurati
Dossier: A hypochondriac scientist at the forefront of her field agrees to overcome her fear of space travel to aid Captain Picard on a final mission
When “Star Trek” was hitting its highest number of TV screens in the TNG era, there was an eerie sameness to all the characters: They were all eager to work and suffered from no social ills of any kind. While the show was a treasure, the difficulty in drawing conflicted and complex humans shows when one watches the series in retrospect. In Agnes Jurati, we have a wonderfully sloppy mess of complexities. In the hands of Alison Pill (who’s equally excellent at playing unease and frustration in series like “The Newsroom” or “Hello Tomorrow”), Agnes is as messy of a human as humans come.
She has a wonderful external nervousness that lends itself to self-deprecation. She is open to loving the galaxy’s bad boy, the cigar-smoking Captain Rios. And there’s also a mission that she’s willing to kill for in a way that stretches even a doctor’s ethics. Since we don’t want to enter spoiler territory, let’s just say it’s a juicy arc.
3. Cherie
Dossier: Benihana Chef Shrunken and Trapped Inside a Human Terrarium for Alien Amusement
There’s no question that “Solar Opposites” differentiated itself from its predecessor, Rick and Morty, based on the running subplot of the wall that Jesse and Yumulack created from shrunken humans. In this horrific microworld, any humans who irritated our Pupan protagonists are left to ward off insects and carve out a healthy diet from the candies and food scraps that are deposited into the terrarium
At the center of this plot is former Benihana chef Cherie, who has risen to become a martyr figure after helping to lead a rebellion and being suspected dead. Cherie employs her knives like a Mortal Kombat character and has developed the kind of action survivor mentality of a Ripley from the Alien franchise. While I suspect she became a recurring character because the writers couldn’t resist employing her trademark line “Benihaha bitch!” for a laugh, she’s undergone an arc that’s garnered the gravity of an entire hero’s journey.
2. James Marsden
Dossier: A mid-level celebrity whose ego continuously disrupts a trial and skirts the edge of human decency
For those who haven’t watched “Jury Duty,” only one character in the cast, Ron Gladden, is a real person, and everyone else is putting on an elaborate show for him to convince him that he’s the foreman of an actual jury. The cast was assigned the task of creating as much humorous chaos as possible while still being believable for the mark.
Producers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupinsky (originally from “The Office”) figured that if the show was set in Los Angeles, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for a celebrity to be called on for jury duty. James Marsden worked 17-hour days without the usual trappings, and his only request was that they not make Ron look foolish. Marsden, on the other hand, was willing to debase himself to no end in the name of getting a good laugh and providing some satirical value on celebrity culture. The greatest achievement in the performance is that even if you thought that an actor like Marsden was still well-intentioned, the character falls in the line between unaware and mildly irritating. All the evidence you need for how brilliant the performance is is that the mark believed it.
1. Tanya McQuoid-Hunt
Dossier: A vacationer who stands out among the upper crust for her self-absorption
There’s a good reason “White Lotus” showrunner Mike White chose Tanya as the only character to bring back for a second season in this jet-set satire: Her level of aloofness makes every other character look redeemable by comparison. This is not to suggest that there aren’t more despicable people in this universe, but a thematic undercurrent of White’s brilliant series is that happiness and moral certitude come from first recognizing how much wealth changes you. Tanya is endearing on many levels, and there are plenty of times when she does the right thing, but she’s lost in her own needs. That’s also what makes her so entertaining to watch. The end result is two Emmys well-deserved for a hilarious character actress of over three decades
Runners-Up:
Allison (Danica McKellar) on Home Economics (ABC); Aunt Abby (voiced by Kristen Bell) on Central Park (Apple); Balthazar (Luis Gerardo Mendez) on Resort (Peacock); Bonnie (voiced by Danice Cabanela) on Adventure Beast (Netflix); Brian (Michael Urie) on Shrinking (Apple); Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish), The After Party (Apple); Grandma (Lori Tan Chunn) on Nora from Queens (Comedy Central); Jayden Kwapis (Bobby Moynihan) on Mr Mayor (NBC); Irving (John Turturo) on Severance (Apple); Landon Payne (Ike Barinholtz) on American Auto, CBS; Lucy Dang (Zoe Chao) on Party Down (Starz); Lt Shax (voiced by Fred Tatasciore) on Star Trek Lower Decks (CBS All Access); Moss Yankov (Emory Cohen) on Florida Man (Netflix); Ms Fish (Beth Stelling) on Rutherford Falls (Peacock); Natalie (Sophie Thatcher and Juliette Lewis) on Yellowjackets (Showtime); Sweetie Bird (voiced by Tessa Netting) on Tiny Toons Looniversity (HBO)
