What are the female characters like in 12 monkeys? And are there a lot?
Hi anon!! Let me just say I am THRILLED by this ask !
The female characters in 12 monkeys are so good!!!!! The main characters include James Cole, Dr. Cassandra Railly, Jennifer Goines, Dr. Katarina Jones, Jose Ramse, Olivia Kirschner, and Theodore Deacon, plus a couple more I can’t reveal cuz of spoilers! So in the main cast alone there are equal women to men, and I think by the end the women outnumber the men!!
But we all know, it’s really quality over quantity when it comes to these things, and boy oh boy does 12 monkeys have QUALITY female characters too!!!
Dr. Cassandra Railly (aka Cassie) is a virologist from the “past” (2015) who, during the plague sent a message that the team in the future who have the time machine have been using to figure out how to stop the plague. She starts the series as this really well respected doctor, but getting tangled up in the time travel plot really affects her. Throughout the series she had a truly remarkable arc, going from a soft almost pacifist like character, to a hardened battle weary soldier in their war with too much anger to fit inside herself, and then finding a nice middle ground. Often within the show Cassie and her arc are used to show the other members of the team their morality and their choices aren’t always as black and white as they seem, in different ways that line up with her arc. Cassie has the full range of emotion and humanity we want from female characters, and Amanda Schull plays her beautifully. She’s truly my favourite character in the show.
Dr. Katarina Jones (aka Jones) is the scientist who helped to invent time travel, and is the person in the “present” (2043) who is in charge of Project Splinter. She is a gruff older German woman who smokes too much and is all hardened and full of sharp edges, but as the series goes on she opens up and you see the parts of her she kept hidden at the start. She will do anything to get what she wants, and while her goal is the save the world, her motivations are selfish in a really nice well developed way. She centers in a lot of the narrative about morality and humanity and where you draw the line when it comes to sacrifice in the name of the greater good. Jones is astounding and incredible. She is so complex and morally grey, while also being someone you root for. She’s wonderful.
Olivia Kirschner is one of the villains of the series, and she’s so good at it!! Olivia is a part of the Army of the 12 Monkeys, who are revealed very early on to have been instrumental in the beginning of the plague that ends the world, and then they’re revealed to be more than that. Olivia is the sort of... prodigal daughter/matriarch of the cult. Without giving too much away, she is an integral part of pretty much all facets of the story, and she gets to have so much time to show us her motivations. She falls from grace within her cult, but not because she doesn’t believe in their cause, but because she believes in it MORE. She is hard to put in a box, but man she’s worth it when you watch her play out.
And last but most certainly not least, Jennifer Goines. Oh Jennifer. In a show where she is not the “main” character, she is the absolute most important character to the plot. When we meet Jennifer, she is a woman who has been committed to a psychiatric facility by her father because she hears voices... but that’s just the start. It’s hard to explain Jennifer without spoiling, but my advice would be to listen very closely to Jennifer. She may seem like she’s saying nonsense but she’s... not. I’ll just say that. Jennifer goes through a great arc, starting out feeling like she’s crazy and being completely lost, both in the world and in her own mind, and ends the story as this self assured woman who is the most important piece of the story, and everyone knows it. Jennifer is also absolutley hilarious. And ... you get more of her than you’d expect. Make of that what you will.
All in all the women on 12 Monkeys are some of the most well written and fully realise female characters I’ve seen in tv. They have their own motivations and the plot and the narrative give them room to breathe and grow at all the right times. They are never relegated to love interest or mother or anything like that. They have minds and souls and they are their own characters at every step of the story. All the conflicts between them feel earned (tho there’s some weirdness between cassie and Jennifer for a while but it gets resolved). The women drive the plot, they push the story forward, and are often the most integral characters to the plot. James Cole may be the Hero, but he’s really just along for the ride a lot of the time.
So, in short, 12 Monkeys has incredible female characters and it’s one of the best shows ever. But don’t just take my word for it, give it a watch and see for yourself.
