Apple TV has long been a haven rich with delights for sci-fi fans. The platform is stacked with movies and TV shows built on various tropes from across the genre. Furthermore, not all of Apple TV's sci-fi projects are created in the same way. While many are adapted from novels, others are completely original ideas that don't exist anywhere else.
Regardless, a huge part of what makes these sci-fi adventures so rewarding is the rich array of characters who populate their various worlds. While many of the heroes and villains are taken from the pages of source material and adapted for the small screen, there are many who exist only in live-action on Apple TV. That's also true for certain characters who appear in Apple TV's sci-fi book adaptations but have been created especially for the story's new medium.
10. Salvador Quinn from Silo
Based on Hugh Howey's book trilogy from the 2010s, Silo has been praised for its smart approach to adapting the books for live-action. That said, it hasn't been an entirely faithful affair. There have been a few characters created especially for the TV show that help drive the narrative forward, such as Camille Simms (Alexandria Riley). However, I think Silo's best original character is Salvador Quinn — a figure who has never actually appeared on-screen.
Apple TV establishes him as Silo 18's Head of IT during the Rebellion, and connects him with book-accurate lore and twists in a way that makes him feel like a very authentic and oddly tangible character. With just one season left to go, I hope we'll get to see him via a flashback before Silo ends next year.
9. Jo Ericsson from Constellation
Constellation aired in 2024 and was swiftly and unfairly canceled after just 1 season. Thankfully, the mysterious finale doubles up as a thought-provoking way to end the arc of Noomi Rapace's Jo Ericcson. The Swedish astronaut lives in a world where a very limited multiverse does exist. In short, there are only two realities, and both versions of Jo swap places.
The death of one of them means Constellation can't follow each Jo directly, but the show finds razor-sharp ways of teaching the audience what the less fortunate one was like. Jo is the sort of thoughtfully written sci-fi character I'd expect from a literary epic, making it even more impressive that Apple TV created her and the show she exists within. But it's also immensely depressing that we'll likely never see anything from Jo or this story again.
8. Carol Sturka from Pluribus
Best known for the Breaking Bad saga, television industry legend Vince Gilligan returned to sci-fi with Pluribus in 2025. Although the show's hivemind concept isn't exactly conducive to a flood of compelling characters, this seemingly intentional restriction helps the characters who aren't connected to the hivemind feel even more vivid.
Rhea Seehorn leads the cast as fantasy author Carol Sturka, who is left especially alone when her partner dies at the beginning of what is ultimately the most peaceful apocalypse possible. While initially frustrating and borderline unlikable, Carol's journey goes on to quickly reveal she's only acting how most people would in her position. Any violent instincts or attempts at deception are only to reverse the end of the world and return everyone's status as an individual. Granted, Gilligan's story does a lot of the heavy lifting here, but Carol is the perfect kind of character to hold it all together.
7. Jeff from Finch
2021's Finch doesn't get talked about enough. It's a great sci-fi movie that, although it's not based on a book, clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Isaac Asimov's Robot series. One of the grandfathers of sci-fi, Asimov installed three near-infallible laws in his Robots throughout his work, and Jeff (Caleb Landry Jones) has a practically identical version of all three. He also has a fourth law that's exclusive to the movie: he's programmed to commit himself to looking after Finch's (Tom Hanks) dog once Finch is dead. The dynamic between Finch and his creation defines the movie, but Jeff is the beating mechanical heart at the center of it all.
6. Blair Caplan from Dark Matter
Originally published in 2016, Blake Crouch's Dark Matter premiered as a TV show in 2024, with Crouch himself serving as creator and showrunner. While bringing his story to life on the small screen, the author fleshed out the universe with new characters and storylines. However, they all connected directly to what was already in the source material.
Blair (Amanda Brugel) was one of Crouch's smartest and most necessary additions to the series in this respect. The book routinely mentions the first characters to step into the Box and get lost in the multiverse, but never names or shows any of them. Blair is established in the Apple TV series as the very first of these lost Box pilots, and Dark Matter even shows where and how she lost her bearings.
5. Harmony Cobel from Severance
Severance is built on a concept so simple (at least by sci-fi standards) that I'm still surprised it hadn't been explored this way in the literary world before the Apple TV series premiered in 2022. The idea of Lumon Industries mentally severing its employees into two distinct personalities allows for some very interesting characters to arise. Patricia Arquette's Harmony Cobel is one of the best.
Harmony's near-religious attachment to Lumon and its history make her both a villain to be unnerved by and an individual to pity. It's impossible to watch Severance without your feelings about her changing as the story progresses. Even just two seasons in, there's no way to easily describe her that fully captures the brilliance of her nuanced arc and backstory.
4. Mark Scout from Severance
As much as I tried not to choose two characters from the same show, Severance is just too densely packed with great ones. Whether you're talking about Mark's Innie or his Outie, there's a reason he's the face of the Apple TV smash hit. With Mark's Outie struggling to process the loss of his wife, his application to Lumon is what he believes to be the solution to his ailing mind.
As a direct result of that decision, Mark's Innie is created as a wholesome counterpart who goes on to be a self-assured personality, eventually demanding autonomy and his own life. Despite being two people occupying the same mind, it's brilliant how the writers highlight the similarities in both halves of Mark, and how they make him whole for more reasons than one.
3. Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova from Star City
For All Mankind expanded its universe even further earlier this year with the release of Star City. Although the prequel spinoff does feature two characters from its parent show, it primarily focuses on franchise newcomers. There are a few standouts, but Anna Maxwell Martin's character takes the crown for how easy she is to despise.
As a prominent figure in the Soviet Union's crushingly brutal regime, Raskova is framed at first as a textbook villain. Then, as Star City progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that she's just as governed by fear as those she's trying to keep in line with her stern demeanor. I felt a strong element of sympathy for her by the end, which took me by surprise. Fantastic writing and character design.
2. The Cleonic Dynasty from Foundation
Isaac Asimov's Foundation books were long deemed unadaptable due to their centuries-long timeline and sprawling worldbuilding. Apple TV proved those concerns to be overblown, although there continue to be countless changes made to the source material to aid in how digestible the story is in live-action. One of the best and biggest changes is the introduction of the Cleonic Dynasty — most of whom are clones of the original Cleon I.
Cleon I and Cleon II are mentioned in the books, but they have incredibly limited roles, and Cleon II is not a clone of Cleon I. So, it's probably most accurate to say that Apple TV's Cleon I is a book character, but none of his successors are. The clones have all added a fascinating new angle to Foundation, allowing a greater focus on Empire's decline from a new perspective. If I had to choose the most pivotal Cleon, it would be Cleon XVII for his unpredictable and game-changing actions near the end of season 2.
1. Ed Baldwin from For All Mankind
In many ways, For All Mankind feels nothing like a sci-fi show. Its tasteful pacing allows it to transform from a very grounded version of the 1960s all the way to a near-modern-day setting with such glacial speed that it's only when you stop to think that the show that earns its sci-fi label. Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) was born on Earth and died of old age on Mars. That's pretty undeniably a sci-fi arc.
Ed is the perfect encapsulation of what For All Mankind is all about, which is telling a generational, character-driven story that never strays too far from our own reality. His deeply emotional and turbulent arc as a spacefaring legend in a universe where the US always had something else to prove to the Soviets is a masterclass in how to build a sci-fi character whom the audience really cares for and misses when they are gone.
Every movie and show on this list is streaming now on Apple TV.
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