If anything, a director’s next movie after their first big hit is an even tougher challenge than creating the hit itself. After M. Night Shyamalan burst onto the scene with the spooky storytelling and terrifying twists of The Sixth Sense, he followed it up with his own unique take on superhero mythology: Unbreakable. Fans spent years begging Shyamalan to make a sequel to Unbreakable, and he finally gave them one without telling them.
The final scene of Shyamalan’s psychological thriller Split unexpectedly connected it to Unbreakable, leading into a crossover, Glass, to conclude the trilogy. As an idiosyncratic re-imagining of comic book lore, the Unbreakable franchise has a ton of fascinating characters.
Dr. Karen Fletcher
Dr. Karen Fletcher is the foil that Shyamalan uses to flesh out Kevin Wendell Crumb in Split. While he has Casey and her friends trapped at home, Kevin occasionally heads out for his therapy sessions. Dr. Fletcher has been treating Kevin’s dissociative identity disorder for years, and she’s one of the only people he can have a real conversation with.
It was Dr. Fletcher’s treatments that allowed Kevin to work at Philadelphia Zoo for a few years before his other personalities took over. Dr. Fletcher is the one who introduces the notion that Kevin’s DID could actually change his genetic makeup.
Joseph Dunn
Everybody grows up viewing their dad as a real-life superhero, but in Joseph Dunn’s case, his dad actually turned out to be a superhero. After watching his dad bench-press every weight in the house, Joseph becomes convinced that his dad has superhuman strength.
Played by Spencer Treat Clark in both Unbreakable and Glass, Joseph Dunn subverts audience expectations of cutesy kid characters with some surprisingly dark moments, like pulling a handgun on his father in a desperate bid to prove he has superpowers.
Dr. Ellie Staple
Glass isn’t entirely satisfying as the follow-up to both Unbreakable and Split, but Sarah Paulson’s performance as Dr. Ellie Staple is a highlight. The character is introduced as a psychiatrist who works with patients who have delusions of grandeur and does everything in her power to prove that the heroes and villains of the Unbreakable universe don’t really have superpowers.
This was already an intriguing setup in a world where original concepts in superhero movies are few and far between, but Shyamalan took it a step further by making Staple’s true nature crucial to his signature plot twist.
Casey Cooke
With roles in movies like The Witch and Marrowbone, Anya Taylor-Joy has quickly established herself as one of the most iconic “scream queens” of the current generation of horror stars. She gave an incredible performance in Split that anchored the movie.
Obviously, James McAvoy steals the show as Kevin Wendell Crumb and his various other personalities, but Taylor-Joy gives the audience a protagonist they can really root for in Casey Cooke. Throughout the movie, flashbacks reveal Casey’s harrowing backstory, which makes her desperate struggle against Kevin in the present even more heartbreaking.
David Dunn
David Dunn is M. Night Shyamalan’s take on the Superman myth. He has all the “Übermensch” powers of Supes, but he’s just a regular guy who has no idea he’s special until he’s the only survivor of a gruesome train crash. After learning that he’s abnormally strong, David has to choose whether to use those powers for good.
Shyamalan sought to tell a grounded superhero story that explores the possibility of superpowers existing in the real world. Bruce Willis’ performance as David nailed this premise by tapping into the same everyman quality he brought to the role of John McClane.
Kevin Wendell Crumb
James McAvoy got the chance to show off more range than ever before with the role of Kevin Wendell Crumb in Split. He has multiple distinctive personalities – 23, to be exact – and McAvoy brings a wholly unique edge to every single one. Kevin’s 24th personality, “The Beast,” which emerges during the events of Split, is the scariest one of all: a bloodthirsty cannibal with superhuman capabilities.
After Split acted as a sort of supervillain origin story explaining how Kevin became a supernatural menace, Glass built on his backstory. The real Kevin has been buried in his own mind under all the other personalities, known collectively as “The Horde,” so he’s never really present – the fabricated personas have taken over his consciousness entirely.
Mr. Glass
From Pulp Fiction’s Jules Winnfield to Star Wars’ Mace Windu, Samuel L. Jackson has played a bunch of iconic roles over the years. One of his most memorable characters is Mr. Glass, who seems to be a comic book-obsessed mentor figure throughout most of Unbreakable before the movie’s classic Shyamalan twist reveals him to be a sadistic villain who staged a series of disasters just to prove David Dunn’s super-strength.
Like all the best villains, Mr. Glass is the polar opposite of his arch-nemesis. While David Dunn is a true-to-life man of steel, Elijah Price has particularly brittle bones that break with the slightest provocation. As a result, he doesn’t pose much of a physical threat – but the psychological threat he poses is terrifying.
