- Kirsten Raymonde – A former child actor from Toronto who is eight when the Georgia Flu destroys her world. Initially she and her brother are the only survivors in her family, but as they travel, he dies too. She joins the Travelling Symphony as a teenager and becomes obsessed with actor Arthur Leander, whose death she witnessed as a child on the first day of the pandemic.
- Arthur Leander – A wildly successful film actor originally from the (fictional) Delano Island in British Columbia. Despite his success, Arthur is shiftless, unhappy, and marries three times. He dies onstage of a heart attack while portraying King Lear at age 51, the same night the pandemic takes hold.
- Jeevan Chaudhary – A former paparazzo, turned entertainment journalist, turned EMT, whose life intersects with Leander's at key moments.
- Frank Chaudhary – Jeevan's paraplegic brother, a former war reporter wounded in Libya, now a ghostwriter who lives a life of solitude in his apartment.
- Miranda Carroll – Arthur's first wife, eleven years his junior. She is initially an artist who is obsessed with creating her graphic novel, Station Eleven, about Dr. Eleven, a man who lives on a defunct planetary space station. She later becomes a proficient businesswoman. Shortly before Arthur's death, Miranda gives him two copies of the finally-completed graphic novel, which Arthur gives to his son, Tyler, and the child-actor Kirsten. Mandel has said Miranda is the character she most identifies with.[10]
- Clark Thompson – Arthur's English best friend, whom he met while they were struggling actors. He then works as a management consultant, and post-collapse, reinvents himself as a curator to a museum of obsolete objects.
- Tyler Leander – The son of Arthur and his second wife Elizabeth. He grows up in Jerusalem, estranged from his father, and is later stranded in the settlement at the (fictional)[11] Severn City Airport. He and his mother eventually leave with a religious cult, and he grows up to be the religious leader known as the Prophet.
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