Meet The Cast Of Characters In Amazon’s The Underground Railroad

Slight spoilers are ahead. Like the detailed routes throughout the actual Underground Railroad, the cast of characters involved in the journey depicted in the new Amazon Prime series are plentiful. The Underground Railroad's visually captivating story of runaway slave Cora Randall spans a plethora of states — from Georgia to North Carolina to Indiana — over the course of months, with each new town bringing people who mean to both help and harm her into her proximity.

The Underground Railroad is, at its core, not just Cora’s story. Viewers are taken on a journey through multiple characters’ origins, as well as their hopes for the future. With slaves, slave catchers, freeborn men and women and abolitionists alike given their chance to tell their story over the course of 10 episodes, viewers walk away from the series more knowledgeable about what led each character to become involved in the system known as the U.S. slave trade. For some, it’s hatred. For many others, it’s a fact of life they must live with. Like the locomotives that give the titular railroad its name being underground, the system connects our characters in a way they can’t always see, for better and for worse. 

These are the characters who make up The Underground Railroad and how they’re involved in Cora’s epic journey.