Dr. Sarah Gunning

Sarah Gunning is the only doctor on tiny Crockett Island, which means she is perpetually stretched thin, tending her ailing mother and a graying congregation with equal patience. Practical and clear-eyed in a place given to superstition, she trusts evidence over miracles, even as she carries an old, unresolved tenderness for Riley Flynn.

Annabeth Gish plays her with a weary steadiness that makes her the show's quiet ballast — someone whose skepticism isn't cynicism but professional discipline. As the island's faith curdles into something stranger, her insistence on facts becomes genuinely suspenseful, and Gish never lets the character's compassion get crowded out by her doubt.