Gator Tillman

Gator Tillman is a deputy in his father Sheriff Roy Tillman's North Dakota county, and he wants very badly to be taken as seriously as his old man. He struts, postures, and follows orders with a puppyish need for approval, mistaking swagger for authority whenever a situation calls for real nerve.

Joe Keery plays him as a man performing toughness rather than possessing it, all clenched jaw and borrowed menace, which makes him funnier and more unsettling than a straightforward henchman would be. The gap between how Gator wants to be seen and how transparently soft he actually is gives the role its comic, faintly sad tension.