Character

Helena

Helena in Orphan Black (2013), played by Tatiana Maslany.

Helena arrives as a shadow at the edge of Sarah's discovery of her own clones — a scarred, watchful figure with a crossbow and a rosary, raised by religious extremists to believe herself the one true original. She speaks in fractured English, kills without apparent hesitation, and seems to regard her sisters as abominations rather than family.

Tatiana Maslany plays her as both predator and wounded animal, feral instincts layered over a childlike hunger for love she's never been allowed. The writing could have left her a slasher-movie villain; instead it keeps peeling back why she's like this, and Maslany finds the strange tenderness underneath the violence long before the show asks you to feel it.

Played by

Appears in

Orphan Black2013