Regina Tiedemann 1986

In 1986 Winden, Regina Tiedemann is a teenage girl who doesn't quite fit in — awkward, watchful, and the target of casual cruelty from her classmates. She's the daughter of the town's outspoken Claudia Tiedemann, and beneath the teasing she's quietly perceptive, guarded, and hungry for someone to actually see her.

Lydia Maria Makrides plays her not as a victim but as someone absorbing every slight and filing it away, which matters enormously once you know how much of Dark's tangled timeline eventually runs through her. The performance is small and unshowy, but it plants a dignity in Regina that the show will spend decades paying off.